Akos Biro

20th Century French Expressionist Blue Pastel Path Leading to the Alps Landscape

Windy Track Landscape by Akos Biro (Hungarian 1911-2002) pastel painting on artist paper, unframed painting: 9 x 12 inches provenance: the artists estate, France Superb o...

Valley Landscape by Akos Biro (Hungarian 1911-2002) pastel painting on artist paper, unframed painting: 9 x 12 inches provenance: the artists estate, France Superb origin...

Edith Isaac-Rose "Pastel Landscape in Blues 2" c.1960 Pastel on paper 17"x15" unframed Unsigned Edith Isaac-Rose (1929-2018) Born in Chicago in 1929, and neé Ganansky-Teitelbaum, she graduated from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1951 and moved to New York in 1959 where she lived ever since. Taking as her professional name her parents’ first names, Edith was a prolific artist working first as an abstract expressionist then turning in the 1980s to figurative, political work consisting of drawings, paintings, and embroideries which she called “Daily Rage”. She had been represented by the Phyllis Kind Gallery and her work is in the Hirshhorn Museum as well as numerous private collections. Edith, along with her partner of 35 years, Bea Kreloff, (1925-2016), founded Art Workshop International in 1981 where they held art and writing workshops in Assisi, Italy, Monhegan Island, Maine, and Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Edith was a resident at the Westbeth Artist Housing in Greenwich Village and was actively involved with the anti-war movement, gay liberation...

'Study for Connecticut at Putney' is an original pastel drawing by American artist Wolf Kahn. The landscape is an exploration of color and light: it is rendered in cool blues and purples with fields of subtle yellow, the pastels treated with the same gesture as Kahn's paintbrush on a canvas. Indeed, this pastel was a study executed en plein air for a painting – the painting now sometimes called 'Bend in the River' – that he later created in the studio. This process of creating studies, selecting the best of the studies, and then recreating them as paintings was typical of Kahn's studio process and makes this pastel a significant example of the artist's creative output. 9 x 11 inches, artwork 15.5 x 18.13 inches, frame Signed 'W. Kahn' lower right Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting. Housed in a gold finish wood moulding. Acquired directly from the artist. Wolf Kahn, the youngest of four siblings, was born into a well-to-do artistic family. His father was the conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic Symphony, and his mother came from a family of art collectors.(1) During 1938, Kahn took his first art lessons, but most of his initial drawings were of military or historical events. The next year Kahn was sent to England for safety following the ascendancy of Hitler to power, and in 1940, he immigrated to the United States. In 1942, he entered New York's High School of Music and Art, and while there, he was employed by a commercial art firm doing illustrations. After a stint in the Navy, Kahn entered Hans Hofmann's school, and among his fellow students were Neil Blaine, Jane Freilicher, Allan Kaprow and Larry Rivers. His initial results were done with a dark palette and abstracted forms, and although Hofmann's style of teaching was difficult, Kahn has consistently praised him for teaching him the value of control and understanding.(2) Kahn's first exhibition was a 1951 group show in a loft with several other artists in lower Manhattan. From this impromptu show, a group effort evolved called the Hansa Gallery Cooperative.(3) In 1953, Wolf Kahn had a one-man show at this gallery, which was reviewed by Fairfield Porter, and at this same time bolder, more vivid colors began to appear in his work. By the mid-1950's, on a summer trip to Provincetown, Kahn's paintings indicated a new direction of softening warm colors in the manner of Bonnard. He was included in Meyer Shapiro's seminal exhibition, The New York School: The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum, and by the end of the 1950s, he had developed his abstracted landscape style for which he is best known. In 1966, he made his first "barn" painting on Martha's Vineyard that reduced the complexities of detail of the architecture to a more basic shape, a stylistic convention that is evident in the Museum's painting. Kahn has since commented frequently on his use of color as a unique and specific component of each work as the situation demands, where the gradual buildup of the colors resembles the beauty and translucent nature of pastels.(4) Since then Kahn has had one-person exhibitions at the Kansas City Art Institute, Chrysler Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art and the Columbus Museum, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums throughout the United States. Footnotes: 1. Much of the biographical information is drawn from Justin Spring, Wolf Kahn (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996). 2. Spring, 21. Wolf Kahn draws this from a 1973 address to the College Art Association. 3. This group included Jane Wilson...