Gianni Benvenuti

Pushkin's Fairy Tales Princess - Fantasy Art - Art Nouveau

1963

Bob Peak may be the heir to Norman Rockwell in portraying the American Scene. Yet Peak's graphic representations depart from Rockwell's tight academic style. In the present work from...

What makes this work important? It's not that it's a commissioned artwork for a men's 60s pulp adventure magazine depicting the instant a soldier is shot. The big point of the painting is how brilliantly the formal elements are thought out, designed, and executed. John McDermott tells a story using a complex figural composition in an unexpected wide-angle vision. The work is as abstract as it is representation. His use of light is significant because it creates a high-contrast two-color style that bears the mark of its creator. This is a work done by a master artist/illustrator without peers compared to artists living today. If the contemporary art world gave awards for draftsmanship, painting technique, and graphic design .... John McDermott would win the highest accolades. Initialed lower left - unframed John McDermott (August 30, 1919 – April 20, 1977), also known under the pen names J.M. Ryan and Mariner, was an American illustrator and author noted for action and adventure illustrations.[1] McDermott worked as an in-between and effects animator for Walt Disney Studios and as a US Marine combat artist,before establishing himself as a cover illustrator for 1950s paperbacks and pulp magazines such as Argosy, American Weekly, and Outdoor Life. Under his J.M. Ryan pen name, he wrote the novels The Rat Factory (1971), a derogatory satire of Walt Disney and the Disney studio; Brooks Wilson Ltd (1967), on which the 1970 film Loving was based; and Mother's Day (1969) about Ma Barker. Under his own name, he novelized director-writer Bo Widerberg's screenplay for the 1971 film Joe Hill, which would be his final published book. Early life John Richard McDermott was born 30 August 1919 in Pueblo, Colorado, the younger of two sons of Henry McDermott, an oil broker. McDermott was a young child when his father committed suicide.[4] The family eventually moved to Los Angeles where McDermott's mother, Hazel, worked in a beauty parlor. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1936. Although he had had no formal art education, he took a job as an artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Career Disney At Disney, McDermott worked as an in-betweener and effects animator on Brave Little Tailor, Pinocchio, The Reluctant Dragon and Fantasia. His experiences while working at Disney, particularly during the time of the 1941 Disney animators' strike, would later become the basis for his 1969 satirical novel The Rat Factory. McDermott left Disney to fight with US forces during World War II. US Marines McDermott World War II sketch titled "Buddy is Wounded" On September 29, 1942, McDermott enlisted with the US Marine Corps. He served as a "pistol and palette" combat artist assigned to the map-making section. As a sergeant with the III Amphibious Corps, McDermott was involved in battles in the South Pacific theater of war, documenting the Guam, Okinawa and the Guadalcanal Campaigns. McDermott considered his wartime years to be his art education. "In the Marines, as a combat artist, I traveled with the troops and for three years got all the drawing opportunity anyone could want. My work changed enormously during this time and I’m sure it was due to constant drawing, every single day, from life, just putting down what I saw around me. In a few instances it was a dangerous kind of scholarship." According to the Marine Corps history journal Fortitudine, McDermott was so prolific that his contemporary style pen-and-ink sketches became easily recognizable to both Marines, from published work in Leatherneck Magazine, and civilians, from glossy copies supplied by the Marine Corps to the nation's press.His wartime art appears in World War II history books and is displayed at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Illustration Following the end of World War II, McDermott moved from California to New York City to work as a freelance illustrator. McDermott made his reputation drawing modern action, war and adventure scenes. His work adorned the covers and inside story pages of popular pulp magazines of the 1950s such as Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book, Outdoor Life and American Weekly. McDermott's illustrations appeared on numerous covers of 1950s paperback novels published by Dell, Fawcett Gold Medal, Bantam Mystery and others. His action graphics were geared toward thriller and detective genres, such as Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm books Murderers' Row and The Betrayers. He also created covers for science fiction comic titles such as Voyage to the Deep[citation needed] and horror-themed paperbacks such as the classic 1955 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers...

Sarah Noble Ives, artist (1864-1944). Original drawing of three Dutch children, with an ink inscription reading: “Full Page / 6 Buff / Three children sliding on the ice / upon a summer’s day” above image. Ink, watercolor, and gouache on linen/board. Illustration for Mother Goose...

In this painting, Art Nouveau French illustrator Georges Lepape depicts a high moment of personal drama. He exquisitely renders a beautiful yet solitary woman sitting on the beach...

Kathryn E. Cherry Rockport Harbor Signed lower right Oil on canvas board 10 1/2 x 12 inches Kathryn Cherry was an influential St. Louis painter, ceramicist, designer, and art educa...

John Rettig Marblehead Harbor, Grey Day, 1919 Signed and dated lower right Oil on academy board 15 x 18 inches Dubbed as the “Wizard of Scenic Creation”, John Rettig was best known...

One of the most prolific and acclaimed illustrators of the 20th century, Mark English produced work for such publications as McCalls, Time, Sports Illustrated, and Redbook before co-...

This piece came from the collection of the Bezalel Art Gallery on the Lower East Side of New York City. Emmanuil Snitkovsky is an internationally known artist, sculpture and poet. Emmanuil Snitkovsky was born into a family of artists and scholars from the Odessa Art College in Russia. Immersed in the traditions of Russia art, he approaches form, line, space and color with relentless vision and impeccable technique. Two highly successful artists, the husband and wife team of Emmanuil and Janet Snitkovsky have exhibited a selection of eight large Judaic paintings at the Chabad Chassidic Art Institute (Chai Gallery) in Crown Heights. Three of those paintings are truly singular visions of Jewish Art that cause us to stop and reassess our preconceptions about the meaning and importance of their subjects. Emmanuil and Janet Snitkovsky were both born in the Ukraine in the 1930′s. Emmanuil was trained in Odessa in public monument art, and Janet majored in fashion at the Lvov Decorative Art Institute. After both narrowly survived the devastation of the Second World War in Stalin’s Russia, they began to collaborate on state sponsored art works in 1962. For ten years, they worked on grandiose public sculptural projects to commemorate the fallen Russian heroes of the Second World War in Moscow, Kiev, Tula and Kazan. They were exemplary Soviet Realists working for the Soviet regime. Eventually, this career became untenable for them, both as artists and as Jews, when they clashed with Soviet officialdom over a commission to commemorate the Babi-Yar massacre. The Soviets refused to acknowledge this massacre of 100,000 Jews and eventually suppressed the memorial. In 1978, Emmanuil and Janet arrived in New York and began to recreate their artistic lives. In the ensuing 25 years, they have been quite successful, exhibiting widely in the United States and Europe. They have nurtured a hybrid style of painting and sculpture called “Renaissance Revival” combining contemporary and classical subjects in a stylized realism that evokes both the American regionalist Thomas Hart Benton and the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. The works are highly proficient, polished, and commercial productions in a quirky decorative style. They have continued to accept sculptural projects that have not shied away from kitschy realistic sculptures of Charlie Chaplin as “The Kid,” The Little Tramp” and Buster Keaton as “Cameramen.” In some ways, they have appropriated American culture just as they once accepted Soviet culture. Janet, a graduate of the Lvov College, was invited- by virtue of the high honors she achieved there- to matriculate at the Lvov University of Art. Such an opportunity is extremely rare for anyone, particularly for someone of Jewish descent. Their works of art are included in collections of the Japanese Imperial Family...