Isabelle Graham Reese

Cubist Floral Still Life

ca. 1950s

Still Life with Flowers, 1962. Gouache and ink on paper, 16.25 x 22 inches. Signed and dated center right. Framed measurement: 26 x 31 inches. original frame and glass. Excellent con...

Still Life, ca. 1950's. Tempera on paper. Image measures 14 x 17 inches. Black paper sheet measures 18 x 24 inches. Unframed. Signed lower left. Discreet tears in upper right corn...

Edgar Levy (1912-1975). Floral Still Life with Shell, ca. 1955. Oil on canvas measuring 28 x 36 inches. Unframed. Signed with artist monogram lower left. Edgar Levy is remembered ...

Bertha G. Davis (1911-1997) Untitled, ca. 1960's Oil on cradled masonite panel. 16 x 20 inches; 24 x 28 inches framed. Signed lower left. Artist estate stamp on verso. Vintage custom wormy chestnut frame. A painter of cityscapes, landscapes, and abstracts in Texas, Bertha G Davis was primarily a self-taught artist whose style was influenced by her early life experiences in pre-World War II Lithuania and later Mexico. Her style is expressionistic*, relying on color to denote her profound feelings. She works primarily in watercolor and acrylic with some mixed media*. She is the daughter of Abraham and Dvora Germaize of Vilna, Lithuania and grew up in Jewish ghettos in Vilna, Alita, and Kovno. Davis was influenced by her father who was a decorative wood-worker and carpenter in Lithuania. The family of five daughters and a son escaped to Mexico City in the late 1920’s because of Jewish oppression. The images and emotions she experienced had no outlet. She was known as a beauty, and at age 17 was named Jewish Miss Mexico, barely able to speak Spanish having just emigrated from Eastern Europe. Irving Davis, a merchant from Texas who had also come from Eastern Europe via Cuba, saw her at this event where she was crowned Jewish Miss Mexico, and three days later asked for her hand in marriage. They moved to a small town in Texas, raising a family. Her daughter, Sylvia, was born when Davis was 20 and they were inseparable. As Sylvia became an actress, painter, and sculptor, Davis was amazed at the capacity for creativity. Davis didn’t begin her own artistic journey until she was 47, when her daughter Sylvia Caplan encouraged her to try. She was inspired by this daughter who gave her a drugstore palette of watercolors, paper and brushes and told her to “just try.” Davis did not put down her palette and brushes until her death in 1997. Bertha G Davis was primarily self-taught but maintained a style oriented toward color and texture that reflected her strong feelings. Most of her early work was done while she lived in McAllen, Texas where she was known for her contribution to art and showed her work and the work of other artists at the Bertha Davis Gallery. She studied with Stewart Van Orden, at Pan American College in 1960-61; and was a student at the Art Institute San Miguel Allende, Mexico, 1965. She was also a student of Harold Phenix...

(Note: This work is part of our exhibition Connected by Creativity: WPA Era Works from the Collection of Leata and Edward Beatty Rowan) Oil on canvas, 24 ½ x 19 ½ inches unframed, 32 x 27 inches framed, signed and inscribed “Adrian Dornbush/ Flower Still Life” verso, a remnant of exhibition label verso, stamped “1454” verso, original frame Exhibited: i) Midwestern Artist’s Exhibition Representative Work from Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska & Colorado, Kansas City Art Institute, February 1 to March 2, 1931, no. 34 (see catalog with a listing of work with this title); and ii) Special Display and Sale of Late Oil Paintings Produced by Cedar Rapids Own Artists from the Little Gallery, at Newman’s Department Store, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 1932 (see [Advertisement], The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), March 15, 1932 – listing a work with this title, together with paintings by fourteen other artists, including Grant Wood, Marvin Cone...

Abella original still life cubist acrylic painting Juan Jose Abella Rubio was born in Estercuel, a hamlet anchored in the Teruel mining basin in March 1944. In his painting the oche...

Antique American modernist still life painting. Oil and gouache on board, circa 1940. Housed in a period modernist frame. Image size, 24L x 18H.

Signed lower right: CARLES