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Surrealist Trompe L'oeil, Lush Roses

Trompe-l'œil (French for "deceive the eye",) is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture. Though the phrase, originates in the Baroque period, when it refers to perspectival illusionism, trompe-l'œil dates much further back. It was (and is) often employed in murals. Instances from Greek and Roman times are known, for instance in Pompeii. A typical trompe-l'œil mural might depict a window, door, or hallway, intended to suggest a larger room. A version of an oft-told ancient Greek story concerns a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis (born around 464 BC) produced a still life painting so convincing that birds flew down to peck at the painted grapes. A rival, Parrhasius, asked Zeuxis to judge one of his paintings that was behind a pair of tattered curtains in his study. Parrhasius asked Zeuxis to pull back the curtains, but when Zeuxis tried, he could not, as the curtains were included in Parrhasius's painting—making Parrhasius the winner. With widespread fascination with perspective drawing in the Renaissance, Italian painters of the late Quattrocento such as Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) and Melozzo da Forlì (1438–1494), began painting illusionistic ceiling paintings, generally in fresco, that employed perspective and techniques such as foreshortening to create the impression of greater space for the viewer below. This type of trompe l'œil illusionism as specifically applied to ceiling paintings is known as di sotto in sù, meaning "from below, upward" in Italian. The elements above the viewer are rendered as if viewed from true vanishing point perspective. Well-known examples are the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua and Antonio da Correggio's (1489–1534) Assumption of the Virgin in the Duomo of Parma. Similarly, Vittorio Carpaccio (1460–1525) and Jacopo de' Barbari (c. 1440 – before 1516) added small trompe-l'œil features to their paintings, playfully exploring the boundary between image and reality. For example, a fly might appear to be sitting on the painting's frame, or a curtain might appear to partly conceal the painting, a piece of paper might appear to be attached to a board, or a person might appear to be climbing out of the painting altogether—all in reference to the contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. In a 1964 seminar, the psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan...

Framed 40 X 28 sight 32 X 20.5 inches. Bears his address verso Via Innocenzo n.57 Roma. (Rome, Italy Titled: L'Ultimo "Clown" Hand signed lower left and bears artists name verso. Alberto Trevisan (1919-1978), a listed Italian artist who specialized in Venetian watercolor...

size uncludes frame. Lucien Mathelin, born in 1905 in Binche, A province of Hainaut, in Wallonia, Belgium, and died in 1981 in Paris. French painter. His work was influenced by surrealism andtinged with irony. Lucien Mathelin was born in a family of artists and has benefited from artistic training since childhood. He made his first oil on canvas at the age of 15 in 1920. In 1924, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne which he became a member. He did not study plastic arts, but traveled to Morocco (1925-1926) and Greece (1933-1934), where he enriched his palette. In 1937, Mathelin worked for a while for Raoul Dufy to realize the gigantic painting...

Milia Laufer, born Romania. From 1951 lived and worked in Safed. Together with her husband opened one of the earliest galleries in Israel, in Tiberias. Worked in watercolors and oils...

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...

This is hand signed and dated in English and appears to have Chinese (or Taiwanese) calligraphic characters above it. This depicts an Asian porcelain or pottery vase in a vibrant blue green color with a dragon motif filled with colorful flowers. This is a bold color painting...

"Origin: How God And I Created The World" acrylic on canvas, 45.5 x 61.5 inches (unframed), $9,500 Tony Smith’s paintings are works in motion. They are tho...

Gustavo Úbeda (1930-1994) - Still life - Acrylic panel Acrylic measurements 61x91 cm. Frameless. The painting by Gustavo Úbeda Romero (Herencia, 1930 – Sao Paulo, 1994) comes from a...

FIELD PROJECT is an acrylic on canvas surrealist painting by Brooklyn, New York artist Tony Geiger. It measures 60x48" and is a unique artwork. Note the mo...

RIGHT FLANK is an acrylic on canvas surrealist painting by Brooklyn, New York artist Tony Geiger. It measures 40x40" and is a unique artwork. It's a classi...

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is an acrylic on canvas surrealist painting by Brooklyn, New York artist Tony Geiger. It measures 36x48" and is a unique artwork. N...

Surrealist contemporary tablescape, acrylic on canvas by Scottish artist Frank McLean Docherty R.S.W. Signed and dated bottom left. This piece is wonder...