Maurice Freed

Modernist Landscape with Fishing Boat

Morris Kantor, American, 1896-1974 Seaside View, 1930 Hand signed M. Kantor and dated 1930 lower right Oil on canvas 22 1/4 x 19 1/4 inches 24 1/2 x 21 (frame) Morris Kantor (Belarusian: Морыс Кантор) (1896-1974) was a Russian Empire-born American painter based in the New York City area. This is a beautiful boat scene with a river or lake probably on Long Island. Born in Minsk on April 15, 1896, Kantor was brought to the United States in 1906 at age 10, in order to join his father who had previously relocated to the states. He made his home in West Nyack, New York for much of his life, and died there in 1974. He produced a prolific and diverse body of work, much of it in the form of paintings, which is distinguished by its stylistic variety over his long career. Perhaps his most widely recognized work is the iconic painting "Baseball At Night", which depicts an early night baseball game played under artificial electric light. Although he is best known for his paintings executed in a realistic manner, over the course of his life he also spent time working in styles such as Cubism and Futurism, (influenced by the Art Deco movement) and produced a number of abstract or non-figural works. A famous cubist, Futurist, painting of his "Orchestra" brought over 500,000$ at Christie's auction house in 2018. Kantor found employment in the Garment District upon his arrival in New York City, and was not able to begin formal art studies until 1916, when he began courses at the now-defunct Independent School of Art. He studied landscape painting with Homer Boss (1882-1956). In 1928, after returning to New York City from a year in Paris, Kantor developed a style in which he combined Realism with Fantasy, often taking the streets of New York as his subject matter. He did some moody Surrealist Nude paintings and fantasy scenes. In the 1940's he turned towards figural studies. Later in his career, Kantor himself was an instructor at the Cooper Union and also at the Art Students League of New York in the 1940s, and taught many pupils who later became famous artists in their own right, such as Knox Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmund Abeles and Susan Weil...

Ivan Schwebel, Israeli American (1932-2011) Oil on canvas. Painting of Winter Landscape. Signed Schwebel, 1985. Sight- L-27" x W-31.5", Frame- L-28.5" x W-32". Ivan Schwebel, Painter. Was born 1932, U.S.A. and immigrated to Israel 1963 after living in Spain, France and Greece. Studies: 1953-55 with Kimura Kyoen whilst serving with the U.S.Army in Japan; 1955-61 Institute of Fine Arts, with Philip Guston; New York University. Larry Abramson, who is very much in the mainstream of Israeli art, curated an exhibition of Schwebel’s work at the Jerusalem Print Workshop in the early 1980s; in the accompanying text, he described him as “an artist from the New York School ship-wrecked on a hill near Jerusalem.” IN SCHWEBEL’S BEST WORK, THE paint speaks for itself: the pools and explosions of rich color, achieved with pigment that he would grind and mix himself, the luminous figures emerging out of dark shadows, the quirky, dramatic compositions. Schwebel was erudite, with a passion for the bible and Jewish and Israeli history. He delved into all of it for his subject matter, bringing together characters and narratives regardless of time, and setting them in modern- day Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, the Judean hills, or New York City. He liked to play with ideas, and thoroughly mixed his visual metaphors. He showed David and Bat-Sheva next to a Nazi deportation train, and Job despairing over his relationship with the Palestinians. He based his characters on photographs of himself, friends and family, or movie stars. On his website, he describes a series of paintings about anti-Semitism in which the Holocaust is merged with the Spanish Inquisition: “Abarbanel who tried to negotiate with Ferdinand and Isabella is reincarnated in Rumkowski – the German appointed Head of the Lodz Ghetto. The bridge connecting two parts of the Ghetto is spanned over a present-day Tel Aviv cityscape. He was included in a portfolio that included Ivan Schwebel, Michael Gross, Liliane Klapisch and Moshe Kupferman, five of Israel's leading contemporary artists who were each approached in May 1977 with a request to contribute a hand-printed screenprint for a portfolio to be titled "Jerusalem". The sole term of reference was the name "Jerusalem", with no qualifications at all. The five artists then spent time working completely independently and individually on the project at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. Each screenprint was hand-signed by their respective artist and numbered from the edition of 200, hand-printed on BFK Rives paper Published by Whartman and Sacks Art Publications His “Tel Aviv” series, in contrast, is fun: “Chen Cinema” shows a couple of actors who seem to have stepped out of an old romantic movie to cuddle in the shabby street outside the cinema. In his final “Safe Place” series of paintings, he goes beyond self-conscious narrative to create his own Garden of Eden. Select Group Exhibitions: Landscape and Nature: Contemporary Israeli Prints...

An artist staunchly independent from prevailing modes of expression and a complex personality, Edwin Dickinson seems to have explored a wide range of styles based on his own intuitio...

Oil on cardstock painting of oil tankers docked in port along with people dockside on a bright clear day by the Long Island American artist, Whitney Myron H...