Charles Louis Goeller

The Shelf

1930s

Still Life (Untitled), c. 1935 – 1940, oil on canvas, signed lower left, magazine cover has a 1934 date, 32 x 26 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso In their essay for the gro...

Still Life (Untitled), c. 1940/50s, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches, identified by label verso Jeanette Maxfield Lewis was a California-based landscape painter and etcher. Born in Oa...

Wind Flowers in a Tzu Chow Vase, 1933, oil on canvas board, signed and dated lower right, 20 x 16 inches, label verso with title and original price ($185.00), exhibited 44th Annual E...

Cylinder and Pear, c. 1959, oil on board, 18 x 24 inches, literature: W. Meyers, Walter Tandy Murch: Paintings and Drawings 1925-1967, New York, 2021, p. 176, pl. 41, illustrated; pr...

Edith Kramer (1916 - 2014) Still Life with Mask, n.d. Oil on canvas 26 x 20 inches Signed and titled on the stretcher Provenance: Estate of the artist Kramer was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary in 1916. At age 13 Kramer began art lessons with Friedl Dicker. Dicker was graduate of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany and was an artist and art teacher of note. Kramer studied drawing, sculpture and painting, and was influenced by the method for teaching art developed by Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten. It was in 1934 after Kramer graduated from Realgymnasium that she, then 18, followed Dicker to Prague to continue to study under her. During this time in Prague, Kramer witnessed the therapeutic impact of art when she assisted Dicker in teaching art to the children of political refugees. With the threat of Nazi invasion looming, Kramer took refuge in America in 1938. In New York City, she worked for three years teaching sculpture at a progressive school called the Little Red School House. During World War II Kramer worked as a machinist at a tool and die shop in the Soho district of New York City. She stayed after her shift to draw the other workers in their industrial setting. These works were rendered in the social realist style. In 1947 Kramer visited some of the earliest known artwork, in the caves at Lascaux. Kramer spoke of these cave paintings as an example of the universal language of art. At the age of 33 she returned to New York City, with hopes of making a living as an artist. Still in her 33rd year, Kramer was offered a job at Wiltwyck School for Boys, a school and residential treatment facility for children with behavioral and emotional needs. This job was arranged for her by psychoanalyst and board member at Wiltwyck, Dr. Viola Bernard. Dr. Bernard gave Kramer the title, "Art Therapist," noting that few teachers were willing to work with such challenging students. It was here that Kramer worked with disturbed boys, ages 8 through 13, for the following seven years. Raised in a family which was interested in psychoanalytic theory, Kramer herself became a follower of Sigmund Freud. Kramer especially believed in the concept of sublimation. Freudian theory describes sublimation as a process in which primitive urges coming from the id are transformed into socially productive activities that lead to gratification of the original urge. Kramer's training was in art, art education and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. Kramer believed sublimation to be one of the most vital goals of art therapy...

Donald Vogel’s paintings reflect his interest in seeking beauty in life and in sharing pleasure with his viewers. Vogel entreats us to "rejoice and celebrate each new day, knowing it...

Charles Blum (New York, 1925-1998), Windowsill Garden, Oil on Masonite Panel, 1966, signed and dated lower right, wood frame. Image: 48" H x 23.75" W; frame: 53" H x 29" W. Provenanc...

Beautiful still life of a vase of bearded irises, begonias, and daffodils by Helen Gleiforst (American, 1903-1997). Signed "Gleiforst" lower right. Unframed. Image size: 14"H x 10"W. Helen Gleiforst was born in Crete, Nebraska and soon moved to Oregon where she studied at the University of Oregon. Gleiforst then settled in Beverly Hills where she began to paint. Her teachers included Nicolai Fechin, George Melcher, and John Hubbard Rich...