Skip to main content

1940s Paintings

to
75
283
87
248
26
205
158
6
79
106
99
52
34
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
292
129
113
44
39
20
13
7
3
151
84
65
42
40
37
30
28
21
17
14
11
11
10
10
10
10
9
9
9
18
96
5,086
2,653
28
36
136
371
451
551
388
291
242
12
15
9
6
5
4
348
294
161
158
45
Style: Modern
Period: 1940s
Vintage American School Handsome Young Male Model Portrait Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American school modernist portrait painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. Signed . Framed. Image size, 26L x 32H.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Basketball Player
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Basketball Player Gouache on card stock, c. 1940 Signed by the artist in ink lower center A study for the fresco mural in the Social Security Buildin...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Gouache

High Rolls, New Mexico, 1940s Southwestern Landscape, Desert Church with Trees
By Andreas Storrs Andersen
Located in Denver, CO
"High Rolls, New Mexico", is a oil on canvas by Andreas Storrs Andersen (1908-1974) of a wooden church along a dirt road in the mountains with clouds in the background. Painted in a ...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Ed Sketching at Red Rocks, Vintage 1940s Original Mountain Landscape, Colorado
Located in Denver, CO
Original vintage 1940s Modernist Landscape painting of Red Rocks Park, Colorado by Vance Kirkland (1904-1981). Titled, "Ed (Hicks) Sketching at Red Rocks". This regionalist mountain landscape painting is set near Red Rocks Park, Morrison, Colorado (just west of Denver). The figure in the painting is of Kirkland's friend, Ed Hicks. Watercolor on paper, signed and dated, January 1943, lower left and titled verso by the artist. Painted in colors of red, brown, blue, and green. Presented in a custom gold leaf frame, outer dimensions measure 34 ¾ x 42 ⅞ x 1 ¼ inches. Painting as shown within the mat and frame measures 21 x 29 inches. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado About the Artist: Variously referred to as the “Father of Modern Colorado Painting,” “Dean of Colorado Artists” and “Colorado’s pre-eminent artist,” Kirkland was an inventive, visionary painter who spent fifty-two years of his fifty-four year career in Denver. Of the approximately 1,200 paintings he created, about 550 from the first half of his career (1927-1953) are water-based media: acquarelle, gouache, casein and egg tempera, with a few oils. In the latter half of his career (1953-1981) he used oil and his unique oil and water mixture. He also produced five hundred drawings and some ten prints, mostly lithographs on stone, while also engaged in teaching full-time for most of the period. To show people “something they have never seen before and new ways to look at things,” he felt he needed to preserve his artistic freedom. Consequently, he chose to spend his entire professional career in Denver far removed from the established American art centers in the East and Midwest. “By minding my own business and working on my own,” he said, “I think it was possible to develop in this part of the country… I’ve developed my kind of work [and] I think my paintings are stronger for having worked that way.” The geographical isolation resulting from his choice to stay in Colorado did not impede his creativity, as it did other artists, but in fact contributed to his unique vision. The son of a dentist, who was disappointed with his [son’s] choice of art as a career, Kirkland flunked freshman watercolor class in 1924 at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) for putting colors into his landscapes that did not exist in nature and for competing colors. Not dissuaded, he won first prize for his watercolors in his junior and senior years. [While in Cleveland,] he studied with three influential teachers. Henry Keller, included in the prestigious New York Armory Show in 1913, introduced him to designed realism which he later used in his Colorado landscapes in the 1930s and 1940s. His other teachers were Bill Eastman, who studied with Hans Hofmann and appreciated all the new movements in modern art, and Frank Wilcox, a fine watercolorist. While a student at the Cleveland School of Art, Kirkland concurrently took liberal arts courses at Western Reserve and the Cleveland School of Education and taught two freshman courses in watercolor and design, receiving his diploma in painting from the school in 1927 by doing four years of work in three. The following year he received a Bachelor of Education in Art degree from the same institution. In 1929 he assumed the position of founding director of the University of Denver’s School of Art, originally known as the Chappell School of Art. He resigned three years later when the university reneged on its agreement to grant its art courses full recognition toward a Bachelor of Arts degree. His students prevailed on him to continue teaching, resulting in the Kirkland School of Art which he opened in 1932 at 1311 Pearl Street in Denver. The building, where he painted until his death in 1981, formerly was the studio of British-born artist, Henry Read, designer of the City of Denver Seal and one of the original thirteen charter members of the Artists’ Club of Denver, forerunner of the Denver Art Museum. The Kirkland School of Art prospered for the next fourteen years with its courses accredited by the University of Colorado Extension Center in Denver. The teaching income from his art school and his painting commissions helped him survive the Great Depression. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts commissioned from him two post office murals, Cattle Roundup (1938, Eureka, Kansas), and Land Rush (1940, Sayre, Oklahoma). He also did murals for several Denver clients: the Gerald Hughes mansion (1936, later demolished), Arthur Johnson home (1936-37, Seven Drinks of Man), Albany Hotel (1937, later demolished), Neustetter’s Department Store (1937, “History of Costume,” three of five saved in 1987 before the building interior was demolished in advance of its condo conversion), and the Denver Country Club (1945, partially destroyed and later painted over). In 1953 the Ford Times, published by the Ford Motor Company, commissioned Kirkland along with fellow Denver artists, William Sanderson and Richard Sorby, to paint six watercolors each for the publication. Their work appeared in articles [about] Colorado entitled, “Take to the High Road” (of the Colorado Rockies) by Alicita and Warren Hamilton. Kirkland sketched the mountain passes and high roads in the area of Mount Evans, Independence Pass near Aspen, and Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. In 1946 Kirkland closed his art school when the University of Denver rehired him as director of its School of Art and chairman of the Division of Arts and Humanities. In 1957...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

1940s Modern Reclining Nude Oil Painting on Linen
Located in Soquel, CA
Wonderful reclining nude in modern style, circa 1940. Faint illegible signature lower right edge. Condition: Good: Professionally cleaned; two tears professionally repaired/inpainted...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Linen, Oil

Seated Man Portrait, Large Modernist Oil Painting WPA Artist
Located in Surfside, FL
Nahum Tschacbasov was born in Baku, in the southeast of Russia. When he was eight years old, he came to America, where his family settled in Chicago. His career, spanning more than five decades from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, is a kaleidoscope of influences, from modernism to the Byzantine style and expressionism of his Russian roots. Tschacbasov’s paintings of the 1930’s reflect the social and political preoccupations of the times. He received considerable critical attention for his powerful dramatic satirical depiction of social injustice. In the 1940’s he gained wider recognition when his style evolved into a fusion of Cubism and Surrealism. Through the influence of Jung, as well as currents brought to America by the newly arrived group of European Surrealists, he created a powerful personal iconography in which the inner workings of the psyche are revealed as myth and metaphor. His first encounters with modern art are the works of Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Rouault. 1932-33 Tschacbasov moves for a short time to New York City in order to be in a modern art center and then to Paris, where he adopts the name Tschacbasov, an anagram of different family names. He studies with Leopold Gottlieb for eight months, then with Marcel Gromaire, who teaches him pictorial structure, and briefly with Fernand Leger. Working in his studio on the edge of Montmartre and later in the Hotel de Sante in Montparnasse, he produces a large body of work, retaining fifty paintings. After trips to North Africa, Spain, and the Balearic Islands, he travels often from Paris to New York City, where he spends six months painting a series of Depression-inspired pictures after finding that his American business has gone bankrupt in his absence. 1934 In Paris, Galerie Zak exhibits landscapes from his trip to Majorca in the first one-man exhibition of Tschacbasov paintings; Salon de Tuileries also exhibits his work. His savings exhausted, he returns to New York via Tunisia in the midst of the Depression. 1935 Living on Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights, Tschacbasov works on the WPA Federal Arts Project, Easel Division, where he meets other artists and becomes politically involved. His works are shown at Galerie Secession with those of Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and other modernist and expressionist painters. Tschacbasov, Rothko, Gottlieb, Joseph Solman and others from Galerie Secession form a group called The Ten combining common aims of social consciousness with an expressionist and abstract style. Themes of social injustice are more dominant in Tschacbasov's work than in that of others of The Ten, as he draws on his own childhood experiences of the harsh realities of immigrant life in industrial Chicago. In the summer, a one-man exhibition of his non-objective paintings is held at Galerie Secession, and in December, Montross Gallery in New York City holds the first exhibition of The Ten, including two works by Tschacbasov, "Handout" and "Three Graces." 1936 In January, an exhibition of The Ten is held at Municipal Art Galleries in New York City, and later in the fall an exhibition, also of The Ten, is held at Galerie Bonaparte in Paris. 1936-38 Among the paintings exhibited in the "Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting" at the Whitney Museum of American Art are Tschacbasov's "Deportation", "Clinic", "Friday Night", "Harbor Sunset", and "The Matriarch". 1936-37 Tschacbasov is appointed business manager of Art Front Magazine, a publication associated with the Artists' Union. His circle of friends at this time include Philip Evergood, Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, David Burliuk, William Gropper, the Soyer brothers, Robert Gwathmey, Marsden Hartley, and Max Weber. Due to cut-backs in WPA funding, he teaches at his 38 West 22nd Street studio and at the American Artists' School. On the faculty are David Burliuk and the Soyer brothers, as well as Elaine de Kooning and other artists with similar aesthetic and social points of view. Personal and artistic crises lead to his entering into Jungian psychoanalysis, which provides new impetus and direction to his painting. Under the influence of analysis, he starts to write portions of a surrealistic autobiography, The Moon is My Uncle. His paintings, "Refugees" and "Friday Night" are shown with works by Avery, Burliuk, and DeHirsh Margules in a group exhibition at Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. In September, the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts focuses on themes of social criticism in an exhibition entitled "The World Today", curated by Elizabeth McCausland, which includes Tschacbasov's, "Little Red School House". 1940 Tschacbasov takes up photography. Photographing the works of friends and other artists, he builds a collection of color slides...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sketch n. 13 - Original Painting by Giovanni Brancaccio - 1948
Located in Roma, IT
Sketch n. 13 is an original modern artwork realized by Giovanni Brancaccio in 1948. Mixed colored oil on canvas. Hand signed and dated on the lower margin. Good conditions.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

'Ginger Cat with Still Life', American Modernist, WPA Muralist, SFAA, GGIE, MoMA
Located in Santa Cruz, CA
Signed lower right, 'Jay Risling' (American, 1896-1993) and dated 1941. A psychologically penetrating study of a contented, golden-eyed ginger cat shown re...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Untitled [Abstraction]
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Golden Cycle Mill, Colorado, 1940s WPA Mining Watercolor Landscape, Black White
Located in Denver, CO
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...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Vintage Mid Century Fauvist American Modernist Amusement Park Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
A Painting depicting an amusement park exploding in vibrant colors. The painting is signed "William Wright" lower right. Oil on Canvas. 20 x 24. Nicely framed.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American Mid Century Modern Kitchen Still Life Original OilPainting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Vintage modernist still life painting. Oil on canvas. Housed in a period frame. Image size, 14L x 8H. Signed.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Father, Daughter and Horse by Orovida Pissarro - Oil painting
Located in London, GB
*UK BUYERS WILL PAY AN ADDITIONAL 20% VAT ON TOP OF THE ABOVE PRICE Father, Daughter and Horse by Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968) Oil on canvas 60 x 73 cm (23 ⅝ x 28 ¾ inches) Signed a...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Virginia Tillou Signed Antique American Female Modernist Still Life Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Vintage modernist still life painting by Virginia Tillou (1906 - 1995). Oil canvas. Housed in a period Heydenryk frame. Image size, 12L x 18H. Sig...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Peter Collins ARCA: 'Still Life with a Fruit Bowl' 20th century oil painting
Located in London, GB
To see our other Modern British Art, and our other Peter Collins works, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

American WPA Jewish New York Modernist Madonna Mother and Child painting
Located in Norwich, GB
A magnificent oil on canvas by Russian American WPA artist Nahum Tschacbasov (1899-1984), dating from 1943. Depicting a Maternity scene - or possibly a m...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Carmicael Graphic Oil Painting
Located in Pasadena, CA
"Hope is all we have but if we believe it is enough" A statement piece and graphic painting full of emotion and color by Jae Carmichel (1925-2005) Jae Carmichael, painter, sculptor, photographer, writer, and independent filmmaker. She was the founding director of Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum. She staged more than 200 solo exhibitions in galleries in Los Angeles, Japan, and Europe and has works included in permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She studied art with Francis de Erdely, Millard, Sheets, Phil...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Large Exhibited Modernist Surreal Nocturnal Winter Landscape Signed Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist landscape painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1930. Signed. Housed in period frame. Image size 45L x 32H.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American Mid Century Modern Cubist Abstract Architectural Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Vintage American school modernist painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Unsigned. Image size, 30L x 24H. Housed in a period frame.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mid Century Abstract
Located in Buffalo, NY
Modernist abstract oil painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Unsigned. Image size, 37"L x 25"H.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Victor, Colorado, 1940s Modernist Mountain Landscape with Town, Mining Town
By Martyl Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf
Located in Denver, CO
'Victor, Colorado', 1942 oil painting on masonite by Martyl Suzanne Schweig (1918-2013). This classic Colorado landscape was painted overlooking a ghost town with the Rocky Mountains visible across the background, completed in rich tones of green, gold, and brown. This painting was completed on a trip with fellow artist, Adolph Dehn...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Vintage Signed American Surreal Exhibited Beach Scene "Femininity" Oil Painting
By Harry Long
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist oil painting by Harry Lane. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Signed. Exhibited. Framed. Image size, 20L x 16H.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Game of Cards by Orovida Pissarro - Oil painting
Located in London, GB
A Game of Cards by Orovida Pissarro (1893-1968) Oil on canvas 59 x 72 cm (23 ¹/₄ x 28 ³/₈ inches) Signed and titled upper right Orovida 1949 Artist biography Orovida Camille Pissarr...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Pittsburgh Alleyway
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Pittsburgh Alleyway, c. 1946, oil on gouache on paper on “prestwood” (Masonite), 9 x 12 inches, signed lower middle, Bohrod’s original label verso from his gallery at 4811 Tonyawatha...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media

Antique American Modernist Maine Coastal Original Vintage Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Vintage American modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Unsigned. Unframed. Image size, 24"L x 20"H.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Moonlight Shanties
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Moonlight Shanties, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, signed lower right, signed and titled verso About the Painting In Moonlight Shanties, Joachim depicts a lower-class neighborhood sitting along-side an elevated road or railway which crowds out the small nearby houses and structures. Joachim’s use of an expressionist palette and gestural brushstrokes together with the isolated figures obscured in the shadows, create a feeling of unease, isolation and even loneliness. From the 1920s through 1940s, American artists commonly employed expressionist conventions in their social realist works which portrayed the gritty side of urban America, especially the communities of the city-dwelling poor. Expressionist styles were considered appropriate for bridging the gap between the modernist idea of art-for-art’s-sake and the narrative qualities demanded by the dual crises of the Great Depression and World War II. Moonlight Shanties successfully uses these expressionist methods to portray a neighborhood and its people who appear to be literally and figuratively “on the edge.” About the Artist Paul Lamar Joachim...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Colorado Hill Town with Storm Clouds, 1940s Modernist Landscape, Green Blue
Located in Denver, CO
WPA era signed framed modernist oil painting of houses and trees in summer with a stormy cloud in Colorado by Paul K. Smith in shades of green, ...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Halleluja, A story
Located in Greenwich, CT
Initially read as archaic and simple, Halleluja is a complex celebratory spring painting full of color, imagination, and humor and combines many elements seen throughout her later ca...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"New York City Skyline View from the East River, " Lionel Reiss, Jewish Artist
By Lionel Reiss
Located in New York, NY
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...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Till the Clouds Roll By 1945 Frank Sinatra Mid Century Modern Hollywood Film WPA
Located in New York, NY
Till the Clouds Roll By 1945 Frank Sinatra Mid Century Modern Hollywood Film WPA TILL THE COULDS ROLL BY (Film Set), oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches signed “Richard Whorf” lower right and signed and dated on the verso “R. Whorf/ Dec. 21, 1945. Frame by Hendenryk. ABOUT THE PAINTING This painting is from the collection of Barbara and Frank Sinatra, dated December 21, 1945 (just nine days after Frank Sinatra’s 30th birthday), and depicts the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Culver City backlot during the filming of Till the Clouds Roll By, the direction of the film having been taking over by Richard Whorf in December 1945. It is not presently clear if Whorf gave the Sinatras this painting as a gift, as the presence of the Dalzell Hatfield Galleries label on the verso indicates the painting may have been sourced there. Frank and Nancy Sinatra acquired a number of works from Dalzell Hatfield Galleries during the 1940’s, or perhaps they framed it for the couple. Sinatra performed “Old Man River’ in the film. Sinatra and June Allyson are depicted in the center of the painting. PROVENANCE From the Estate of Mrs. Nancy Sinatra; Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. An image of the Dalzell Hatfield label and the back of the original frame (which we replaced with a stunning Heydenrk frame) are attached. Nancy Sinatra was Fran's first wife. Nancy Rose Barbato was 17 years old when she met Frank Sinatra, an 18-year-old singer from Hoboken, on the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1934. They married in 1939 at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Jersey City where Frank gave Nancy a recording of a song dedicated to her titled "Our Love" as a wedding present. The young newlyweds lived and worked in New Jersey, where Frank worked as an unknown singing waiter and master of ceremonies at the Rustic Cabin while Nancy worked as a secretary at the American Type Founders. His musical career took off after singing with big band leaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Storm Over Victor (Colorado Mountain Town), 1940s WPA Era Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Oil on board painting by George Vander Sluis (1915-1984) titled Storm Over Victor (Colorado Mountain Town) from 1946. WPA Era Mountain Landscape wi...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

The square of Champel, Geneva by Benjamin II Vautier - Gouache on paper 20x15 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Work on paper
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Gouache

1940s American Modernist Abstracted Industrial Watercolor Ink Charcoal Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Charles Bunnell original vintage 1941 signed painting from the artist's Black and Blue Series, Abstract Structure style. Watercolor, Ink and Charcoal on paper in colors of black, wh...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor

Riders Through the Canyon, Mid-Century Western Landscape
Located in Beachwood, OH
Riders Through the Canyon, c. 1941 Oil on board Signed lower right 24 x 32.25 inches "Also, on this second trip the significant colors of the Southwest became apparent - the prep...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

"Sock Hop" Mid-Century American Modernism WPA Female Artist 20th Century Realism
Located in New York, NY
"Sock Hop" Mid-Century American Modernism WPA Female Artist 20th Century Realism. 30 x 24 inches. Oil on canvas. Signed on stretcher, c. 1940s. Frame is likely original to the painting. Realist painter-printmaker Kyra Markham...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Park Scene (Chelsea, Manhattan)
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Park Scene (Chelsea, Manhattan) Oil on artist's board, c. 1947-49 Signed lower right (see photo) Provenance: Estate of the artist Dehn Heirs Condition: Good, needs a light cleaning Original wormy chestnut frame Painting size: 9 1/4 x 12 inches Frame size: 14 1/4 x 17 inches One of the earliest know Virginia Dehn paintings after her marriage to Adolf in 1947. The lived in Chelsea at 433 West 21st St. Inscription by artist verso: Virginia Dehn 443 W. 21 St. New York City V.70 Virginia Dehn From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Virginia Dehn Virginia Dehn in her studio in Santa Fe Virginia Dehn (née Engleman) (October 26, 1922 – July 28, 2005) was an American painter and printmaker. Her work was known for its interpretation of natural themes in almost abstract forms. She exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the U.S. Her paintings are included in many public collections. Life Dehn was born in Nevada, Missouri on October 26, 1922.] Raised in Hamden, Connecticut, she studied at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri before moving to New York City. She met the artist Adolf Dehn while working at the Art Students League. They married in November 1947. The two artists worked side by side for many years, part of a group of artists who influenced the history of 20th century American art. Their Chelsea brownstone was a place where artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered. Early career Virginia Dehn studied art at Stephens College in Missouri before continuing her art education at the Traphagen School of Design, and, later, the Art Students League, both located in New York City. In the mid-1940s while working at the Associated American Artists gallery, she met lithographer and watercolorist Adolf Dehn. Adolf was older than Virginia, and he already enjoyed a successful career as an artist. The two were married in 1947 in a private ceremony at Virginia's parents house in Wallingford, Connecticut. Virginia and Adolf Dehn The Dehns lived in a Chelsea brownstone on West 21st Street where they worked side by side. They often hosted gatherings of other influential artists and intellectuals of the 20th century. Among their closest friends were sculptor Federico Castellón and his wife Hilda; writer Sidney Alexander and his wife Frances; artists Sally and Milton Avery; Ferol and Bill Smith, also an artist; and Lily and Georges Schreiber, an artist and writer. Bob Steed and his wife Gittel, an anthropologist, were also good friends of the Dehns. According to friend Gretchen Marple Pracht, "Virginia was a glamorous and sophisticated hostess who welcomed visitors to their home and always invited a diverse crowd of guests..." Despite their active social life, the two were disciplined artists, working at their easels nearly daily and taking Saturdays to visit galleries and view new work. The Dehns made annual trips to France to work on lithographs at the Atelier Desjobert in Paris. Virginia used a bamboo pen to draw directly on the stone for her lithographs, which often depicted trees or still lifes. The Dehns' other travels included visits to Key West, Colorado, Mexico, and countries such as Greece, Haiti, Afghanistan, and India. Dehn's style of art differend greatly from that of her husband, though the two sometimes exhibited together. A friend of the couple remarked, "Adolf paints landscapes; Virginia paints inscapes." Virginia Dehn generally painted an interior vision based on her feelings for a subject, rather than a literal rendition of it.] Many of her paintings consist of several layers, with earlier layers showing through. She found inspiration in the Abstract Expressionism movement that dominated the New York and Paris art scenes in the 1950s. Some of her favorite artists included Adolf Gottileb, Rothko, William Baziotes, Pomodoro, and Antonio Tapies. Dehn most often worked with bold, vibrant colors in large formats. Her subjects were not literal, but intuitive. She learned new techniques of lithography from her husband Adolf, and did her own prints. Texture was very important to her in her work. Her art was influenced by a variety of sources. In the late 1960s she came across a book that included photographs of organic patterns of life as revealed under a microscope. These images inspired her to change the direction of some of her paintings. Other influences on Dehn's art came from ancient and traditional arts of various cultures throughout the world, including Persian miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, Dutch still life painting, Asian art, ancient Egyptian artifacts...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Lying woman in red hat
Located in Genève, GE
Work on watercolor paper Black wooden frame with glass pane 40 x 48.5 x 3 cm
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Pastel

Deserted Street, Figurative Exterior Painting with Yellow, Orange and Red
Located in Denver, CO
Oil on canvas painting from 1946 by Colorado/Woodstock modernist Jenne Magafan (1916-1952) titled 'Deserted Street'. Single figure portrayed in a ghost town with buildings and teleph...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Church at Chapala Signed Marion Wakeman Taos School Exhibited Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist landscape painting by Marion D Freeman Wakeman (1891 - 1953). Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Image size, 26H x 20L
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Rail Crossing: Middletown, NY"
Located in New York, NY
This beautiful oil on linen canvas painting, entitled "Rail Crossing: Middletown, was executed by the esteemed artist Jules Halfant (American, 1909-2001)...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

“Woman with Orange Necklace”
Located in Southampton, NY
Original oil on hardboard (a type of masonite) painting by the Russian American artist, Nahum Tschacbasov. Signed, dated 1946 along with a dedication to his wife on their 17th wedding anniversary. Condition is very good. The back of the painting has a sketch as well by Nahum Tschacbasov. Framed in a semi-antique ornate gold frame...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

"Mexican Mountains, " Hendrik Glintenkamp, Modernist Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Hendrik (Henry) J Glintenkamp (1887 - 1946) Mexican Mountains, 1940 Oil on canvas 32 x 26 inches Signed lower left; signed and dated on the reverse T...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"War Brides, Wash Sq NYC" American Scene WWII Modernism WPA Mid-Century Oil
Located in New York, NY
"War Brides, Wash Sq NYC" American Scene WWII Modernism WPA Mid-Century Oil. 30 x 40 inches. Oil on canvas, c. 1942. Signed lower right. Titled on the stretcher. Housed in a sensational Heydenryk frame. Our gallery, Helicline Fine Art...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Overflight over the city. 1947, paper, mixed media, 23x20 cm
Located in Riga, LV
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...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Paper, Ink, Mixed Media, Watercolor

Modernist Trees, 1940s Framed Modernist Landscape Watercolor Painting, Red Green
Located in Denver, CO
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...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper

“Studio Interior”
Located in Southampton, NY
Modernist oil painting done in miniature on a thick block of wood of a female nude in the artist’s studio. Signed lower left by the well known New York artist, Nicholas Takis...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Wood Panel, Oil

Behind the Curtain
Located in Wien, 9
August Wilhelm Dressler, Behind the Curtain, 1940, Oil on Wood Panel, 60 x 50 cm. Signed lower left.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Wood Panel, Oil

Forest, American Modernist Abstract Landscape Painting by Female Artist
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Forest" is a 29 x 36 inches, oil on canvas painting by American modernist, female artist Peter Miller. The work is painted in a vibrant color palette. The work is estate stamped on ...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

“Oil Tankers”
Located in Southampton, NY
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...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil, Cardboard

1940s Still Life with Flowers Oil Painting, Red, Yellow, Blue, Purple
Located in Denver, CO
Original vintage 1945 oil painting with an interior still life with a vase of flowers, tea cup, and drapery by 20th century Colorado modernist, John E. Thompson (1882-1945). Oil on c...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

The bridge
Located in Geneva, CH
Work on paper
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Gouache

"Edge of the Arve" by Jean Ferdinand Chomel - Oil on cardboard
Located in Geneva, CH
Swiss painter Sculptor, painter and ceramist. Landscape. Wall painting and drawing Artwork on cardboard
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

NYC Subway Mid 20th Century American Modernism WPA Realism industrial Colorful
Located in New York, NY
NYC Subway Mid 20th Century American Modernism WPA Realism industrial Colorful "New York Subway," 36 x 48 inches. Oil on Masonite (backed with a wood frame), Signed and dated ’47 upper left. The colors of the painting are extraordinarily vibrant. The white gold frame, signed Richard Tobey...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

"NYC Subway" American Modernism Scene WPA Mid-Century Realism Cityscape Transit
Located in New York, NY
"NYC Subway" American Modernism Scene WPA Mid-Century Realism Cityscape Transit. 26 x 28 inches. Oil on canvas, c. 1940s. Signed lower left. Hand carved frame. Max Arthur Cohn (1903 – 1988) Born in London, England, Cohn became an artist primarily known for scenes of New York City, rural views, and abstract figural compositions. His style has ranged from realism in the 1920s to 1940s to abstraction from the 1950s to 1990s, with some reintroduction in the later years of realism and re-working of earlier subject matter. His primary studio...
Category

American Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Untitled Non-Objective Abstraction
Located in Lawrence, NY
Oil on board Never afraid of trying new styles, curious and opinionated, constantly engaged with the world around him, Rolph Scarlett more than once proved to be at the artistic zeit...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

1946 "Untitled" oil on canvas painting signed and dated by artist Alex Katz.
Located in Boca Raton, FL
"Untitled" oil on canvas painting by artist Alex Katz. Signed and dated A. Katz 46 recto lower right. Painted in 1946, during the period when Katz was studying at Cooper Union in New...
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Buffalo New York Regionalist Modern Landscape Signed Exhibited Rare Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Antique American modernist landscape painting signed "Welch '42". Oil on board, circa 1942. Signed. Image size, 16L x 14H. Housed in a modern frame.
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Cemetery and church by Eugène Louis Martin - Oil on canvas
Located in Geneva, CH
Work on canvas
Category

Modern 1940s Paintings

Materials

Oil

Recently Viewed

View All