Paper Paintings

'Row of Plane Trees In Winter - Maussane-les-Alpilles', Provence, watercolour and pencil on art paper, by Yves Brayer (1946). A line of Plane trees greets visitors to almost every vi...

Outsider Folk Art American Mid-Century Naive WW2 Self Taught WPA Depression Era "Victory for Now" Ralph Fasanella (1914-_1997) "Victory and After,” gouache on paper. Signed, titled...

Mid Century Abstract Original Painting - Blue Calligraphy on Crimson Water in Oil and Tempera on Paper Wonderful Bay Area abstract composition by San Francisco's artist Honora Berg ...

'Still Life with Strings', ink and pencil on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). This gallery acquired this artwork with two similar works for which this one may...

This exquisite watercolor by Swedish artist Olle Hjortzberg is a testament to the beauty that lies in simplicity. Depicting a modest bouquet of summer flowers, this piece evokes a se...

Mid Century Bay Area Abstract Expressionist Blue Hydrangeas in Acrylic on Paper Vining Blue Hydrangeas by San Francisco's artist Honora Berg (American, 1897-1985), 1946. The vertica...

'Cubist Still Life', gouache on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). Surely this very attractive piece was inspired by Juan Gris (1887-1927) and Georges Braque's ...

'Fish, Dove and Musical Instrument', gouache on paper, from the Italian School of artists (circa 1940s). Surely this very attractive piece was inspired by Georges Braque (1882-1963) ...

Sea Shells – Blue & Gold, c. 1940s, watercolor on paper, signed upper left, 15 x 19 ¼ inches (image); title and artist’s name and address inscribed verso, presented in a newer glazed...

Shooting Gallery Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Abstract Realism Modern *William Kienbusch (1914 – 1980) Shooting Gallery, Sixth Avenue Post...

Charming woman nude pencil study by Russian-French painter Alexandre Pavlovitch Chemetoff (or Chemetov,) also known as Chem (1891 - 1981). It is a striking representation in which on...

Hermosa Beach Coastline - Watercolor On Paper Watercolor painting depicting the Hermosa Beach coastline by California artist F.J. Whitlock (American, B- 1923 ). Vibrant hues of blue...

Bill Crawford (1913-1982). Original illustration artwork depicting teams as they advance to the World Series. Depicted are representations of the St. Louis Cardinals and The Brooklyn...

*Dimensions include the frame This French artwork from around 1940 exhibits a vivid, expressive style, reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh's post-Impressionist works. The robust, swirli...

"Homestead" is a regional, American landscape by Pennsylvania Impressionist and New Hope School painter Harry Leith-Ross. The painting is a 14" x 19" watercolor on paper, signed "Lei...

A fantastic mid-century modernist still life by Vaclav Vytlacil. This piece comes from the estate of the Artist, which was handled by Martin Diamond Fine Arts. Still Life (1946) Ca...

Yellow Rose Bouquet Still Life - Watercolor on Paper Watercolor still life painting depicting a bouquet of yellow roses surrounded by an all green backgroun...

A dark and exotic looking male dancer with chiseled features wears a blue hat made of flowers and feathers is depicted in vibrant colors that evokes festiv...

Abstract figurative painting on board. Carl Bredemier label on the reverse. Framed. Oil on board

1940s nude study, watercolor, and ink on paper painting by Polish/Russian artist Rotislaw Racoff (1904 - 1982). This is a fine study of a young woman, probably Asian, sitting back. T...

Fiocchetto is an artwork realized by Elica Balla (Rome,1914 - 1993) Hand signed lower right. Hand signed and titled o rear. Good conditions!

Signed lower right, "V. Di Gesu" for Victor Di Gesu (American, 1914-1988), dated 1946; additionally signed verso and titled "Blue Teapot". A vibrant still-life showing a bouquet of ...

Includes a Certificate of Authenticity

Deer Dance, painting by Tonita Pena, Santa Fe, Cochiti, Pueblo, male, female Tonita Peña (born 1893 in San Ildefonso, died 1949 in Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico) was born as Quah Ah (meaning white coral beads) but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña. Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor. She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s. Tonita Peña was born on May 10, 1893, at San Ildefonso Pueblo, to Ascensión Vigil Peña and Natividad Peña of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. When she was 12, her mother and younger sister died, as a result of complications due to the flu. Her father was unable to care for her and she was taken to Cochití Pueblo and was brought up by her aunt Martina Vigil Montoya, a prominent Cochití Pueblo potter. Peña attended St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe. Edgar Lee Hewett, an anthropologist involved in supervising the nearby Frijoles Canyon excavations (now Bandelier National Monument) was instrumental in developing the careers of several San Ildefonso “self-taught” artists including Tonita Peña. Hewett purchased Peña's paintings for the Museum of New Mexico and supplied her with quality paint and paper. Peña began gaining more notoriety by the end of the 1910s selling an increasing amount of her work to collectors and the La Fonda Hotel. Much of this early work was done of Pueblo cultural subject matter, in a style inspired by historic Native American works, however, her use of an artist's easel and Western painting mediums gained her acceptance among her European-American contemporaries in the art world. At the age of 25, she exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area. In the early 1920s, Tonita did not know how much her painting sold for at the Museum of New Mexico, so she wrote letters to the administrators because a local farmer was worried that she got paid too little. In the 1930s Peña was an instructor at the Santa Fe Indian School and at the Albuquerque Indian School and the only woman painter of the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Julian Martinez, Abel Sánchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña. As children, these artists attended San Ildefonso day school which was part of the institution of the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to indoctrinate and assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society. In 1931, Tonita Peña exhibited at the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts which was presented at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Works from this exhibition were shown at the 1932 Venice Biennial. That year is the only time Native American artists have shown in the official United States pavilion at that biennial, and Tonita Peña's paintings were part of that exhibition.[1 Her painting Basket Dance, that had shown in the Venice Biennial was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for $225. This was the highest price paid up to this time for a Pueblo painting...

In this composite image Naval Artist Arthur Beaumont shows us the final moments of the German battleship PRINZ EUGEN, as the ghosts of her former comra...

Corn Kachina, by Riley Sunrise, Quoyavema, Hopi, Kachina, Dancer, painting Artist Signature - Riley Sunrise (1914-2006) Quoyavema “Another of the earlier Hopi artists, Riley Sunrise (Quoyavema) worked with Fred Kabotie and Waldo Mootzka in illustrating John Louw Nelson’s Rhythm for Rain. He is also known as Quoyavema or Kwayeshva, according to Nelson. His paintings are comparable to Fred Kabotie’s, with some of them showing more action and most of them revealing less detail. Sunrise is represented in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Gilcrease Institute (Tulsa), and the Southwest Museum. The Museum of the American Indian in New York has an extensive collection of his paintings of native Hopi dances.” (Clara Lee Tanner: Southwest Indian...

This charming pastel painting on paper was designed by Pio Santini (1908-1986) and named: nude with lace. The artist's signature, Santini, can be found in the bottom left corner of the artwork. Lovely romantic composition with a nude young lady kneeling and holding a piece of white lace. Flamboyant magenta red drape background. The painting remains in its original frame, which features delicately carved wood, a gesso finish, an off-white wood liner, and glass protection. The piece is in good condition but has a dark stain and some small chips on the edges of the original wood frame. Measurements: With frame: 22.75 in. wide (58 cm) x 26 in. high (66 cm) Opening view: 14.50 in. wide (36.5 cm) x 17.75 in. (45 cm). Artist Biography: Pio Santini (1908-1986) Pio Santini was born on April 17, 1908, close to Rome, in Tivoli, Italy. He showed a precocious and pronounced artistic taste and gifts, to begin with, drawing and painting. From his childhood drawings, as early as 5 or 6 years old, he was gifted and had a technique above the average. As early as 1933, Pio Santini moved to Paris, in the Montparnasse district, also known as The Artists Area, where he settled in his first Parisian studio. He is recognized as a member of the Academy of Paris, a significant art movement in the first half of the 20th century, alongside Amedeo Modigliani and other Italian artists. While attending the classes of the Estienne School for further training in plastic art, Pio Santini started to attract attention in various Parisian Salons (particularly the Winter Salon, the Independents Salon, and the French Artists Salon) and to find a place in the Parisian universe of painting, as is shown in the press of the time. The Second World War, which pitted his country of birth against his adopted nation, created conflicting emotions in him. During this time, the concept of a united and reconciled Europe took root in his mind. In a way, he played a part in the resuming cultural exchanges between France and Italy by founding the association The Romans in Paris after the war, and especially by creating and animating the Villa D’Este Prize for about ten years, rewarding each year a French artist or writer by offering, a one month stay at the Villa, in Tivoli. Later, the Montparnasse Prize would reward Italian artists in Paris, in the same way. While devoting himself to painting, he worked as an art illustrator for edition and press and left us a rich but unrecognized work from this period. In the early 1960s, Pio Santini decided, imperiously and bravely, to live on his painting. A member of the Society of Independent Artists since 1934, he then actively participated in numerous collective exhibitions in France and abroad. He regularly exhibited in Parisian Salons, most of which he was a member: the Independents Salon, the Autumn Salon, the Winter Salon, the National Salon of the Fine Arts, and the Comparison Salon. A regular participant in the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français, he was often rewarded: Great Price of the Salon in 1970, then in 1974, a gold medal in 1971, and Prize-winner of the Ernest Marché Prize in 1974. Pio Santini lived his last years in his house in Garches, near Paris. He worked there until the last moment and died of illness at the age of 78. Keeping himself a part of the avant-garde of contemporary art, Pio Santini developed a personal work of formal coherence very steadily. He is a two-time artist, one of the beginnings of his career, the Thirties, and the other one, his rebirth, the Sixties, when the artist can again devote himself to painting. Between these two periods, the Second World War badly hit the pictorial growth of Pio Santini. However, everything had started under the best auspices for the young painter whose desire to devote himself to painting is evident in his self-portrait of 1928 as a manifesto. In the 1930s, following the revolutions of cubism, abstraction, and surrealism, figurative and sensual...

Byron Browne was an important American modernist painter. Ink, tempera, and crayon on paper Signed and dated lower right.

Apartment Interior #2 - Watercolor and Pen on Paper Detailed interior scene by Doris Lyons Hoover (American, 1927-2014). The apartment is furnished with several chairs, one of which is wicker, with a bookshelf behind them. The room is decorated in shades of green, brown, and blue-grey. There are two light green carpets on the floor. Signed "Doris Hoover" in the lower right corner. Location information in lower left corner. Presented in a wood frame. Frame size: 17"H x 21"W Image size: 9.75"H x 13.5"W Doris Lyons Hoover (American, 1927-2014) was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, on Oct. 8, 1927, on her grandparents' farm. She was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and attended college at the University of Chattanooga, (now UTC) where she received honors in ar. At U.C. she met her husband Jack Hoover, and the couple moved to Palo Alto in 1954. Doris Hoover became a nationally known fabric artist, teacher, lecturer and co-founder of the Peninsula Stitchery Guild, a leading organization in the Bay Area Crafts Movement of the 1970s. Her beautiful, often playful quilts, soft sculptures and creative stitchings grace...

Watercolor on paper

"Abstractions" by American modernist painter Leonard Nelson is a double sided work on paper. The front is 10.5" x 7.5" and the back side drawing is 10" x 6.75". Both sides are signed and dated "Nelson 46", and the artworks are matted and framed behind glass. Leonard Nelson (1912 - 1993) Born in Camden, New Jersey, Nelson applied for a scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, regardless of having no portfolio. He was persuasive enough to be given one semester and subsequently was awarded an Academy fellowship to study painting. Nelson went on to earn the Academy's prestigious Cresson Traveling Scholarship award in 1939. He studied at PAFA from 1936 - 1940 with, among others, Henry McCarter...

"Femme Rousse Sur Fond Vert" is an original oil on canvas impressionistic portrait of a woman by Albert Bertalan. A red-headed lady in a purple and white striped collared coat sits in front of a green background daydreaming about something personal. The painting is framed with an ornate gold frame. From the late 19th century until World War Two, Paris was the center of the art world. Artists and intellectuals from around the globe descended on Paris, drawn by the atmosphere of creative freedom established by the French Impressionists. Because of the Impressionists’ innovations the direction of art had changed forever, the times were ripe for another Renaissance. The School of Paris, as this broad-based group of artists are referred to embodied the spirit of modernism. Albert Bertalan was born on September 21, 1899 in Jaszbereny, Hungary. He is known for painting compositions of figures in unique environments, including women by the sea, among other similar subject matters. He studied at the Nagybanyai Art School under some of the most important Hungarian artists, including Ivànyi Grünwald...

This watercolor portrait was made by Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952, American)and dedicated to his long time friend Anita Shonover in 1940. The portrait is signed dated and inscr...

Juanita Guccione (1904 - 1999) Study for Ladders, 1948 Gouache on paper 17 x 13 inches Signed lower left, dated, and inscribed “Study for Oil Painting...

Wonderful 1945 scenic watercolor of Italian Alps with Dolomites covered in snow in background. This is double sided with landscape on verso. Signed ...

Original 1940s watercolor on paper painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell portraying a semi abstracted view of Golden Cycle Mill in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Painted in shades of black and gray. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 18 x 19 ½ x 1 ⅜ inches. Image sight size is 8 ⅛ x 9 ⅝ inches. Golden Cycle Mining and Reduction Company was a mining company in Colorado City (now Old Colorado City) in El Paso County, Colorado. Piece is clean and in excellent condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the artist: Artist and teacher, Charles (“Charlie”) Bunnell worked in a variety of styles throughout his career because as an artist he believed, “I’ve got to paint a thousand different ways. I don’t paint any one way.” At different times he did representational landscapes while concurrently involved with semi- or completely abstract imagery. He was one of a relatively small number of artists in Colorado successfully incorporating into their work the new trends emanating from New York and Europe after World War II. During his lifetime he generally did not attract a great deal of critical attention from museums, critics and academia. However, he personally experienced a highpoint in his career when Katherine Kuh, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, personally chose one of his paintings – Why? - for its large exhibition of several hundred examples of abstract and surrealist art held in 1947-48, subsequently including it among the fifty pieces selected for a traveling show to ten other American museums. An only child, Bunnell developed his love of art at a young age through frequent drawing and political cartooning. In high school he was interested in baseball and golf and also was the tennis champion for Westport High School in Kansas City. Following graduation, his father moved the family to Denver, Colorado, in 1916 for a better-paying bookkeeping job, before relocating the following year to Colorado Springs to work for local businessman, Edmond C. van Diest, President of the Western Public Service Company and the Colorado Concrete Company. Bunnell would spend almost all of his adult life in Colorado Springs. In 1918 he enlisted in the United States Army, serving in the 62nd Infantry Regiment through the end of World War I. Returning home with a 10% disability, he joined the Zebulon Pike Post No. 1 of the Disabled American Veterans Association and in 1921 used the benefits from his disability to attend a class in commercial art design conducted under a government program in Colorado Springs. The following year he transferred to the Broadmoor Art Academy (founded in 1919) where he studied with William Potter and in 1923 with Birger Sandzén. Sandzén’s influence is reflected in Bunnell’s untitled Colorado landscape (1925) with a bright blue-rose palette. For several years thereafter Bunnell worked independently until returning to the Broadmoor Art Academy to study in 1927-28 with Ernest Lawson, who previously taught at the Kansas City Art Institute where Bunnell himself later taught in the summers of 1929-1930 and in 1940-41. Lawson, a landscapist and colorist, was known for his early twentieth-century connection with “The Eight” in New York, a group of forward-looking painters including Robert Henri and John Sloan whose subject matter combined a modernist style with urban-based realism. Bunnell, who won first-place awards in Lawson’s landscapes classes at the Academy, was promoted to his assistant instructor for the figure classes in the 1928-29 winter term. Lawson, who painted in what New York critic James Huneker termed a “crushed jewel” technique, enjoyed additional recognition as a member of the Committee on Foreign Exhibits that helped organize the landmark New York Armory Exhibition in 1913 in which Lawson showed and which introduced European avant-garde art to the American public. As noted in his 1964 interview for the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC, Bunnell learned the most about his teacher’s use of color by talking with him about it over Scotch as his assistant instructor. “Believe me,” Bunnell later said, “[Ernie] knew color, one of the few Americans that did.” His association with Lawson resulted in local scenes of Pikes Peak, Eleven Mile Canyon, the Gold Cycle Mine near Colorado City and other similar sites, employing built up pigments that allowed the surfaces of his canvases to shimmer with color and light. (Eleven Mile Canyon was shown in the annual juried show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1928, an early recognition of his talent outside of Colorado.) At the same time, he animated his scenes of Colorado Springs locales by defining the image shapes with color and line as demonstrated in Contrasts (1929). Included in the Midwestern Artists’ Exhibition in Kansas City in 1929, it earned him the gold medal of the Kansas City Art Institute, auguring his career as a professional artist. In the 1930s Bunnell used the oil, watercolor and lithography media to create a mini-genre of Colorado’s old mining towns and mills, subject matter spurned by many local artists at the time in favor of grand mountain scenery. In contrast to his earlier images, these newer ones – both daytime and nocturnal -- such as Blue Bird Mine essentially are form studies. The conical, square and rectangular shapes of the buildings and other structures are placed in the stark, undulating terrain of the mountains and valleys devoid of any vegetation or human presence. In the mid-1930s he also used the same approach in his monochromatic lithographs titled Evolution, Late Evening, K.C. (Kansas City) and The Mill, continuing it into the next decade with his oil painting, Pikes Peak (1942). During the early 1930s he studied for a time with Boardman Robinson, director of the Broadmoor Art Academy and its successor institution, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1930 to 1947. In 1934 Robinson gave him the mural commission under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) for West Junior High School in Colorado Springs, his first involvement in one of several New Deal art...

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) Lobstermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, circa 1943 Watercolor on paper Sight 17 1/2 x 23 inches Signed lower left Provenance: Private Collection, Las Vegas, Nevada In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...

Print engraving, soft ground and scouper on paper; ed. 45/50 24 x 20 inches; 26.25 x 23 inches framed Signed and dated lower center, "SW Hayter 47", titled in pencil lower center Pro...

Watercolor on paper titled "Horse and Boy" painted by Douglas Denniston (1921-2001) from 1945. Semi abstract picture of a young boy and his horse, painte...

"Ortez (Modernist Family Portrait)" is a gouache on paper abstract painting by Lewis Lee Tilley (1921-2005) from 1947 of five family members sitting on a couch. Painted in jewel tone...

Watercolor on paper painting by Eve (Van Ek) Drewelowe titled "The Champagne Cascades, Crescendos, Crashes" from 1945. An abstract landscape scene of a waterfall with white, yellow, and black. Presented in a custom gold frame, outer dimensions measure 43 ¾ x 33 ¾ x ½ inches. Image size is 29 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: A painter and sculptor, Eve Drewelowe was the eighth of twelve children and grew up on a farm with a tomboyish spirit. Her farm duties did not permit her to take art classes in her youth that she later felt would have hindered the development of her artistic style. Although her father died when she was eleven, he imparted to her reverence for nature and a true love of the earth, values later reflected in her western oil and watercolor landscapes. She attended the University of Iowa at Iowa City on scholarship, receiving her B.A. degree in graphic and plastic arts in 1923. After graduation and against the advice of her art professor, Charles Atherton Cumming who believed that matrimony ended a woman’s painting career, she married fellow student Jacob Van Ek. While he pursued his doctorate in political science, she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Iowa for her M.A. degree in painting and the history of art. At that time her alma mater was one of the few universities in the United States offering an advanced fine arts degree, and she was its first graduate, receiving her degree in 1924. That year the Van Eks moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Jacob had obtained a position as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado. Five years later he became the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, a position he held until 1959. Eve briefly studied at the University. In 1927 and 1928 she taught part-time at the University’s School of Engineering and a decade later summer courses (1936 and 1937) in the University’s Department of Fine Arts. In 1926 she became a charter member of the Boulder Artists Guild and participated in its inaugural exhibition. Like many American artists of her generation, she helped foster an art tradition outside the established cultural centers in the East and Midwest. Her professional career spanning six decades largely was spent in and around Boulder. There she produced more than 1,000 works of art in oil, watercolor, pen and ink, and other media in styles of impressionism, regionalism, and abstraction. She devoted a considerable part of her work to Colorado, Wyoming, and Arizona subject matter depicting colorful and fantastic landscapes pulsating with energy and untouched by humans. Excited by what she saw, the wide open spaces made her feel like a modern-day pioneer. In discussing her work, she once said, “What really motivated me in my youth, in my growth, in maturity was my desire to captivate everything. I put on canvas an eagerness to possess the wonder of nature and beauty of color and line – to encompass everything, not to let anything escape.” Before World War II she and her husband took two international trips that had far-reaching consequences for her career, exposing her to the arts and cultures of countries in Asia and Europe. The first in 1928-29 was an extensive excursion in the Far East for which her husband had received a scholarship to study and report on the socioeconomics of Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and India. The year after their return she had her first solo show at the University of Colorado’s library gallery. Discussing the twenty-six oils and sixteen ink drawings on view representing sixteen different countries, the Christian Science Monitor reviewer noted: “The pictures have a wide range and are far from being stereotyped in subject matter, being personal in choice. The ink-brush drawings are spontaneous, well balanced, and striking in their masses, giving the sense of having been done on the spot.” Her second trip with her husband and a party from the Bureau of University Travel had a four-month itinerary that included England, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and France. It yielded seventeen oils and twenty-six ink-wash drawings which she exhibited in a February 1936 solo show at the Boulder Art Association Gallery. Her creative output in the 1930s attracted the attention of the critic for the Parisian Revue des Arts whose observations were translated and printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on June 10, 1937: To present our readers Eve Van Ek [at that time she signed her work with her married name] …is to give them an opportunity to admire a talent of multiple aspects. The eclecticism of her art passes from a rich skill in forceful oil painting of fine strokes of precision best seen perhaps in her treatment of mountain subjects, of craggy cliffs hewn as in nature, through pen and ink or lithographic crayon design, water color, and occasionally embroidery and sculpture, to the delicate perfection of detail of the miniature. The lofty mountains of Colorado have supplied her with extremely interesting subjects for study; she knows how to represent in an entirely personal way the varying scenes and the curious restlessness of the terrain. While pursuing her art, she also was a dean’s wife. The responsibilities attached to that position proved too restrictive, contributing to a grave illness. She underwent an operation in 1940 at the Mayo Clinic for a gastric polyp, a dangerous procedure at that time. Although she had expected to come back to Boulder “in a box,” the surgery proved successful. Depicting her painful hospital stay in a watercolor, Reincarnation, she reflected on the transformative experience of piecing her life back together. That October she received encouragement from the review of her solo exhibition at the Argent Gallery in New York written by Howard Devree, art critic for the New York Times who said: “The whole exhibition is stimulating…Boats, fences and even flowers in the canvases of Eve Van Ek…seem struggling endlessly to escape from the confines of the frame.” Her watercolor, Crosses, Central City (1940), illustrates her work described in the New York review. The composition pulsates with energy conveyed by the modernist technique of juxtaposing the scene’s various angles, distorting the shapes and positions of the structures, additionally highlighting them with bright colors. The telephone poles at various angles represent crosses figuratively marking a Way of the Cross symbolized by the wooden stairs...

A vibrant, Miro like work celebrating his exhibition at the famous Kootz gallery. This piece serves as historical work and and artistic expression of joie de vivre! In 1947 Hans Ho...

Original watercolor on paper, signed in pencil.

Lionel S. Reiss (1894 - 1988) New York City Skyline View from the East River Watercolor on paper 13 x 19 inches Signed lower left In describing his own style, Lionel Reiss wrote, “By nature, inclination, and training, I have long since recognized the fact that...I belong to the category of those who can only gladly affirm the reality of the world I live in.” Reiss’s subject matter was wide-ranging, including gritty New York scenes, landscapes of bucolic Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and seascapes around Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, it was as a painter of Jewish life—both in Israel and in Europe before World War II—that Reiss excelled. I.B. Singer, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that Reiss was “essentially an artist of the nineteenth century, and because of this he had the power and the courage to tell visually the story of a people.” Although Reiss was born in Jaroslaw, Poland, his family immigrated to the United States in 1898 when he was four years old. Reiss's family settled on New York City’s Lower East Side and he lived in the city for most of his life. Reiss attended the Art Students League and then worked as a commercial artist for newspapers and publishers. As art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he supposedly created the studio’s famous lion logo. After World War I, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the ‘Old World.’ In 1921 he left his advertising work and spent the next ten years traveling in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Like noted Jewish photographers Alter Kacyzne and Roman Vishniac, Reiss depicted Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. He later wrote, “My trip encompassed three main objectives: to make ethnic studies of Jewish types wherever I traveled; to paint and draw Jewish life, as I saw it and felt it, in all aspects; and to round out my work in Israel.” In Europe, Reiss recorded quotidian scenes in a variety of media and different settings such as Paris, Amsterdam, the Venice ghetto, the Jewish cemetery in Prague, and an array of shops, synagogues, streets, and marketplaces in the Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, Vilna, Ternopil, and Kovno. He paid great attention to details of dress, hair, and facial features, and his work became noted for its descriptive quality. A selection of Reiss’s portraits appeared in 1938 in his book My Models Were Jews. In this book, published on the eve of the Holocaust, Reiss argued that there was “no such thing as a ‘Jewish race’.” Instead, he claimed that the Jewish people were a cultural group with a great deal of diversity within and between Jewish communities around the world. Franz Boas...

Gouache on paper, 18 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Signed (at lower right): Morris; (with monogram, on the back): GLKM [monogram] / 1932 [sic] Executed circa late 1940s A passionate advocate of abstract art during the 1930s and 1940s, George L. K. Morris was active as a painter, sculptor, editor, and critic. An erudite man with an internationalist point of view, Morris eschewed the social, political, and figural concerns that preoccupied so many artists of Depression-era America, believing that painters should focus their attention on the beauty, refinement, and simplicity of pure form instead. His goal, he said, was “to wedge the expression further and further into the confines of the canvas until every shape takes on a spatial meaning” (as quoted in Ward Jackson, “George L. K. Morris: Forty Years of Abstract Art,” Art Journal 32 [Winter 1972–73], p. 150). Born into an affluent family in New York City, Morris was a descendent of General Lewis Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. From 1918 until 1924, he attended the Groton School in Connecticut, studying classics and art. He continued to focus on literature and art while attending Yale University (1924–28), an experience that prepared him well for his future activity as an artist-critic. After graduating in 1928, Morris studied at the Art Students League of New York, working under the realist painters John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller, as well as Jan Matulka, the only modernist on the faculty. In the spring of 1929, Morris traveled to Paris with Albert E. Gallatin, a family friend and fellow painter who introduced him to leading members of the Parisian avant-garde, including Jean Arp, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Hélion, and Piet Mondrian. Morris also took classes at the Académie Moderne, studying under Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, important exponents of Synthetic Cubism who influenced his aesthetic development. Indeed, after experimenting with the simplified forms of Modernism for a few years, Morris moved on to abstraction by 1934, adopting a hard-edged, geometric approach inspired by Leger’s cubist style and the biomorphic shapes of Arp and Joan Miró. Following his return to New York in 1930, Morris built a white-walled, open-spaced studio (inspired by that of Ozenfant, which had been designed by Le Corbusier) on the grounds of Brockhurst, his parents’ 46-acre estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1935, he married the painter and collagist Estelle “Suzy...

Otto Tschumi * 4.8.1904 Bern, † 18.2.1985 Bern) Weite Landschaft (Wide Landscape) A fine surrealist landscape • Mixed media: gouache, tempera, pencil on paper ca. 15 x 19 cm • Shabby chic gilt 19thC frame most likely chosen by the artist himself . 16.5 x 20.5 cm • Signed and dated (19)43 bottom left • Verso: In pencil titled, dated and re-signed by the artist Worldwide shipping is complimentary - There are no additional charges for handling & delivery. Swiss painter Otto Tschumi, considered one of the most important Swiss surrealists, was born on the 4th of August 1904 in Bittwil, Seeberg, Switzerland and died on the 18th February 1985 in Bern. Tschumi grew up in modest circumstances in Bern and attended basic school there. He then ended his apprenticeship as a sign painter...

Jules Schyl (Sweden, 1893-1977) Title: Ballet Dancers A Ballet Dancer painting is a rare find for an artist mostly known for his oeuvre with Cubism and Expressionist paintings. The current painting has many similarities with Degas sketches...

Born in Hungary, Bisttram went on to become a prolific artist creating many thousands of paintings and drawings that embraced styles from realism through abstraction. A member of the WPA, he was best known as one of the founders of Transcendental Art...

Provenance: Frédérique Tison, Château de Chassy (Burgundy-Franche Comté - France) Bibliography: J. Clair, V. Monnier Balthus, catalogue raisonné of the complete works, Gallimard, Pa...

A powerful American Expressionist School study of poppies shown informally arranged in a lilac container. A heavily-impastoed oil showing bravura brushwork and demonstrating an elega...

Modernist painting of trees, interior forest scene by Colorado artist, Richard Sorby (1911-2001). Painted in dark colors of green, blue and black with brown, orange and white. Water...

Abstract Work on Paper Mid-Century Modernism Greek American Gouache Drawing. A modernist artist who emigrated to America from Greece in 1904, when he was fourteen years old, Jean Xceron is described as having a reputation as an artist that has mysteriously fallen into obscurity---especially since he was reportedly quite prominent during his lifetime. However, a partial explanation of that omission is the fact that many of his papers and early records have been lost. He was a painter of biomorphic abstractions and did collages, which were influenced by Dadaism. Xceron was active in New York City when modernism was gaining influence. Of him during this period, it was written that his artistic role was "a vital link between what is commonly termed as the first-generation (the Stieglitz group, the Synchromists, etc.) and second-generation, the American Abstract Artists, the Transcendental Painting...

Overflight over the city. 1947, paper, mixed media, 23x20 cm Adolfs Zardins (1890 08 II Riga, Latvia – 1967 07 II Jurmala, Latvia), painter. Only in 1990 his relatives give his arti...

Charming mid century watercolor painting of late 19th Century Paris street scene circa 1950. Signed lower left "Julius" , attributed to Julius Rosenbaum...

Four women with puppets. 1947, paper, mixed media, 16.3x11 cm Adolfs Zardins (1890 08 II Riga, Latvia – 1967 07 II Jurmala, Latvia), painter. Only in 1990 his relatives give his art...

Landscape with Blooming Trees Paul-Emile Pissarro 1884-1972 French Paper size 9.5x12.5 under glass framed 12x16x1 signed, very good condition. The backi...

Signed lower left, 'Byron' for Byron Randall (American, 1918-1999) and dated 1947. Born in Tacoma, WA on Oct. 23, 1918. Randall was in Salem, OR during the 1930s. He created artwork...

Acquired from the Herminio Iglesias collection, Havana.