Piste Paintings

A Charming 1940s Watercolor of a City in Mexico with Cathedral and Rooftops by Noted Chicago Artist, Rudolph T. Pen. A well executed early work by Pen, completed during the artist's...

"Blue Hydrangeas" (2025) By Susie Hyer is an original handmade oil painting on stretched linen that depicts a close-up look at a small bushel of blue hydrangeas, done in an impressio...

"Figures, Boats, and House - Cape May Point, NJ" is a Pennsylvania Beach Scene by American Impressionist painter Albert Van Nesse Greene. The ...

"Dusk Forest Scene, Catskills," 1875 by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.5 x 7 inches. The work is signed by DeForest, and dated May 13, 1875 at lower right. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood DeForest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the DeForests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the DeForests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old DeForest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. DeForest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, DeForest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years DeForest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade DeForest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...

From an incandescent sunset on Long Island Sound to an iconic pop-kitsch ice storage bin at the neighborhood corner store, Rob Brooks offers us a visual journey from the real to surr...

Original Painting of a Vineyard in the Wine-Growing Region of Bordeaux, France, by leading British Contemporary Landscape Artist, Angela Wakefield. Art measures 30 x 20 inches Fram...

'Winter in Provence', gouache on art paper, by Raymond Debiève (circa 1970s). There is both beauty and melancholy in this delightfully charming artwork. The artist's naive style is at odds with the refinement, poise and sophistication of the painting. Perhaps the artist was making a statement as well with the broken wall...

This expansive coastal landscape by Alfred Bergström presents a luminous and windswept shoreline, where sea, sky, and land are unified through a sensitive and dynamic treatment of li...

Willard Dixon is widely recognized for his calm, contemplative landscapes and skyscapes, paintings that hold stillness, clarity, and a quiet reverence for nature. In this exhibition,...

Don Hatfield (American, born 1947) "Mothers and Children on the Beach" Unknown Oil paint, canvas, stretcher bars Signed on the bottom right of the painting. Don Hatfield’s 'Mothers ...

A serene yet atmospheric winter landscape by Edgar Britton, this 1945 gouache captures a snow-covered mountain road winding through the Colorado Rockies. Tall trees frame the composi...

This painting reflects Bruno Surdo’s continued engagement with classical realism as a vehicle for contemporary allegory. A young girl, centered and frontal, sits in an inflatable ring surrounded by floating plastic waste—bottles, containers, straws—both above and beneath the water’s surface. The composition is calm, almost symmetrical, yet emotionally unsettling. Surdo’s atelier-based training is evident in the careful modeling of the child’s anatomy, the naturalistic rendering of skin tones, and the controlled atmospheric perspective. The figure is painted with the same dignity and structural clarity found in Renaissance portraiture, elevating what could be a simple environmental image into a modern history painting. Art historically, the work draws from the tradition of allegorical portraiture, where innocence is personified to communicate moral themes. The child recalls Renaissance depictions of putti or symbolic youth figures, yet here innocence is placed in peril. The floating debris creates a contemporary vanitas motif: instead of skulls and extinguished candles, the symbols of decay are plastic and petroleum byproducts—markers of environmental neglect. The waterline dividing the composition subtly recalls the layered moral narratives of Baroque painting, where surface beauty often concealed deeper truths. The title, Contaminating the Innocent, underscores this allegorical intent, transforming the image into a meditation on generational responsibility. Within Surdo’s broader oeuvre—often concerned with spectacle, identity, and human consequence—this painting shifts toward ecological consciousness. Yet it remains consistent with his practice of grounding urgent modern themes in the visual authority of classical technique. By presenting environmental degradation through the lens of Renaissance-informed realism, Surdo avoids didactic illustration and instead creates a quiet, haunting indictment. The stillness of the child’s gaze contrasts with the chaos of the polluted water, reinforcing the central tension: the vulnerability of innocence in a world shaped by adult action. Bruno Surdo Contaminating the Innocent oil on canvas 48h x 48w in 121.92h x 121.92w cm BRS072 Bruno A. Surdo b. Chicago, 1963 EXHIBITIONS 2020 Realities, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL 2018 Liberation, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL Blood Sport, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL Art on Paper 2018, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Pier 36, New York, NY SOFA Chicago 2018, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL 2017 POP!ARAZZI, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL Coming Attractions, Gallery Victor Armendariz, Chicago, IL 2015 SOFA Chicago 2015, Ann Nathan Gallery, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL Bruno Surdo: Allegories, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2014 Bruno Surdo: Respond, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Modern Metaphors, Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL 2013 Bruno Surdo: Revelations, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Vice + Virtue, Northern Illinois University Museum of Art 2012 Contemporary Realism Biennial, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN 2011 Bruno Surdo, University of St. Francis School of Creative Arts, Fort Wayne, IN Uncensored, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2010 Art Chicago 2010, Ann Nathan Gallery, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 2009 Art Chicago 2009, Ann Nathan Gallery, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 2007 Bruno Surdo, Art Institute of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN 2006 Context/Content: Making Meaning with the Figure, University of Arkansas, Conway, AR Creative Imaginings, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL Bruno Surdo: Cycles, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2005 Art Chicago 2005, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2004 Tragedy, Memory, & Honor, Richard M. Daley Center, Chicago, IL Art Chicago 2004, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Group Show, Arcadia Gallery, New York, NY Drawings VII, Koplin Del Rio Gallery, West Hollywood, CA Armory Show, New York Armory, New York, NY 2003 Paintings & Drawings, College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL The Art Show, New York, NY Bruno Surdo: New Work, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Art Chicago 2003, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2003-10 International Show of Contemporary Artists, Chicago Art Open, Chicago, IL 2002 Bruno Surdo: Perception of Appearance, Frye Museum, Seattle, WA Tragedy, Memory, & Honor, Richard M. Daley Center, Chicago, IL Bruno Surdo: Transcendence, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Art Chicago 2002, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL Tragedy, Memory, & Honor, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 2001 Magic Vision, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR 1998 Evanston and Vicinity Artists, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL 1996 Bruno Surdo: A Personal View, University of Wisconsin, Kenosha, WI 1995 Bruno Surdo: Recent Works, College of Lake County, IL AIDS in Our Society, Loyola University, Chicago, IL Bruno Surdo: Life, Struggle, and Hope, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL 2001 Magic Vision, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR Bruno Surdo: Dualities of Life, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 1999 Group Show, Ann Nathan Gallery, Chicago, IL 1998 Group Exhibition, Fine Arts Building Gallery, Chicago, IL 1995 Spiritual Inquiries, Struve Gallery, Chicago, IL 1994 Recent Works, The 14th Annual Juried Exhibition for Lake County Artists, Grayslake, IL Go Figure, Figurative Works on Paper, Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, Chicago, IL SELECTED COLLECTIONS The Re-Birth of Venus, Temporary Loan, Fort Wayne Museum of Art Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR College of Lake County, Greyslake, IL Flashpoint Academy, Chicago IL John Robert Wiltgen Design Shoemaker Ruud Collection Julie & Thomas Danilek Michael Vozzella and Mike Silver Benjamin Fernandez Tom Braake Betsy Colburn Michael Diemand & Lor LaRose Michael Staab & Kathy Brock Bruce Leep Frank Tzurect Mary Foley Rosalyn Carlson Mimmy Turney Janet Long Halstead Billy Hunt Carol Galli Myles Kerrigan Honorable & Mrs. Edwin Berman Theodore Gage Northrop Art Museum Past Present & Future Company Dr. James & Peggy Kemmler Salvatore Monastero Nix & Virginia Lauridsen Joel Miller David & Marlene Zerkel Ann & Andy Abel Claudia Rush Marc Miller Leonard Goldberg Lawrence Pucci Howard Tullman Collection Susan & Manny Kramer James Rinnert Richar Interiors Michael & Nancy Colt Khalid Altijir Dr. Joe Grodman Beryl & Jack Gore Larry Wolf & Eric Naegle Chuck Wolandi Jack Schwab & David Sandelin Thomas Kaczmarek Marti Dinerstein Craig & Michael Golden...