Josef Marc Plotast

London, Big Ben Cityscape Mid Century Architectural Modernist Gold Leaf

1959

Genre: Modern Subject: Landscape with figure of horse, driver and wagon Medium: Oil Surface: wood Board EMANUEL ROMANO Rome, Italy, b. 1897, d. 1984 Emanuel Glicen Romano was born in Rome, September 23, 1897. His father Henryk Glicenstein was a sculptor and was living in Rome with his wife Helena (born Hirszenberg) when Emanuel was born. His father obtained Italian citizenship and adopted the name Enrico. Emanuel was brought up in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, England and Poland. In 1926 Emanuel Glicenstein Romano and his father sailed for New York. They briefly visited Chicago. Romano's sister, Beatrice, and mother only joined them in New York years later. Romano changed his name on his arrival to America and some have erroneously speculated that this was to avoid antisemitic discrimination. In truth, as the son of a highly-regarded artist, Romano changed his name to ensure that any success or recognition he would later attain, would be the result of nothing other than his own merit as an artist, and not on account of his father's fame. In 1936 Romano was worked for the WPA Federal Art Project creating murals. ( there were many jewish artists active with in the WPA period. notably Chaim Gross, Ben Shahn, Isaac and Moses Soyer, Abraham Rattner and many others. During and immediately after World War II, Romano created a series of allegorical works depicting graphic holocaust images that were held closely by the family until after his passing. One of these works is now on permanent display in the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg Florida. Emanuel's father died in 1942 in a car accident before they could realize their shared dream of visiting Israel. In 1944 Romano, having completed his degree at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, began teaching at the City College of New York. Romano moved to Safed, Israel in 1953 and established an art museum in his father's memory, the Glicenstein Museum. COLLECTIONS Indianapolis Museum of Art Metropolitan Museum of Art Boston Fine Arts Museum Fogg Museum Musée Nacional de France Recently his work has been added to the Florida Holocaust Museum collection. His notable works include his holocaust themed allegorical paintings as well as portraits of Marianne Moore, his father and William Carlos Williams...

Alex Charles Chartier, French, 1894-1957 Oil painting on board 1951 Quartier Plaisance, Paris village scene Hand signed and dated '51 lower left. Dimensions: 21" x 25-3/4", frame...

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...

Sunset harbor seascape oil painting with cityscape in background.

Highway Derelict, May, 1939, oil on canvas board, signed upper right, 18 x 20 inches, exhibited 1) Society of Independent Artists, American Society of Fine Arts (Art Students League), New York, NY, April 19 – May 12, 1940, no. 535 (noted verso, listed in catalog, and see Kantner, Dorothy, Palette Palaver, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, April 19, 1940 – “Helen F. Price and Ethel M. Dean, the former of Johnstown, the latter of this city, are two members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh who are represented in the Independent Artist’s Exhibition which opens today in New York. Miss Price is represented by . . . ‘Highway Derelict’ . . . .”), 2) Solo Exhibition of Log Cabin Paintings...

Untitled (Houses and Railroad Tracks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas board, signed lower right, 16 x 20 inches, presented in a newer frame This work is part of our exhibition America Coas...

My Only Working Tool, 1949, oil on panel, signed and dated lower right, 16 x 12 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, exhibited at the Art News Second Annual National Amateur Competition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, December, 1950 (see The Best Amateurs, Art News, volume 49, issue 8, December 6 to 20, 1950, p. 65 – 66), presented in a period frame Fausto Sansone...

From private collection, NY. Part of JC Gallery's current show, 'Through the Harrowed Land: Alfred Maurer and Modernism', running until 30th May. For more information, please inquire.