Edward Marecak

Zeus and Hera, 1967 Framed Semi-Abstract Figural Painting, Mid Century Modern

1967

Oil painting on burlap by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) titled "Winter Witches in an Upside World Interfering with Each Other" from 1990. Titled and dated by the artist on verso. Painted in shades of black, gray, red, purple, and green. Presented in the original artist frame, outer dimensions measure 44 ⅛ x 44 ⅛ x 1 ⅜ inches. Image size is 43 x 43 inches. About the artist: Edward Marecak Born Ohio 1919 Died Colorado 1993 Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of “Peter and the Wolf,” awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier oeuvre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s, he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish, foreshadowed the output of his entire Colorado-based career, distinguished by a dramatic use of color, intricacy of execution and attention to detail contributing to their visual impact. He once observed, “Each time I start a new painting I always fool myself by saying this time keep it simple and not get entangled with such complex patterns, color and design; but I always find myself getting more involved with richness, color and subject matter.” An idiosyncratic artist proficient in oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, and casein, he did not draw upon Colorado subject matter for his work, unlike many of his fellow painters in the state. Instead he used Midwest landscape imagery, bringing to life in it witches and spirits adapted from the Slovakian folk tales he heard growing up in Ohio. A number of his paintings depict winter witches derived from the Slovak custom in the Tatra Mountains of burning an effigy of the winter witch in the early spring to banish the memory of a hard winter. The folk tale element imparts a dream-like quality to many of his paintings. A devote of Greek mythology, he placed the figures of Circe, Persephone, Sybil, Hera and others in modern settings. The goddess in Persephone Brings a Pumpkin to her Mother, attired as a Midwestern farmer’s daughter, heralds the advent of fall with the pumpkin before departing to spend the winter season in the underworld. Train to Olympus, the meeting place of the gods in ancient Greece, juxtaposes ancient mythology with modernity creating a combination of whimsy and thought-provoking consideration for the viewer. Voyage to Troy #1 alludes to the ancient city that was the site of the Trojan Wars, but has a contemporary, autobiographical component referencing the harbor of the Aleutian Islands recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. In the 1980s Marecak used the goddess Hera in his painting, Hera Contemplates Aspects of the Art Nouveau, to comment on art movements in the latter half of the twentieth century Marecak’s love of classical music and opera, which he shared with his wife and to which he often listened while painting in his Denver basement studio, is reflected in Homage of Offenbach, an abstract work translating the composer’s musical colors into colorful palette. Pace, Pace, Mio Dio, the title of his earliest surrealist painting, is a soprano aria from Verdi’s opera...

An original modernist still life oil painting by John E. Thompson (1882-1945), table is draped in red cloth and flowers in vase are red, yellow, blue/purple and white with green stem...

"High Rolls, New Mexico", is a oil on canvas by Andreas Storrs Andersen (1908-1974) of a wooden church along a dirt road in the mountains with clouds in the background. Painted in a ...

Untitled (Still Life with Pink Roses) is an oil on canvas painting by David Spivak (1893-1932) . Presented in a custom gold frame, outer dimensions measure 19 ⅞ x 24 x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 12 x 16 inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born in Philadelphia in 1893, David and his family moved to Denver in 1895 due to his mother’s ill health. He attended elementary and high school in Denver, and was briefly enrolled at the University of Denver, where his mother taught Russian. He was drawn to art at a young age, however the University of Denver did not offer a degree program in fine art, and art education in the Denver area was lacking. Spivak’s father, Dr. Charles Spivak, prominent Denver physician and founder of the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society, was concerned about his son’s career choice, hoping David would instead follow in his footsteps. David’s mother, however, recognized her son’s artistic talent and felt it needed nurturing. In 1912, Spivak moved to Chicago to attend the Chicago Art Institute where he worked under John Morton and Wellington Reynolds (1865 – 1949). After a two-year stint in Chicago, Spivak spent 3 years in New York attending the Arts Students League where he studied under Robert Henri, a prominent Ashcan School artist. Between 1914 and 1917, Spivak mostly painted portraiture, and Henri’s artistic influence can be seen in Spivak’s work during this period. Spivak was drafted into the Army in 1918 because of World War I. He spent a year stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. In 1919, he moved back to Denver in and began working as an artist. His dedication to art extended beyond art making into education. He taught at various high schools throughout Denver, as well as the Denver Academy of Applied Arts, the Denver Art Institute, and the Chappell School of Art. Spivak was also a central figure in the art community, helping to develop the Denver Art Museum, as a founding member, along with Dean Babcock and Albert Bancroft, of the Denver Artists’ Guild in 1928 (where he served as president at the time of his death), and as the head of fine art exhibits at the Colorado State Fair. He believed that bringing art into the lives of all people, regardless of status or class, was paramount. In his short life, Spivak was quite prolific, producing over 300 paintings between 1914 and 1932. He excelled in landscape painting and portraiture, and his style was rooted in impressionism. Spivak’s contemporaries who also painted in an impressionistic manner include Robert Graham, Frank Vavra...

Semi-Abstract figurative oil on burlap painting titled 'Sybil (The Prophetess)' by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) painted in 1976. Signed and dated by the artist in the lower right corne...

1985 original signed oil painting titled 'The Four Winter Months' by Denver modernist, Edward Marecak (1919-1993) with four abstract/stylized figures painted with colors of red, black, green, gray, blue, and orange. Referential abstraction painted in oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, titled verso. Presented in a vintage frame, outer dimensions measure 24 ½ x 30 ½ x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 23 ¾ x 30 inches. Provenance: Estate of the artist, Edward Marecak About the Artist: Born Ohio 1919 Died Colorado 1993 Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. His junior and senior high projects earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy...

Si Accose Di Lui by Roberto Fantini, Italian (1960) Date: 2005 Oil on Burlap, signed and dated verso Size: 39 x 39 in. (99.06 x 99.06 cm)

There is a great exhibition on in Paris at the Petit Palais at the moment, entitled "Modern Paris/Le Paris de la Modernité 1905-1925" . Here is a painting that would fit into the exh...

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Portrait of the Artist Manuel Neri Heavy Impasto on Linen San Francisco Abstract San Francisco Abstract Expressionist School a portrait by Honora Berg (American, 1897 - 1985). Heavy impasto with broad strokes an interior scene with the iconic San Francisco sculptor Manuel Neri. Honora captures Manuel's distinctive features with her expressionist style and layered paints. Manuel is in a dark suit and bright shirt and tie resting his arm on the window and looking out at the trees in the distance. Provenance, Estate of Honora Berg - David Carlson Gallery, Larry Miller...

Eurydice in the Underworld, as Hades and Persephone inform her that Orpheus has bargained for her release.

Wonderful mid century abstract figurative nude at night with red chair by Honora Berg (American, 1897-1985). A nocturnal setting adds more interest and dimension. Signed on verso "H Berg." Unframed. 36"H x 30"W. Honora Berg an early Bay Area Figurative and Abstract Expressionist painter. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute with David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and James Budd Dixon. Berg's friend Edith Truesdell...