Constantine Cherkas

Summer Houses at Laguna Beach

1956

Large gilt framed abstract modernist landscape of Jerusalem. Framed it measures 33.25 X 41.25 inches. Canvas measures 28 x 36 inches. Bold Blue sky. Avraham Binder was born in 1906 in Vilnius (or Vilna), now part of Lithuania. He began painting at an early age and completed the prescribed studies in painting at the academy of arts in his native city. Upon graduation, at the commencement exhibition of works submitted by the graduates, he was awarded a prize in recognition of his talents. Artistic talent had deep roots in the Binder family. Avraham's father and grandfather were both artistically inclined, as was his sister Zila Binder and daughter Yael. In fact, he came from a long line of master artistic bookbinders, hence the family surname. The Binder family emigrated to Palestine in 1920. There, his father established a bookbinding workshop in Tel-Aviv while Avraham pursued painting. Binder has not identified with any particular modern school nor narrow artistic doctrine. He struggles to verbally explain his personal conception. Instead, he derives inspiration from emotions, resulting in a great variety of artistic treatments. Particularly memorable are his urban landscapes with their predominance of blues and aquamarines, composed of a profusion of squares and rectangles, crowding one another and covering nearly the entire canvas. The angular shapes are interspersed with radiant dots of red, gold and yellow, like the lights of the big city. Those squares and rectangles reflect, perhaps, impressions of a childhood spent among books which were scattered about the home and workshop of his father, the bookbinder. These shapes, no doubt, had their influence upon the artist whose first youthful impressions were – books. Traces of these shapes are discernible in Binder’s work to this day, in the angularity of splashes of color which, no longer crowded together, are now well separated to create an airy spaciousness. Not only the splashes of color – the inventing space, too – creates figurative effects in the artist’s treatment. Avraham Binder is not a “cerebral” painter. Neither identified with any particular modern school, nor preaching any narrow artistic doctrine, he is an emotional artist: his inspiration, derived from the heart, leads him on to the most varied range of treatments in his artistic work. In vain might one try to persuade him to define his personal conception of painting. He is not one to indulge in verbal explanation. But his sheer artistic skill, his virtuosity with the paint brush, did impel him to experiment widely with the artistic techniques of the modern age. And his exceptional talent stood him in good stead in all this experimentation. Binders large-scale urban landscapes are not mere constructs to represent our present-day architecture with its pervasive angularity. Made up as they are of color, Binder’s unique color composition qualifies these canvases to be ranked among the foremost artistic works in Israeli painting. They are uniquely Binder, very different from what we see in the work of his contemporaries. Here and there, Binder also introduces the human element into these paintings. He lives and breathes the atmosphere of his surroundings, deeply experiencing the sea and the shore of Tel-Aviv that confront him day after day, and which he has transferred to his canvases, as metaphors in paint, throughout the life. More recently, he has created a new series of shore-and-seascapes, in tones ranging from brown to blue. ochre, violet and pale yellow – marvelous views of the sea and of figures enlivening its shore. In yet another series, featuring nearly the same range of hues, he lets us view, through his eyes, the Carmel Market in Tel-Aviv, or the city’s coffee houses with their crowds of people, heads bunched together as if in search of human closeness, with the windows looking in upon them. He has also done large paintings of Jerusalem – not the Jerusalem of gloom and holiness, but a Jerusalem in contrast to the flat topography of Tel-Aviv; it is this different topography which here provides the challenge for him as a painter. And the colors – the colors are bright, full of light, an inner illumination which seems to emanate from the artist himself, rather than from the sun beating down from above. So many great artists have built their life’s work upon watercolors. Binder’s watercolors are in no way inferior in their artistic worth to many of those, what with their spontaneity, their translucent quality, their color combinations, and the artist’s ability to say so much with an economy of brush strokes. We have here a painter who, until the end of his life, was still in his full creative powers, and who continued to add to his impressive storehouse of artistic works. Hundreds of his paintings grace the homes of collectors in Israel and throughout the world, or hang in his private collection; they include Israel landscapes and, most importantly, cityscapes; an exquisite series of wild flowers; many portrait paintings; experimental wood sculptures; murals painted on wood panels; reliefs…, etc. All these are testimony to an artist who refuses to rest on his laurels, who forever reaches out to try his hand at new challenges, strikes out in novel directions, discovers innovative techniques, and experiments in all the dimensions of the plastic arts. On the Israel Museum website they have listed an exhibition of his Artists in Israel for the Defense, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv 1967 Artists: Avraham Binder, Motke Blum, (Mordechai) Samuel Bak, Yosl Bergner, Nahum Gilboa, Jean David, Marcel Janco, Lea Nikel, Jacob Pins, Esther Peretz Arad, Dani Karavan, Reuven Rubin, Zvi Raphaely, Yossi Stern...

Marius Sznajderman Hand signed and dated lower right, with an inscription on the verso 40 X 30 inches Oil or acrylic on canvas. Machu Picchu is an Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, above the Urubamba River valley. Built in the 15th century and later abandoned. The lost city of the Incas. Expressively capturing the mystique of the famed Incan ruins, this 1983 exprerssionist painting by Marius Sznajderman, titled Machu Picchu Courtyard, showcases his signature blend of bold color and dynamic brushwork. The composition features a stylized interpretation of Machu Picchu's verdant landscape and ancient stone structures, rendered in an abstracted yet recognizable form. Sznajderman's use of undulating greens, deep blues, and earthy tones imbues the work with an almost dreamlike quality, emphasizing the spiritual and historical significance of the site. Marius Sznajderman was a French-born American painter, printmaker, and scenic designer. Born in Paris in 1926 to Polish-Jewish parents, he fled Nazi-occupied France in 1942, eventually settling in Caracas, Venezuela. There, he studied at the School of Fine Arts and co-founded the Taller Libre de Arte, an influential experimental art workshop. In 1949, he immigrated to the United States, earning both Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees from Columbia University. Over his extensive career, Sznajderman explored themes ranging from Latin American culture to Jewish heritage, with his works held in numerous public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Artist: Marius Sznajderman (French-American, 1926-2018) Issued: 1983 Dimensions: 41"L x 31"H Country of Origin: France/United States Marius Sznajderman was a Jewish Venezuelan painter, printmaker and scenic designer living and working in the United States. Born in Paris, France in 1926 his Jewish parents had migrated to France from Poland in 1923. In November 1942 the family fled Nazi-occupied France for Spain before settling in Caracas, Venezuela. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Caracas where his teachers included illustrator Ramon Martin Durban, scenic designer Charles Ventrillon-Horber and painter Rafael Monasterios. and immigrated to the United States in 1949, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York. He settled in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he lived and had a studio for more than 50 years before moving to Amherst, Massachusetts in 2015. His work, which includes painting, prints and collages, as well as set designs, is in more than 45 museum and public institution collections in the United States, Latin America and Israel. He held more than 40 solo exhibitions at galleries and museums and participated in more than 75 group shows around the globe. He helped found the Taller Libre de Arte, an experimental workshop for the visual arts, sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The Taller Libre de Arte was a center for young artists to work and to meet with critics and intellectuals to discuss avant-garde ideas and artistic trends from Europe and Latin America. Among the notable artists who participated in the Taller Libre de Arte were Ramón Vásquez Brito, Carlos González Bogen, Luis Guevara Moreno, Mateo Manaure, Virgilio Trómpiz...