Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 8

Lowell Nesbitt
Flowers 1978, Op Art Floral Oil Tempera on Board Roses Pop Art Large Painting

1978

About the Item

Lowell Nesbitt (American, 1933-1993) Flower, 1978 tempera on board 60 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches. Provenance: Sold: Christie's East, May 18, 1999, Lot 224 Blair Nesbitt is an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. Although he worked in a variety of media and covered a wide range of subjects throughout his career, he is best known for his large, Photorealist botanical paintings. Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1933, Nesbitt earned a degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Later, he also studied at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Working in stained glass and etching and also producing abstract paintings in his early career, a 1962 encounter with artist Robert Indiana led him to steer his aesthetic toward realism. Though he held his first solo show at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1958, it was his 1964 debut at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. that would truly bring him to the attention of the art world. In this exhibit, his botanical series of paintings, drawings, and prints captivated the art world and public alike. The game-changing Corcoran Gallery show would send his career down the trajectory of sustained success. In 1976, Nesbitt moved from his New York City West 14th Street studio to a massive space located at 389 West 12th Street. The 12,500 square foot living and workspace supplied ample room for creating his enormous paintings (the largest was more than 30 feet long), but it also bragged an indoor swimming pool, a four-story atrium, and a rooftop area for entertaining. “The Old Stable,” as Nesbitt came to call it, soon became a popular hangout for celebrities, dignitaries, and other art world heavy hitters. Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Larry Rivers, and James Rosenquist were all known to have frequented The Old Stable or to have at least paid a visit. Throughout his long career, Nesbitt was known as an artist who could successfully capture an array of diverse subject matter using a variety of techniques. Creating beyond his signature Photorealistic flowers and botanicals, Nesbitt produced paintings, drawings, and prints of everything from landscapes to reptiles to electronic components. He is even credited as the first artist to use computer parts as artistic subject matter. In 1980, the United States Postal Service honored his contributions to the art world with a series of four stamps based on his trademark floral paintings. Another unique honor arrived when Nesbitt became the official artist for NASA’s Apollo 9 and Apollo 13 space flights. In 1993, Nesbitt died of natural causes at his New York studio at age 59. Today, the prolific artist’s works can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Collection of the Fine Arts at The Smithsonian Institution; and in a staggering multitude of other prestigious museums and private collections around the world.
  • Creator:
    Lowell Nesbitt (1933-1993, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1978
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 60.5 in (153.67 cm)Width: 40.5 in (102.87 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU3826922562
More From This SellerView All
  • American Flag OUR FLAG Pop Art Acrylic Painting
    By Martin Hoffman
    Located in Surfside, FL
    signed with initials verso and a stamp Kooter Boogers of America. with an intentionally distressed surface. please see photos. Martin Hoffman, a prominent artist whose work in the 1970s was simultaneously identified with high art (gritty realist paintings sold through the O.K. Harris Gallery in New York) and low (illustrations for Playboy magazine). Throughout his career, his style ranged from energetic abstraction and hard-edge pop to photo-based realism and minimalism. In recent years, he created a series of autobiographical paintings in a winsome, cartoon-like style. He also did a series of subtly hued works in which inscrutable words half-disappear into the paint in which they are inscribed. Hoffman’s first job out of college was as art director for the Miami News, a position that he held from 1956 until 1962. Afterward he worked as a graphic designer in Miami while making paintings at home in his spare time. His earliest paintings (which were done, he said, as a “testosterone-driven teenager”) were executed in automotive lacquer on 4 x 8 foot sheets of builder’s hardboard. They combined glossy, visceral surfaces and metallic paints with collaged-on metal shapes and mirrors. In the 1960s, Hoffman’s paintings began to incorporate figures and symbolism with erotic undertones. Through a mutual friend, Sidney Janis saw Hoffman’s paintings and selected one of them for his international “Erotic Art ‘66” exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. Others in the show included Pop Art icons Jim Dine, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselman. Hoffman’s painting hung besides an Andy Warhol silkscreen painting of a partially peeled banana. From 1966 to 1992, Hoffman was a freelance Playboy illustrator. He called those years “a wonderful period – it supported my family.” Hoffman painted a series of nudes titled “Woman Eternal” which was featured in Playboy’s December 1972 issue. Through the years, he also created illustrations for books, record albums, movie posters and print ads. Clients included Pfizer, Caesar’s Palace, Harley Davidson Motorcycles and the NASA Art Program, which commissioned a series of works based on activities at the former Kennedy Space Center...
    Category

    1970s Pop Art Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Acrylic

  • Abstract Flowers Oil Painting Study for Amaryllis
    By Nobu Fukui
    Located in Surfside, FL
    This piece is done in a sort of sgraffito technique with the flowers sort of etched in the paint. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Nobu Fukui Came to New York where he became a US citizen. From 1964 - 65, he studied at the Art Students League in New York City. His work has been widely exhibited in New York and California. He had his first one-man show in this country in 1965 at the Daniels Gallery in New York. That same year his works were included in the Japanese Artists in Europe and America Exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. This was followed by numerous exhibits and one-man shows in various cities in the United States and Japan - New York, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh and Yokohama, for example. Fukui's works are formal, dynamic and abstract. Form functions minimally as a symmetrical structure so as to focus on his real interest in color interaction. Fukui's work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Larry Aldrich Museum, Conn; Dartmouth College, NH; New York State University, Potsdam NY; Roosevelt College, Chicago IL; Westinghouse Corp, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; The New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN and The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI, Indianapolis Museum of Art; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; amongst others. and other private collections. He has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Daniels Gallery, Max Hutchinson Gallery, Marisa Del Re Gallery, and Steven Haller...
    Category

    1990s Abstract Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil, Panel

  • French Modernist Fauvist Oil Painting Claude Gaveau School of Paris
    By Claude Gaveau
    Located in Surfside, FL
    CLAUDE GAVEAU (1906 - 1970) A beautiful and large signed oil on canvas by the important french painter Claude Gaveau. The work is signed upper right and unlined and unrestored on its original canvas. Title: “Composition” Signature: Signed upper right Medium: Oil on original canvas Provenance: Private french collection Size: c. 24 x 29 inches unframed Claude Gaveau (1906 - 1970) is a French painter born in Neuilly-sur-Marne in 1940. The painter was born near Paris and studied there as well as in Belgium. He comes from a family of artists, his grandfather was the creator of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He is passionate since very young about painting and entered the Ecole des Arts Appliqués in Paris in 1955 where he studied mural art for five years, stained glass, tapestry, mosaic and fresco. In 1960, he studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, becoming equally accomplished in oil painting, watercolor, drawing and lithography, pastel and gouache. Influenced by great Post Impressionist painters such as Paul Cézanne, George Braque and Raoul Dufy, Gaveau gets inspired as well by music and lyricism. His talent was quickly recognized, in 1963 he won his first prize and obtained a scholarship from the Academy of Antwerp, Belgium which allowed him to study Flemish painting in Brussels. In 1965, with only 25 years, he made his first solo exhibition at the Angle Aigu Gallery in Paris. His career took a real turn in 1968 when he was nominated for the "la Critique Parrainé" Award by the Saint Placide Gallery in Paris. A recurrent traveler, the landscapes he observes all around the world allow him to broaden his artistic palette. Other exhibitions of his work followed during the 1960’s and 1970’s in France with the Galerie Vauban in Dijon in 1967, 1968 and 1970; with the Galerie Saint Placide in Paris in 1968; with the Galerie Marc Hudier in Belfort in 1970; and three one-man shows with the Galerie La Belle Gabrielle in Paris in 1972, 1975 and 1978. In 1980 Claude Gaveau had his first one-man exhibition with Wally Findlay Galleries...
    Category

    20th Century Contemporary Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • French Modernist Fauvist Oil Painting Claude Gaveau School of Paris
    By Claude Gaveau
    Located in Surfside, FL
    CLAUDE GAVEAU (1906 - 1970) A beautiful and large signed oil on canvas by the important french painter Claude Gaveau. The work is signed upper right and unlined and unrestored on its original canvas. Title: “Still Life” Signature: Signed upper right Medium: Oil on original canvas Provenance: Private french collection Size: c. 24 x 29 inches unframed Claude Gaveau (1906 - 1970) is a French painter born in Neuilly-sur-Marne in 1940. The painter was born near Paris and studied there as well as in Belgium. He comes from a family of artists, his grandfather was the creator of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He is passionate since very young about painting and entered the Ecole des Arts Appliqués in Paris in 1955 where he studied mural art for five years, stained glass, tapestry, mosaic and fresco. In 1960, he studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, becoming equally accomplished in oil painting, watercolor, drawing and lithography, pastel and gouache. Influenced by great Post Impressionist painters such as Paul Cézanne, George Braque and Raoul Dufy, Gaveau gets inspired as well by music and lyricism. His talent was quickly recognized, in 1963 he won his first prize and obtained a scholarship from the Academy of Antwerp, Belgium which allowed him to study Flemish painting in Brussels. In 1965, with only 25 years, he made his first solo exhibition at the Angle Aigu Gallery in Paris. His career took a real turn in 1968 when he was nominated for the "la Critique Parrainé" Award by the Saint Placide Gallery in Paris. A recurrent traveler, the landscapes he observes all around the world allow him to broaden his artistic palette. Other exhibitions of his work followed during the 1960’s and 1970’s in France with the Galerie Vauban in Dijon in 1967, 1968 and 1970; with the Galerie Saint Placide in Paris in 1968; with the Galerie Marc Hudier in Belfort in 1970; and three one-man shows with the Galerie La Belle Gabrielle in Paris in 1972, 1975 and 1978. In 1980 Claude Gaveau had his first one-man exhibition with Wally Findlay Galleries...
    Category

    20th Century Contemporary Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Beulah Stevenson 1950s Abstract Expressionism American Woman Artist Oil Painting
    By Beulah Stevenson
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Dimensions: 32"h, 25"w canvas; 38.5"h, 32"with frame Work is titled "Two Lillies" Elsie Stevenson (1890–1965) was an American painter and printmaker. Beulah Stevenson, (1875-1965) American painter and printmaker. Born in Brooklyn Heights, Beulah (Elsie Sloan) Stevenson lived there her entire life. In New York she studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League, where her instructors included Ashcan artist John Sloan; in Provincetown, she worked and studied with Abstract Expressionist artist Hans Hofmann (an influential teacher whose students included many notable artists including Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Irene Rice Pereira, Gerome Kamrowski, Fritz Bultman, Wolf Kahn, Marisol Escobar and Beulah Stevenson), a long-time curator at the Brooklyn Museum, was also among his pupils. Her work appeared in many group shows, and she won a number of awards. She was a curator at the Brooklyn Museum for many years, and that museum owns a number of examples of her work, as do the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. Stevenson maintained many professional associations during her career; she was president of the New York Society of Women Artists, a board member of the National Association of Women Artists, and a vice-president of the Brooklyn Society of Artists, Art Institute of Chicago, International Graphic Society Inc., Philadelphia Print Club, Provincetown Art Association and the Creative Artist's Association. She also belonged to the American Artists' Congress which promoted social-realist style of American scene painting, she left to join the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors established To Promote Avant-Garde Art. Stevenson was said by a friend to have destroyed many of her papers prior to her death, but a collection was donated to the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Select Group Exhibitions Art Institute of Chicago; , Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Print Club of Philadelphia; National Arts Club, New York; Metropolitan Museum; Whitney Museum; Brooklyn Museum; Chicago Art Institute; Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts; Rochester Memorial Museum; St. Paul Museum; M. H. De Young Memorial Museum Of Art; Houston Museum Of Art; William R. Nelson Museum Of Art; Columbus Museum Of Art; American Institute Of Graphic Arts; Provincetown Art Association; Columbia Museum Of Art; Schenectady Museum Of Fine Art; Portland Museum, ME; Royal Society, London; Gallery O...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Large Modernist Figurative Abstract Oil Painting BASKET
    By Marlene Bauer
    Located in Surfside, FL
    A Pacific Northwest native, Bauer was born in Vancouver, Washington, and has maintained a studio in Portland, Oregon since 1976. She attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the University of Oregon where she received her M.F.A. Since that time, she has exhibited her work throughout the Northwest while teaching art as an associate professor at Marylhurst University. Bauer applies her modernist approach to her artwork, and her paintings become a sort of balancing act in reconciling her subjects and her techniques. Teetering between abstraction and representational, Bauer's houses are depicted as simplified forms, exploiting a universal iconography. The recognizable elements in her artwork – trees, buildings – are unconventionally depicted in wide patches of overlapping color, "pulling each painting away from literal interpretation." Marlene Bauer's abstractions stem from her interest in the visual dynamics of a quick impression of a landscape from a moving car or a glance out a window. The artist has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at the Laura Russo Gallery, the Elizabeth Leach Gallery (both in Portland), and the Davidson Galleries in Seattle. Bauer's artwork is included in many of the region's public and private collections including the King County Regional Justice Center, Bank of America, the City of Portland, the City of Seattle, the Oregon State...
    Category

    1980s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like
  • "Coral Triptych", Randall Browning, Pop Art Still-life, 40x85 in., Original Oil
    By Randall Browning
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful contemporary paintings offer his viewers a unique way of regarding contemporary still life, combined with old-world attention to detail. Browning feels that to truly observe an object, one must be absorbed by it. The large scale of the paintings helps people focus on the incredible variety and subtlety of apparently common objects. In the triptych, Randy is playing with a red and white striped dinnerware set placed upon a blue and off-white background. The teapot draws you into the middle panel and makes your eyes happily jump to the outside panels to view the whole optical illusion. Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful fruit and vegetable paintings...
    Category

    Early 2000s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Round About", Randall Browning, Pop Art Still-life, 30x40 in., Original Oil
    By Randall Browning
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful contemporary paintings offer his viewers a unique way of regarding contemporary still life, combined with old-world attention to detail. Browning feels that to truly observe an object, one must be absorbed by it. The large scale of the paintings helps people focus on the incredible variety and subtlety of apparently common objects. In this black and white painting, you are looking down from a birds-eye view of a retro teapot...
    Category

    Early 2000s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Big and Little", Randall Browning, Pop Art Still-life, 48x40 in., Original Oil
    By Randall Browning
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful contemporary paintings offer his viewers a unique way of regarding contemporary still life, combined with old-world attention to detail. Browning feels that to truly observe an object, one must be absorbed by it. The large scale of the paintings helps people focus on the incredible variety and subtlety of apparently common objects. In this painting, a retro red teapot...
    Category

    Early 2000s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • "Long and Blue", Randall Browning, Pop Art Still-life, 30x40 in., Original Oil
    By Randall Browning
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful contemporary paintings offer his viewers a unique way of regarding contemporary still life, combined with old-world attention to detail. Browning feels that to truly observe an object, one must be absorbed by it. The large scale of the paintings helps people focus on the incredible variety and subtlety of apparently common objects. In this painting, a retro blue teapot sits behind a red coffee mug that gives high contrast. The pair sits on a yellow and white striped background creating pop art and giving a unique modern twist. Randy Browning’s paintings sparkle with the breath of life. His delightful fruit and vegetable paintings...
    Category

    Early 2000s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Grey Flowers Green
    By Wes Olmsted
    Located in Buffalo, NY
    An original Oil painting by Westley "Wes" Olmsted. This work is currently featured in the exhibition Man of Extremes at Benjaman Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Westley G. Olmsted (1934-2...
    Category

    1960s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil, Wood

  • "Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog" Elvis Presley Abstract Inspired by Robert Longo
    By Cindy Shaoul
    Located in New York, NY
    This painting depicts an impressionistic and abstract portrait of Elvis Presley. The thick brush strokes and fun marks creates an abstract atmosphere, and the black and white moveme...
    Category

    2010s Pop Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil

Recently Viewed

View All