1940s Paintings

Lapin, modèle 6, circa 1944-1949 Edition Leblanc-Barbedienne Bronze with a brown patina 7.5 x 4 x 2.5 cm Sandoz : Sculpteur Figuriste et Animalier 1881-1971, Catalogue Raisonné de l...

Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Exhibited 1950 University of Illinois at Urbana "Contemporary American Painting" 1964 Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas This work retains its original frame which measures 54" x 36" x 2". About this artist: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...

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...

Charles Harsanyi (American, 1905-1973) The Ferry No 2, 1946 Oil on board 40 x 52 in. Framed: 46 x 58 in. Signed and inscribed verso Exhibited: Grand Central Art Galleries, 1946 Charles E. Harsanyi was born in Tapolcza, Hungary in 1905. He studied at the Royal Academy in Budapest, Hungary with A. Bankhard from 1923 to 1928. Nineteen years later, in 1947, Harsanyi moved to the U. S., settling in Jackson Heights, New York. The painter and drawing specialist became a member of numerous prestigious art clubs including the Salmagundi Club, The Society of Independent Artists and the Allied Artists of America. Harsanyi served as an awards director and chairman of admissions for the Audubon Artists Association during the 1950s. Later in life after living in Stephentown, New York and Cape Coral...

Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Exhibited 1964 Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas This work retains its original frame which measures 54" x 42" x 2" About this artist: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...

Nice modernist American school painting. Oil and watercolor and gouache on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 18L x 23H.

Antique American modernist still life painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. Housed in a period frame. Image size, 31L x 23H.

Work signed but artist unknown from the gallery- Sold with frame, total size with frame is 82x67 cm

Bryon Browne was an important American modernist painter. Signed upper right; signed, dated and situated 'New York' on reverse

Fortune Magazine Cover Published 1941 Illustration Precisionist American Scene Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Military Tent City Fortune Cover published, May 1941 17 1/2 X 15 in...

Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Bibliography Art in America, April 1951, p.78 About this artists: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...

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

1949 French Portrait of an Elderly Jewish Man, Signed Stern

Work on canvas Beige wooden frame 44 x 57 x 5 cm

Antique signed Canadian fishing oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 24L x 30H.

Original Painting. Fortune Mag Cover Proposal. American Mid Century Industrial Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994) 92 Fortune cover proposal, c. 1945 13 X 10 3/4 inches (sight) Framed...

Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 55.5 x 48 x 6 cm

In this work we find the image of the Buddha and several pomegranates, symbolizing fertility. The choice of combining objects and materials of different nature becomes an unmistakable feature of his style. A taste for the intrinsic qualities of different materials, specifically chosen for their characteristics of gloss transparency and sphericity, not least, the optical precision with which the different surfaces are rendered. Croatto creates images where reality is transformed into a magical and suspended atmosphere. Bruno Croatto...

Oil on board, signed lower right and titled and dated lower left Image size: 19 1/2 x 16 3/4 inches Contemporary hand made frame

Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 56 x 49.5 x 3 cm

Oil on canvas signed by artist Angelo Di Benedetto (1913-1992) featuring two young figures reading a book together while sitting from 1947. Painted in shades of green, orange, red, gray, and green. Image measures 28 x 38 inches, framed dimensions are 33 ¾ x 39 ¾ inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born New Jersey 1913 Died Central City, CO 1992 The son of Italian immigrants from the Salerno province in southern Italy, as a teenager Di Benedetto worked to study at the Cooper Union Art School in New York City (1930-34) from which he graduated with a certificate in freehand drawing. He won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Art School where he studied for three years, beginning in 1934. In 1937, he entered his first juried exhibition at the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, winning first prize and first honorable mention. In December 1938, the Royal Netherlands Steamship Line sent him on a two-month ethnological study trip to Haiti, his first exposure to a different environment outside the United States. In 1940, his Haitian paintings were exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York – his first solo show. Before World War II, Di Benedetto traveled extensively around the United States doing regional paintings. During the war in 1941, Di Benedetto volunteered for a secret mission based in Eritrea, Africa before the Allied invasion. Following Africa, he served as an orientation officer and aerial photographic officer in the District of Columbia. In 1945 he was assigned to a mapping unit at Buckley Airfield in Denver where he served until his discharge in 1946. Like many other servicemen stationed at the time in Colorado, Di Benedetto chose to remain in Colorado, impressed by the state’s physical grandeur and healthful climate. He settled in the old mining town of Central City in 1947. In 1949 Di Benedetto and his wife, ceramist Lee Porzio, opened the Benpro Art School in his studio where he conducted summer art classes. In 1950, Di Benedetto teamed up with Frank Vavra...

Swiss painter of the XIXth XXth century Work on canvas without frame

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY This painting of four different species of fish that can be found in South Korea is from the mid-20th century Korean artist Kim Kyung. Seafood from both the seas that surround the peninsula and from its rivers are an integral part of the livelihood and cuisine of Koreans. Kim Kyung (in Hanja, 金耕, in Hangul 김경) was born in South Korea, his real name, under the current Revised Romanization was Kim Gyeong-Eun (in Hanja 金萬斗, in Hangul 김경은). His name follows the East Asian convention of family name first, though some Western galleries choose to reorder his name with the Western convention as Kyung Kim. He was born in Hadong, Gyeongnam during the Imperial Japanese occupation, as the eldest son of a poor farm family, and at the age of 18 he entered the art department of Japan University. In 1943, he returned to his hometown to escape being drafted into the Japanese army...

Antique Canadian modernist signed oil painting. Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Image size, 16L x 12H.

Untitled (Portrait of Bessy Lyon, Artist Wife) is an oil on canvas painting by Hayes Lyon (1901-1987) from 1945. Presented in a wood frame, outer dimensions measure 35 ¼ x 29 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 24 inches. About the Artist: A native of Athol, Kansas, Lyon is primarily associated with Colorado. After several summer vacations at the Boulder Chautauqua and at Manitou near Colorado Springs, his family relocated in 1920 to Boulder where his father had a lumber business. Nine years later they settled in Denver where his father owned the Acme Lumber Company. To comply with his desire for his son’s financial self-reliance, Lyon graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1931 with a B.A. degree in economics. But shortly thereafter he returned to his first love – art – that ultimately became his career. His interest in the arts was nurtured by his mother, herself a talented amateur artist, and by two of his aunts who served as role models. Beginning in 1932, he pursued a five-year course of study at the Chappell School of Art in Denver which by then had become part of the University of Denver. During his time at the school he studied with John E. Thompson and Santa Fe artist, Józef Bakoś. He also met two other Santa Fe-based artists, Willard Nash and B.J.O. Nordfeldt, when they exhibited at Chappell House, then the home of the Denver Art Museum. Lyon likewise attended the Cooke-Daniels Lecture Series there on the arts in the 1930s. Following graduation with a B.F.A. degree from the University of Denver in 1937, he studied privately for about a year with Andrew Dasburg in Taos, New Mexico, that redirected his attention to the rugged Rocky Mountain landscape, which he saw with directness and painted with an economy of means. His canvas, Winter Vista, done following his study with Dasburg, received the Edward J. Yetter Memorial Prize at the 45th Annual Exhibition of the Denver Art Museum in 1939. The painting was reproduced in the September 1939 issue of the Magazine of Art (Washington, DC). That same year his painting, Mount Evans, was included as one of Colorado’s entries in the American Art Today Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The money he received from the Yetter Prize financed his trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara in 1939 to see firsthand the frescoes of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera and the easel paintings of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their work was admired by many Americans who participated in the WPA-era mural projects in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s. The economic fallout from the Great Depression affecting many American artists at the time likewise resulted in Lyon’s participation in the Colorado Art Project, part of the WPA’s national program. Under its auspices he produced three murals in 1940 about the pioneer era of Fort Lupton, Colorado, which were installed in the auditorium of the local high school. Covering 367 square feet of wall space, one of the murals – Behold the West (the largest one) – incorporates the old fort for which the town is named. Before Lyon painted the murals, the students at Fort Lupton High School researched the history of their community and contributed to their cost, facilitating the murals’ allocation to their school under the Colorado Art Project. In the early 1940s Lyon shifted his focus to two new subjects – bathers, and canyons with conifers – reflecting his ongoing search for personal artistic growth. However, his reliance on structure to create form in his paintings and works on paper alienated some of his longtime followers. Nonetheless, his painting Conifers and Canyons won recognition at the 47th Annual Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. The watercolor version of the piece was among three hundred works in that medium selected by John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Eliot O’Hara from a national competition held by the Section of Fine Arts (Federal Works Agency) and shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1941. Later that year Lyon spent time in California where he saw Orozco’s Prometheus, influencing him to increase his range of originality and expression. In 1942 Lyon enlisted in the U.S. Army, spending almost three years in the Mediterranean Theater – Africa and Italy – preparing camouflage operations and scale models of proposed landing sites. He used his free time in Italy to expand his artistic vocabulary by seeing cultural masterpieces in Rome, Florence, Siena and Milan, and through his extensive contact with Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica art movement, and Gino Severini, a leading member of the Futurist movement. Because of Lyon’s low army rank and pay, de Chirico did a small watercolor for him signing it, "For Mr. Lyon; G de Chirico, 1944." Lyon often visited de Chirico and his wife, Isa, at their apartment near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Following his Army discharge in 1945 fellow Kansas native, Ward Lockwood, invited him to join the Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught painting from 1946 to 1951. During this period some of Lyon’s work employed the palette of the School of Paris which he had seen while stationed in Europe, while other paintings had a certain flatness found in some of Lockwood’s work from the 1930s. From 1951 to 1953 he was affiliated with the Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin as an illustrator and editor of the employee magazine. In 1953, following time spent in Mexico, he returned to Denver, working as an illustrator at Lowry Air Force Base until retirement in 1961. During that time he did little of his own art because he also was designing and building a home in Arvada, Colorado, and re-establishing himself in the Denver art community after a decade-long absence. His painting, Autumn Aspens (1953-present location unknown) illustrates his experimentation with abstraction. In the early 1960s he began painting from memory that continued until the steadily degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s disease took their toll a decade later. He depicted scenes from his wartime European sojourn and from his early adulthood. The latter include Souvenir of Boulder (1962), a nostalgic return to his boyhood home in Boulder; and Holly Mayer and Friends, a painting of Glenn Miller and his musicians, inspired by Lyon’s first encounter with jazz in Boulder in the 1920s. His lifelong passion for vintage cars and automobile racing...

Vintage 1930s - 1940s oil painting of an adobe church in New Mexico with a brilliant blue sky and clouds (likely Rancho de Taos), circa 1940. Painted by Denver modernist, Paul K...

Work on canvas

Work on canvas Brown wooden frame 76.5 x 65.5 x 4.5 cm

We are proud to present outstanding original oil on canvas by American artist William Gropper (1897-1977.) William Gropper was an artist and illustrator, known for his exceptional a...

Signed lower right, 'K. H. Kaneko'; additionally inscribed, verso, 'K. H. Kaneko' and dated 1946 A substantial, Post-Impressionist oil on canvas showing a view of Montmartre lookin...

Vintage American modernist abstract still life oil painting. Oil on board, circa 1950. Housed in a vintage frame. Image size, 22L x 13H. Signed.

Oil on board, signed and dated '44 lower right Image size: 15 x 19 inches (38 x 48.25 cm) Contemporary style hand made frame This portrait of an unknown man certainly captures the p...

Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 63 x 55 x 5 cm

Work on paper Original silver wooden frame with glass window 52 x 66,5 x 1,5 cm

Vintage American modernist still life painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. No signature found. Framed. Image size, 21"L x 13"H.

Work on cardboard Brown wooden frame with glass pane 40 x 46.5 x 1.5 cm

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 55 x 71.5 x 3.5 cm

Bungalow (fauvist painting of New York scene) 1940's. image is 10X 11.5 inches. Hand signed lower right Country Scene Samuel Grunvald was a Hungarian born American WPA artist known for abstract, landscape and seascape paintings. Arrived in the USA from Hungary in 1921 and settled in New York City where he studied at the Art Students League. Grunvald worked for the Federal Art Project, taught at Colony House in NYC. Member: Art Guild, Watercolor Society, New York Watercolor Club. exhibited at Montross Gallery, NYC, World House Galleries, NYC, Leonard Hutton Gallery, NYC, Associated American Artists Gallery and the A.C.A. Gallery. Gunvald's work spanned many modern American movements from the WPA to Abstract Expressionist painting. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society and the Brooklyn Society of Artists. He exhibited with both of these organizations and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He was involved the the WPA being a Federal Arts Project artist. A number of prominent Jewish artists participated in this New Deal program among them Ben Shahn, Joseph Solman, William Gropper, Philip Guston Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Ben Shahn, the Soyers (Isaac, Moses, and Raphael), and many others Grunwald exhibited alongside other popular artists such as Paul Klee, Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Charles Burchfield. He also taught and lectured on art and easel painting, Federal Art Project, NYC. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and The Jewish Museum, New York. Americana. The Catskills became a major resort destination for Jewish New Yorkers in the mid-20th century. Borscht Belt is an informal term for the summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in Sullivan and Ulster counties in upstate New York which were frequented by Ashkenazi Jews. At its peak of popularity, about 500 resorts operated in the region. Later changes in vacationing patterns have led most of those travelers elsewhere, although there are still bungalow communities and summer camps in the towns of Liberty, Bethel, Monticello and Fallsburg catering to Orthodox Jewish populations. Borscht Belt, The term, which derives from the name of a beet soup popular with people of Eastern European origin, can also refer to the Catskill region itself. In August, 1969, the Catskills were the site of a music and art festival in the town of Bethel, which had originally been planned for Woodstock, New York. Thirty-three of the best-known musicians of the era appeared during a sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. The event, featuring liberal drug use and nudity, exemplified the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Select Exhibitions A.C.A. Gallery Associated American Artists Gallery, 1936-1955 American Watercolor Society, 1932-1942 New York Watercolor Club, 1935-1937 Humanist Art...

Elaine de Kooning said of De Hirsh Margules that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country", and New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium." In 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin’s paintings. While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The famous photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends." Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "[i]ndebted to Marin and through Marin to Cezanne for his initial conceptual approach." His work can be found in the collections of the Whitney, MOMA, Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Provincetown Art...

Work on canvas Gilded wood frame 28,5 x 38 x 3 cm

The Market, (fauvist painting of NYC scene) 1940's. image is 10X 11.5 inches. Hand signed lower right Lower East Side Tenements Pushcart Market Samuel Grunvald was a Hungarian born American WPA artist known for abstract, landscape and seascape paintings. Arrived in the USA from Hungary in 1921 and settled in New York City where he studied at the Art Students League. Grunvald worked for the Federal Art Project, taught at Colony House in NYC. Member: Art Guild, Watercolor Society, New York Watercolor Club. exhibited at Montross Gallery, NYC, World House Galleries, NYC, Leonard Hutton Gallery, NYC, Associated American Artists Gallery and the A.C.A. Gallery. Gunvald's work spanned many modern American movements from the WPA to Abstract Expressionist painting. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society and the Brooklyn Society of Artists. He exhibited with both of these organizations and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He was involved the the WPA being a Federal Arts Project artist. A number of prominent Jewish artists participated in this New Deal program among them Ben Shahn, Joseph Solman, William Gropper, Philip Guston Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Ben Shahn, the Soyers (Isaac, Moses, and Raphael), and many others Grunwald exhibited alongside other popular artists such as Paul Klee, Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Charles Burchfield. He also taught and lectured on art and easel painting, Federal Art Project, NYC. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and The Jewish Museum, New York. Americana. Select Exhibitions A.C.A. Gallery Associated American Artists Gallery, 1936-1955 American Watercolor Society, 1932-1942 New York Watercolor Club, 1935-1937 Humanist Art...

Work on wood Golden wooden frame 46 x 38 x 3 cm

Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Still Life with Apples, 1940 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 18 x 24 inches Clarence Holbrook Carter achieved a level of national artistic success that was nearly unprecedented among Cleveland School artists of his day, with representation by major New York dealers...

"Spring" is a 25 x 30 inches, oil on canvas painting by American modernist and surrealist, female artist Peter Miller. The work is signed and titled on verso, and painted in a vibran...

Work on canvas Gilded wooden frame 60 x 71 x 4,5 cm

Rabbit Hunters, egg tempera on Masonite, 12 x 9 inches, 1947, signed and dated lower left, signed, titled and dated verso “Rabbit Hunters Egg Tempera Roger Medearis 1947,” exhibited ...

Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Hospitalities Long Past, 1941 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 37 x 27 inches "Looking into store front windows has always i...

Signed lower right, 'Provenzano' for Sam Provenzano (American, 1923-1999) and painted circa 1949. Exhibited: Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester Finger Lakes Exhibition (from l...

Work on canvas Gray wooden frame 56 x 48 x 5.5 cm

Signed lower right, 'Lily Harmon' (American, 1912-1998) and painted circa 1945. Previously with: Associated American Artists Gallery (partial label verso) An exceptionally lyrical a...

Exhibited: Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, New York Caldwell Gallery, Manlius, N.Y.

"Salutations" is a 12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas painting by American modernist and surrealist, female artist Peter Miller. The work is painted in a vibrant color palette. The painti...

Antique American modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Signed illegibly lower left. Image size, 36L x 24H. Housed in a period modern frame.

Antique American school modernist portrait oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Image size, 20L x 18H.

Work on canvas Golden wooden frame 57 x 74 x 3 cm Paul GAGARIN (1885-c.1980), Pavel Konstantinovich GAGARIN. Russian painter, emigrated to France in 1921 then worked in Brazil where...

Work on wood Golden wooden frame 41 x 57 x 3.5 cm

Vintage American modernist abstract piano painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Signed. Framed. Image size, 24"L x 20"H.