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Modern Figurative Paintings

MODERN STYLE

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Modern
Original 70's Hand Painted Textile Design Gouache Orange & Green Color on Paper
Located in ALCOY/ALCOI, ES
Bamboo design. Sealed on the back with design studio name and number 972 We offer a small number of these original illustration designs by this design studio based in Alcoy (Spain), ...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paper, Gouache

"Morning Coffee", Portrait of People Street Background Figurative Painting
Located in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Original painting on canvas by French artist Françoise Collandre. A graduate from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Métiers d'Arts in Paris, Françoise Collandre entered the fine a...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Original Painting New Yorker Cover Proposal American Scene Modern Santa's Feet
Located in New York, NY
Original Painting New Yorker Cover Proposal American Scene Modern Santa's Feet Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Santas Feet At Midnight New Yorker c...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Gouache

Fireman Textile Fabric Design 1920s American Scene Modern Working Men Art Deco
Located in New York, NY
Fireman Textile Fabric Design 1920s American Scene Modern Working Men Art Deco Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Firemen Textile design, c. 1929 19 1/4 ...
Category

1920s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Gouache

Coquillage et réveil en rouge by Henri Hayden - Still Life Painting
Located in London, GB
Coquillage et réveil en rouge by Henri Hayden (1883-1970) Oil on paper laid down on isorel 33.5 x 46 cm (13 ¹/₄ x 18 ¹/₈ inches) Signed and dated lower le...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil, Laid Paper

Original Leonard Creo Painting of Boys on a Jungle Gym
Located in Larchmont, NY
Leonard Creo (American, 1923-2019) Children on Jungle Gym, c. 20th century Oil on canvas 12 x 11 3/4 in. Signed lower right: Creo - Another version of ...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Steam Train Bromyard Station Contemporary British Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Bromyard Train Station by Ben George Powell, British contemporary artist signed acrylic on canvas, unframed canvas: 16 x 20 inches provenance: private collection of this artists work...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Indian Landscape with Royal Caravan - Oil Painting - 19th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Indian Landscape with Royal Caravan is an artwork realized by an orientalist painter in the mid 19th Century. The work depicts an elegant Indian coach with a noble company and hors...
Category

19th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

1950's Modernist/ Cubist Painting - The Girl In The Forest
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Portrait by Bernard Labbe (French mid 20th century) original gouache on artist paper, unframed size: 19.5 x 16.5 inches condition: very good and ready to be enjoyed provenance: the ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Abstract Figure - Painting by Behçet Safa - 1960s
Located in Roma, IT
Abstract Figure is an original contemporary artwork realized by the artist Behçet Safa (1934-2018). Mixed colored oil on canvas. Hand signed and dated on the back.
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Paint

Judaica Modernist "The Sage" Rabbi Portrait
Located in Surfside, FL
Genre: Judaica Subject: Portrait Medium: Oil Surface: Board Country: United States Dimensions: 16 x 11 3/4 Dimensions w/Frame: 23 x 19 William Will Coombs (1946-2007) Originally from New Hampshire, a full-time, professional artist known for his work in oils, watercolors, drawings and printmaking, he began his formal training at the University of Washington concurrently with a scholarship to the Charles and Emma Frye Museum School in Seattle. He continued his advanced studies in New York City at the School of Visual Arts, the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. In the past 50 years his paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally and have been awarded over a hundred prizes, among them the Gold Medal, Irish Feis, NYC; First prize Knickerbocker 15th Annual National Arts Club, NYC; Best of Show, North Wildwood, NJ; First Prize, Mystic, CT; First Prize, Moorestown Mall, NJ; First Prize, Ocean City, NJ; Purchase Award, Atlantic City, NJ; First Prize, Ocean City, NJ; Purchase Award, Caldwell, NJ; First Prize, Oyster Bay, NY; Best of Show, Allendale, NJ; First Prize, Shore Mall, Atlantic City, NJ; First Prize, Stone Harbor, NJ. Will Coombs is a Fellow of the American Artist Professional League, a member of the Salmagundi Club, a Life member of the Art Students League of NY, a member of the Ocean County Artists Guild, and the Westfield Art Association. Over the past 25 years the artwork of Will Coombs has been devoted to and deeply involved with his love of Hot Air Ballooning. His paintings and lithographs of Hot Air Balloons gently soaring over the New Jersey landscape...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

"Passion for Gambling", Portrait of a Person in Game Context Figurative Painting
Located in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Original painting on canvas by French artist Françoise Collandre. A graduate from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Métiers d'Arts in Paris, Françoise Collandre entered the fine a...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Still Life Oil Painting Betsy Podlach American Post Feminist Modernist Art
Located in Surfside, FL
Betsy Podlach (American, born 1964.) Still life with Tin Cup, 1996 17.5 X 16.5 inches. Framed it measures 18.25 X 17.25 Betsy Podlach graduated from Harvard, cum laude, (she studied at Harvard with Alfred Decreido and William Reimann as well as Carlos Fuentes continuing her studies at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, Ms. Podlach was awarded an art fellowship and residency at The International School of Art in Umbria, Italy. Betsy Podlach is an American painter who considers the Italian Venetians and the american abstract expressionist painters her mentors. The two painters she is most inspired by are Titian and Jackson Pollock, Both use the picture plane and abstraction and space, light, movement and form to communicate a physicality built entirely on the principals of painting, in the “classical” sense of a flat plane and lines, color, shape, space and light applied to that flat surface to create magic – light, space, form, emotion, force, movement, the physical and the spiritual. She describes her work as a figurative version of abstract expressionism. She was influenced by many of the abstract expressionists from the NY school...
Category

1990s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

1960’s French Stylish Portrait of a Woman Modernist Oil 1965
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Artist/ School: French School signed A.Bertin signed on back, dated 1965 Title: Period portrait of a woman Medium: oil on board, framed Framed: 18.5 x 12.5 inches Board : 18 x 12 ...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Modernist Rabbi Judaica Painting on Gold Background
Located in Surfside, FL
A contorted Rabbi looking upward is depicted in a naive, and almost child-like manner. Vibrant colors, and gestural brushstrokes fill the composition, enhancing the flatness of the figure. Harry Sternberg, artist, teacher, and political activist was born in New York City's lower east side in 1904. He was the youngest of eight children born to his mother, a hungarian immigrant, and his father, an immigrant from Russia, . His passion for art came early; by age 12 he had begun saturday art classes at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Sternberg continued to advance his formal art education through 1922, studying at at New York's prestigious Arts Students League alongside Raphael Soyer, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and other notables of the day. His career as a professional artist began in 1928 when he consigned a group of his early prints with the dealer Frederick Keppel in New York. In 1933 he returned to the Art Students League of New York as an instructor, where he taught etching, lithography and composition, continuing to teach there for over 34 years. During the Great Depression he was a WPA artist, and his murals are in post offices in Chicago, Chester and Sellersville, Pennsylvania. Sternberg came to national prominence as a printmaker, painter, and muralist, in the Depression era and during World War II. Sternberg was an acclaimed member of a vital generation of American artists dedicated to exposing social injustices and offering support for an egalitarian society. His interest in the plight of American workers...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Illustration Board

Vintage 1950s Israeli Oil Painting, Signed in Hebrew Kibbutz Worker Reading
Located in Surfside, FL
Murray S. Greenfield Art Gallery (label on verso). Genre: Modern Subject: People Medium: Oil Surface: Board Country: Israel Dimensions: 9 1/2" x 13" Dimensions w/Frame:16.75" x 20.25"
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

1970 Haitian Mod Gold Painting Portrait of African American Woman Emilcar Simil
By Emilcar Similien (SIMIL)
Located in Surfside, FL
Feu de Joie 1970 hand signed and dated. Measurements: 25.75 X 25.75 Framed. Image is 23.75 X 23.75 Emilcar Similien, known as Simil was born in 1944 in St. Marc. He finished elementary school in St. Marc and high school in Port-au-Prince. From 1965 until 1971 he studied at the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Port-au-Prince, where he took courses in painting, sculpture, and art history. Simil uses his images of women only as means for displaying patterns, color, and the sparkle of gold jewelry on black skin. He paints with acrylics on Masonite of any size. His surfaces are smooth and polished. Simil delights in beauty, elegance, and grace. This is done in a silhouette style reminiscent of Kara Walker. Emilcar Simil (Similcar) is known for Acrylic painting in high colors of black skinned female figures. He is of the generation of Haitian artists that include Bernard Sejourne, Prospere Pierre-Louis, Levoy Exil, Louisiane Saint Fleurant, Henri Calixte, Paul Dieuseul, Laurent Casimir, Frantz Zephirin, Denis Smith, Philton Latortue, Philome Obin, Préfète Duffaut, Fernand Pierre...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic Polymer, Acrylic, Canvas

Boy with Dog
Located in Columbia, MO
LARRY KANTNER Boy with Dog 1980 Acrylic on canvas 52.5 x 40.5 inches
Category

1980s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Mid-Century Modern Vintage Figurative Oil Painting - Off to School
Located in Bristol, GB
OFF TO SCHOOL Oil on canvas Size: 32 x 25.5 cm (including frame) A lovely and endearing miniature oil on canvas depicting a scene of a pedestrian walkway on a fine summer’s day. A ...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Qian Zhang Modernist Original Mixed Media "Go Home"
Located in New York, NY
Title: Go Home Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 16 x 16 inches Frame: Framing options available! Condition: The painting appears to be in excellent condition. Year: 2000 Circa Ar...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Lulav and Etrog Benediction, Judaica Oil Painting, Early 20th Century
Located in Surfside, FL
Samuel Seeberger (Sieberger) was a known artist and post-card designer who lived in Paris and was active around 1900-1940. He was arrested for being a Jew when the Germans occupied Paris in the 1940s. He was brought into a concentration camp...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Man With Camera, Florence, Italy
Located in Hudson, NY
Daylight explores a playful world where dreams and reality meld together to create surreal moments. When engaging with Piussi's work, we enter an arena where we are immersed in childlike delight. We experience snapshot images of a world reduced to its essence, in a seemingly comic-book style that has echoes of Giotto and Paolo Uccello, and even of medieval illuminations. My work is simple: the subject matter is stripped to basics, so all that is engagement, controversy and links to reality is taken away, and what remains is an icon with an aura of philosophical suspension, and a window into the enigma of existence. Piussi’s work is directly influenced by artists Alex Katz and David Hockney, and his style reflects a comprehensive understanding of the work of Giotto and Paolo Uccello. In "Girl on a Rock with Mask”, the figure represented in this painting conveys a blank mood, such that the viewer is invited to examine their own intimate feelings that arise when observing the image. Piussi creates a universe of more profound truths in his examination of the tranquility of everyday life: he reminds us of our need for reflection, shows us a fearlessness in the face of stillness and the passage of time. The broad repertoire of his paintings, with their naturalistic color and semi-abstract shapes, presents us with Piussi’s views concerning our contemporary lives. Rather than mimic the appearance of nature, Piussi reaches for its essence, in visions that are devoid of distracting details. Women stand on the shores of quintessentially peaceful seas; they are self-contained, at ease. These women are unwitting replicas of classical goddesses. Or we see a proud diver echoing Neptune, holding his trident. Piussi was born in 1967 in Udine and raised in Florence, where he majored in sculpture at the Institute D’Arte. He completed his artistic education at Milano's Brera Art Academy where he majored in painting. Piussi went on to live in Florence, where he now pursues his passion for painting, bronze, terracotta sculpture and bas-reliefs. Giacomo Piussi...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paint, Oil

Portrait of Artist's Wife with Fruit, 1945 American Modern Oil Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Untitled (Portrait of Bessy Lyon, Artist Wife) is an oil on canvas painting by Hayes Lyon (1901-1987) from 1945. Presented in a wood frame, outer dimensions measure 35 ¼ x 29 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 24 inches. About the Artist: A native of Athol, Kansas, Lyon is primarily associated with Colorado. After several summer vacations at the Boulder Chautauqua and at Manitou near Colorado Springs, his family relocated in 1920 to Boulder where his father had a lumber business. Nine years later they settled in Denver where his father owned the Acme Lumber Company. To comply with his desire for his son’s financial self-reliance, Lyon graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1931 with a B.A. degree in economics. But shortly thereafter he returned to his first love – art – that ultimately became his career. His interest in the arts was nurtured by his mother, herself a talented amateur artist, and by two of his aunts who served as role models. Beginning in 1932, he pursued a five-year course of study at the Chappell School of Art in Denver which by then had become part of the University of Denver. During his time at the school he studied with John E. Thompson and Santa Fe artist, Józef Bakoś. He also met two other Santa Fe-based artists, Willard Nash and B.J.O. Nordfeldt, when they exhibited at Chappell House, then the home of the Denver Art Museum. Lyon likewise attended the Cooke-Daniels Lecture Series there on the arts in the 1930s. Following graduation with a B.F.A. degree from the University of Denver in 1937, he studied privately for about a year with Andrew Dasburg in Taos, New Mexico, that redirected his attention to the rugged Rocky Mountain landscape, which he saw with directness and painted with an economy of means. His canvas, Winter Vista, done following his study with Dasburg, received the Edward J. Yetter Memorial Prize at the 45th Annual Exhibition of the Denver Art Museum in 1939. The painting was reproduced in the September 1939 issue of the Magazine of Art (Washington, DC). That same year his painting, Mount Evans, was included as one of Colorado’s entries in the American Art Today Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The money he received from the Yetter Prize financed his trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara in 1939 to see firsthand the frescoes of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera and the easel paintings of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their work was admired by many Americans who participated in the WPA-era mural projects in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s. The economic fallout from the Great Depression affecting many American artists at the time likewise resulted in Lyon’s participation in the Colorado Art Project, part of the WPA’s national program. Under its auspices he produced three murals in 1940 about the pioneer era of Fort Lupton, Colorado, which were installed in the auditorium of the local high school. Covering 367 square feet of wall space, one of the murals – Behold the West (the largest one) – incorporates the old fort for which the town is named. Before Lyon painted the murals, the students at Fort Lupton High School researched the history of their community and contributed to their cost, facilitating the murals’ allocation to their school under the Colorado Art Project. In the early 1940s Lyon shifted his focus to two new subjects – bathers, and canyons with conifers – reflecting his ongoing search for personal artistic growth. However, his reliance on structure to create form in his paintings and works on paper alienated some of his longtime followers. Nonetheless, his painting Conifers and Canyons won recognition at the 47th Annual Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. The watercolor version of the piece was among three hundred works in that medium selected by John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Eliot O’Hara from a national competition held by the Section of Fine Arts (Federal Works Agency) and shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1941. Later that year Lyon spent time in California where he saw Orozco’s Prometheus, influencing him to increase his range of originality and expression. In 1942 Lyon enlisted in the U.S. Army, spending almost three years in the Mediterranean Theater – Africa and Italy – preparing camouflage operations and scale models of proposed landing sites. He used his free time in Italy to expand his artistic vocabulary by seeing cultural masterpieces in Rome, Florence, Siena and Milan, and through his extensive contact with Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica art movement, and Gino Severini, a leading member of the Futurist movement. Because of Lyon’s low army rank and pay, de Chirico did a small watercolor for him signing it, "For Mr. Lyon; G de Chirico, 1944." Lyon often visited de Chirico and his wife, Isa, at their apartment near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Following his Army discharge in 1945 fellow Kansas native, Ward Lockwood, invited him to join the Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught painting from 1946 to 1951. During this period some of Lyon’s work employed the palette of the School of Paris which he had seen while stationed in Europe, while other paintings had a certain flatness found in some of Lockwood’s work from the 1930s. From 1951 to 1953 he was affiliated with the Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin as an illustrator and editor of the employee magazine. In 1953, following time spent in Mexico, he returned to Denver, working as an illustrator at Lowry Air Force Base until retirement in 1961. During that time he did little of his own art because he also was designing and building a home in Arvada, Colorado, and re-establishing himself in the Denver art community after a decade-long absence. His painting, Autumn Aspens (1953-present location unknown) illustrates his experimentation with abstraction. In the early 1960s he began painting from memory that continued until the steadily degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s disease took their toll a decade later. He depicted scenes from his wartime European sojourn and from his early adulthood. The latter include Souvenir of Boulder (1962), a nostalgic return to his boyhood home in Boulder; and Holly Mayer and Friends, a painting of Glenn Miller and his musicians, inspired by Lyon’s first encounter with jazz in Boulder in the 1920s. His lifelong passion for vintage cars and automobile racing...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

New Year's Day 1937, celebration at the English Garden, Geneva
Located in Genève, GE
Work on canvas Golden molded wooden frame 76 x 66 x 7 cm
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Arthur Smith Original Painting of Acrobats
Located in Larchmont, NY
Arthur Smith (American, 1897-1972) Untitled (Acrobats), 20th century Oil on board 39 1/8 x 25 1/8 in. Framed: 32 1/4 x 18 in. Signed lower left: A Smith Arthu...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

'Old Fishing Boat', Italian Tuscan School
Located in London, GB
'Old Fishing Boat', oil on canvas, Italian Tuscan School, (1972). Glimmering reflections on the water outline the hull of an old fishing boat in the port...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mid-Century Modern Man - Portrait in Oil on Canvas
Located in Soquel, CA
Subtle and moody portrait of a Pensive man by Joan Tidwell (American, 1930-2002). The sitter in the portrait is a middle-aged man looking slightly downwards, wearing a collared shirt. This piece is completed in a tan and green palette, creating a somber feeling. Of particular note are the confident, thick brushstrokes - each one is well-placed in the modernist style. Similar in some ways to Picasso's portraits. Signed "Joan Tidwell" on verso Unframed. Canvas size: 30"H x 22"W oan Gay Tidwell (American, 1930-2002) was born and raised in Hollywood, CA, where she had some success as a child actor. Later, she graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Washington with a Master's Degree in English Literature and Drama. Tidwell moved to the Bay...
Category

1960s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Girl on a Rock with Mask , Florence, Italy
Located in Hudson, NY
Oil on Canvas , Made in Florence, Italy Daylight explores a playful world where dreams and reality meld together to create surreal moments. When engaging with Piussi's work, we enter an arena where we are immersed in childlike delight. We experience snapshot images of a world reduced to its essence, in a seemingly comic-book style that has echoes of Giotto and Paolo Uccello, and even of medieval illuminations. My work is simple: the subject matter is stripped to basics, so all that is engagement, controversy and links to reality is taken away, and what remains is an icon with an aura of philosophical suspension, and a window into the enigma of existence. Piussi’s work is directly influenced by artists Alex Katz and David Hockney, and his style reflects a comprehensive understanding of the work of Giotto and Paolo Uccello. In "Girl on a Rock with Mask”, the figure represented in this painting conveys a blank mood, such that the viewer is invited to examine their own intimate feelings that arise when observing the image. Piussi creates a universe of more profound truths in his examination of the tranquility of everyday life: he reminds us of our need for reflection, shows us a fearlessness in the face of stillness and the passage of time. The broad repertoire of his paintings, with their naturalistic color and semi-abstract shapes, presents us with Piussi’s views concerning our contemporary lives. Rather than mimic the appearance of nature, Piussi reaches for its essence, in visions that are devoid of distracting details. Women stand on the shores of quintessentially peaceful seas; they are self-contained, at ease. These women are unwitting replicas of classical goddesses. Or we see a proud diver echoing Neptune, holding his trident. Piussi was born in 1967 in Udine and raised in Florence, where he majored in sculpture at the Institute D’Arte. He completed his artistic education at Milano's Brera Art Academy where he majored in painting. Piussi went on to live in Florence, where he now pursues his passion for painting, bronze, terracotta sculpture and bas-reliefs. Giacomo Piussi...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Original Painting. Vanity Fair Illustration Proposal. Art Deco Modern 1930s
Located in New York, NY
Original Painting. Vanity Fair Illustration Proposal. Art Deco Modern 1930s Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Vanity Fair Illustration proposal, c 1930’s 18 X 13 3/4 inches (sight) ...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Board

High Holidays Shofar Judaica Oil Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
Freda Leibovitz REITER (1919-1986), born in Philadelphia, PA, was a painter, graphic artist, illustrator, etcher, and lithographer. She studied at the Moore Inst. Des.; PAFA; Barnes Found.; San Carlos Acad., Mexico, D.F. Exhibited: PAFA, 1936, 1938, 1941, 1942, 1954; Graphic Sketch Club, 1938 (prize), 1940 (prize); NAD, 1941, 1944-46, 1957, 1958; CI, 1943; MMA, 1943, 1949; Carlen Gal., 1942 (solo); Phila. Pr. Club, 1944 (solo); Phila. YW-YMHA, 1954. Member: AEA; Nat. Lg. Prof. Women Artists; Phila. Pr. Club Work: LOC.; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Inst.; CI; National Mus. of TV Arts and Sciences; drawings, Phila. Inquirer. Lectures: Mexican Art. Courtroom sketch artist...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

GNOSIS XXX
Located in Tulsa, OK
Fabio Modica GNOSIS XXX oil on canvas 60.00 X 60.00 in $18,000.00
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sanctuary, Modernist Judaica Scene Oil Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
Painter David Rosen emerged onto the art scene while the country was wrought with unimaginable economic turmoil. Like most other Americans, the Great Depression pummeled artists fina...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Duo with a Flute, Judaica Klezmer Musicians Modernist American Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
Ervin B. Nussbaum was born in Columbus, Ohio on November 11, 1914. His father, Marger, had arrived as part of the great Russian Diaspora of the time, when many Jewish families settle...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paper, Acrylic

Large Watercolor Painting John Groth, Men Wrestling, Esquire Magazine WPA Artist
Located in Surfside, FL
John August Groth (American, 1908-1988) "Wrestling Match," Watercolor painting, hand signed upper right and inscribed upper left, "Las Palmas Canary Islands Lucha Canary Wrestling". Framed Size: 21'' x 29'', 53 x 74 cm (sight); 28.5'' x 36.25'', 72 x 92 cm (frame). Depiction of a wrestling match in a city square. John August Groth (1908 - 1988) was an illustrator and art teacher. He gained recognition as a war correspondent-illustrator. He studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Art Students League with Todros Geller, Robert Brackman, Arnold Blanch and George Grosz. He was a member: Society of American Etchers; American Newspaper Guild; Society of Illustrators; Associate Member of the National Academy of Design; American Water Color Society. Positions : Art Director at Esquire 1933 - 1937, Parade Publications 1941 - 1944; War Correspondent for Chicago Sun 1944; American Legion Magazine 1945; Artist-Correspondent in Vietnam 1967.Teacher at Art Students LeagueHe was the first art director of Esquire Magazine and taught at the Art Students League, the Pratt Institute, and the Parsons School of Design. In 1940, he was included in an exhibition at MOMA, titled, "PM Competition: The Artist as Reporter." The exhibition included Philip Guston, Reginald Marsh, John Tworkov, John Heliker, Adolf Dehn, and Chet La More. Groth began sketching intently during the Great Depression after studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. Following the advice of an editor, he penned 100 sketches a day for years. He learned to increase his speed by listening to sports on the radio and sketching the action as fast as he could. "I would listen to the games on the radio at night, and sketch the plays. It made me very quick." His break came when Arnold Gingrich, an editor for Esquire magazine, approached him at an art show in Chicago and offered him a position. "The way (Arnold Gingrich) told it," John Groth says, "he found this barefoot, bearded kid in the park, and the next day made him art director of the world's leading men's fashion magazine. But I swear I was wearing shoes." Groth went on to work as a correspondent and illustrator for the Chicago Sun, Collier's, Sports Illustrated, and The Saturday Evening Post. He developed a passion for war zones. He covered six different wars and was one of the first correspondents in Paris after its liberation. "It is only at war that I feel complete... There, you meet all sort of men -- farmers, mechanics, college professors. It rains on them and it rains on you. The shells burst in the air, and you are there, too." He would make a splash when he beat out friend and rival, Ernest Hemingway, into Paris in 1944. Hemingway was writing for the Chicago Tribune and Groth for the Chicago Sun. Groth was in the first jeep into Paris and got the scoop. His headline read, "Yanks are in Paris!" Hemingway would later write about Groth's technique. “None of us understood the sort of shorthand he sketched in. The men would look at the sketches and see just a lot of lines. It was a great pleasure to find what fine drawings they were when we got to see them. Groth went on to illustrate such classic books as: A Christmas Carol, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grapes of Wrath, The War Prayer, and Gone with the Wind. Deborah Churchman described Groth's work in a 1980 Washington Post article: "Groth's pictures center on the day-to-day life of people caught in terrifying circumstances -- armies occupying cities, soldiers sweeping roads for land mines, bullfighters facing death." Bernie Schonfeld, a photographer for Life Magazine said of Groth, "John is one of the gentlest people in the world, and he always gets himself into the wildest hell hole." He joined the First Congress of American Artists Against War and Fascism in 1936, along with Stuart Davis, Peter Blume...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Old Steam Train going under Bridge in Welsh Landscape Contemporary Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Trelewis by Ben George Powell, British contemporary artist signed acrylic on canvas, unframed canvas: 16 x 20 inches provenance: private collection of this artists work, UK The paint...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

French Modernist Painting Head & Shoulders Portrait Oil Painting
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Huguette Ginet-Lasnier (French 1927-2020) inscribed verso oil painting on canvas 16 x 13 inches. All the paintings we have for sale by this artist have come from the artists estate ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Heinrich Kunsch, Raumkolonne, Mid-Century Oil Painting
Located in Cheltenham, GB
This mid-century oil on canvas by German artist Heinrich Kunsch (b. 1903) depicts several figures shifting columns in an industrial setting. Little is known about Kunsch but his prim...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Mervin Jules Folk Singer Portrait, Signed
Located in Larchmont, NY
Mervin Jules (American, 1912-1994) Folk Singer, 20th century Oil on masonite 18 x 7 1/2 in. Signed lower left: Jules Provenance: Garelick's Gallery, Detroit Matte included, no fram...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Figurative landscape oil painting- Vitality
Located in Beijing, CN
Dai Xiangwen was born in Hunan in 1991 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Jianghan University, He is a member of China Artists Association, China Designers Association, a painter of Li Keran...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Bricklayers House Beautiful Cover Proposal American Scene Modern 1930s Workers
Located in New York, NY
Bricklayers House Beautiful Cover Proposal American Scene Modern WPA 1930s Industrial Workers Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Brick Layers House Beautiful cover proposal, c. 1939 ...
Category

1930s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Gouache

Large Richard Merkin Painting Harlem Jazz Club, New Yorker Magazine Cover Artist
Located in Surfside, FL
Richard Marshall Merkin (American, 1938-2009) Gladys and Half-Pint Hand signed 'Merkin' (center right), Titled, inscribed, dated, and initialed 'GLADYS BENTLEY AND FRANKIE 'HALF-PINT' JAXON 1997/R.M.' verso. Oil on canvas 37 1/2 x 72 in. (95.3 x 182.9 cm) framed 39 1/4 x 74 x 2 in. Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tailcoat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones. Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927). Richard Merkin, Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Museums and Selected Collections : The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA First city Bank, Chicago, Ill Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Selected Publications : 1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow. 1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center) RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short and Krazy Kat...
Category

1990s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil Pastel, Oil

Family, Mother, Children, Modernist Israeli Oil Painting Aharon Giladi
Located in Surfside, FL
Aharon Giladi was born in 1907 in Russia. He studied in Leningrad and in 1929 came to Israel, where he was until 1949 a member of a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley. His dynamic line...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

French Contemporary Modernist Oil Beautiful Coastal Inlet Sandy Beach
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
The Estuary Huguette Ginet-Lasnier (French 1927-2020), signed lower front inscribed verso oil painting on canvas 25 x 20 inches. All the paintings we have for sale by this artist ha...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Huge 1960s French Signed Oil - Portrait of Fashionable Woman Emerald Green Dress
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Artist/ School: French School, circa 1960's, signed with monogram Title: Portrait of a fashionable lady in an emerald green dress. Medium: oil...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Vintage Mid-Century Geometric Abstract Oil & Collage Painting - Le Club 55
Located in Bristol, GB
LE CLUB 55 Size: 33 x 24 cm Oil on canvas Le Club 55 is a legendary and glamorous beach club in the south of France, and we can infer that the setting of the ...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Winter Park, Original Figurative Art, Oil Landscape Painting
Located in Deddington, GB
Figurative landscape set in a park Discover beautiful artwork by Ana Bianchi online with Wychwood Art. Originally trained as a designer in Paris, Ana Bian...
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Pair of Battle Scenes - Oil Painting - 18th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Pair of Battle Scenes is an oil painting realized by an italian artist in 18th century. 110x85 cm each. Framed. Good conditions.
Category

18th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

MERCIFICATION XX
Located in Tulsa, OK
Fabio Modica MERCIFICATION XX oil on canvas 23.00 X 47.00 in $10,590.00
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Jerusalemite at the Table, Judaica Oil Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
Peter Horowitz, painter, born 1922, Poland. Lived in Hod Hasharon in Israel. Studied at the Art Academy, Krakow.
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Indian Modernist Painting
Located in Surfside, FL
God, Keeper, and Maker of all Air Tola-Kina. Figural Abstract Gouache Watercolor Painting.
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

India Ink, Watercolor, Gouache

Original 70's Hand Painted Textile Design Gouache Pink & Black Color on Paper
Located in ALCOY/ALCOI, ES
Flowers and pixel design. Sealed on the back with design studio name and number 268 We offer a small number of these original illustration designs by this design studio based in Alc...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Three Priests
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork titled "Three Priests" 1964 is an oil painting on hardboard by Italian artist Leonardo (Leo) De Magistris, 1933-2010. It is signed and dated at the lower right corner by...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Original Antique American Landscape Fishing Delaware River Oil Painting Framed
Located in Buffalo, NY
A lovely scene adeptly painted by listed American artist and illustrator Jan Nosek (1876 - 1966) who was active in the late 19th and early 20th Century. This scene created in the ea...
Category

1910s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Board, Oil

The Saxophonist by Gilbert Pauli - Oil paint on canvas 98x65 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Oil paint on canvas sold without frame Born in the canton of Friborg, Gilbert Pauli (1944 - 2020) lived in Geneva, where he devoted himself to painting and sculpture, a passion he ...
Category

1990s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Marine Landscape - Tempera by Gian Barresi - 1990s
Located in Roma, IT
Marine landscape is an artwork realized by Gian Barresi in 1990s. Tempera on paper. 50x70 cm not framed. Handsigned on the lower left margin. Good Conditions
Category

1990s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Tempera

Hilly Landscape - Acrylic on Paper by G.-I. Darbois-Gaudin - 1970s
By Germaine-Irene Darbois-Gaudin
Located in Roma, IT
Hilly Landscape is an original artwork realized in the 1970s by Germaine-Irene Darbois-Gaudin Original colored acrylic painting on paper. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower rig...
Category

1970s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Mid Century Modern Portrait Polka Dot Suit Clown by Joan Tidwell
Located in Soquel, CA
Portrait of a Man in a Polka Dot Clown Suit - Oil on Canvas Portrait of a man in a white and red polka dot suit by a Joan Tidwell (American, 1930-2005...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Coral Flowers - Oil Paint by Elena Mardashova - 2023
Located in Roma, IT
Original oil painting on canvas, realized by Elena Mardashova in 2023. Perfect condition.
Category

2010s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Modern figurative paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Modern figurative paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add figurative paintings created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, orange, yellow, purple and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Antonio Feltrinelli, Sunil Das, Suhas Roy, and Clarence Holbrook Carter. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Modern figurative paintings, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available. Prices for figurative paintings made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1 and tops out at $743,750, while the average work sells for $2,376.

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