1930s Art

Captivating color image of Hollywood pinup star Rita Hayworth sunbathing, circa 1939. Rita Hayworth was an American actress, dancer, and pin-up girl. She achieved fame in the 1940s ...

(Note: This work is part of our exhibition Connected by Creativity: WPA Era Works from the Collection of Leata and Edward Beatty Rowan) Fresco, 20 x 16 inches unframed, 22 x 18 inch...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: La Femme Visible MEDIUM: original Heliogravure - Etching in the book titled "La Femme Visible" SIGNED: Hand Signed by Salvador Dali on the frontispie...

"3rd Avenue EL" NYC American Scene Ashcan WPA Modern 20th Century Social Realism Bernard Gussow (1881-1957) 3rd Avenue El 28 1/8 x 30 1/4 inches Oil on canvas Signed lower left Fram...

This lovely Impressionist landscape oil painting is by prolific exhibitor and British artist Oliver Hall. Painted circa 1930 the composition is a path curving through some trees with...

Louis Lozowick, 'Mural Study: Lower Manhattan', lithograph, edition 10 or fewer, 1936. Flint 135. Signed and dated in pencil. Signed in the stone, lower right. A fine, richly-inked...

A mysterious blond young woman is standing by the window in a plush drawing room which has a velvety feel. With her back turned to us, she is looking out over the spires and roofs of...

Kawase Hasui Morning in Hirano, Lake Yamanaka (山中湖平野の朝), 1936 Color woodblock print Oban Sheet: 31 × 42 cm Image: 28.7 × 40 cm First edition seal: 'D' seal Published by Watanabe Shoz...

Portrait of Woman with Black Hair and Fringe styling by Anton Sailer (French 1903-1987) Signed & dated 1930 oil on canvas, framed Framed: 23.5 x 18 inches Canvas: 18.5 x 13.5 inches ...

Medium: original woodcut. Catalogue reference Roethel 145. Printed in Paris in 1938 for the art revue XXe Siecle (issue number 3). Image size: 7 x 8 1/2 inches (170 x 218 mm). Sheet ...

The People, 1938, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 36 x 48 inches, label verso reads “348 / 89 / Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA / _____ The People / _______ Arnold Blanch ...

Thelma Frazier Winter (American, 1903-1977) Woman and Child, c. 1935 Glazed stoneware, painted plaster 14 x 7 x 5.875 inches Thelma Frazier Wint...

Medium: original etching. Executed by John Sloan to illustrate the Somerset Maugham classic "Of Human Bondage" and published in 1938 in a limited edition of 1500 by the Yale Universi...

Pablo Picasso, Spanish (1881 - 1973) - La Peintre Et Son Modele (B 98), Year: 1930, Medium: Lithograph on Johannot, Image Size: 9 x 11.5 inches, Size: 12.75 x 19.75 in. (32.39 x 50....

Medium: stencil print on sandpaper (after the painting). At the height of his period of creative experimentation during the 1930's, Miro executed an abstract painting on sandpaper. ...

Jean Charlot Fresco style painting in plaster on board in the original artist made frame. Titled on a label on the verso: "Bed Time.” In excellent condition. Signed by the artist upp...

Howard Cook, 'Taxco Market', aquatint and etching, 1932-33, edition 30, Duffy 181. Signed and titled in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper; the full shee...

Original poster Italian lithograph. Tira Al Piccion - Roma. Skeet Shooting. VII World Championship “Tiro a Piccione” pre-World War II Olympic style poster. Powerful pre-world War II poster. This shows the American flag flying next to the Nazi flag for the skeet shooting championship in Italy. Note that the year 1935 corresponds with the fascist year date of XIV-XV. Museum linen backed. The USA flag is sitting right next to the German Nazi...

A beautiful large 1930's French post-impressionist oil on canvas nude portrait of a lady in the artist's studio, by Bertrand Py. Excellent quality and very good condition portrait ...

Antique American impressionist coastal seascape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Measuring 30 by 36 inches overall and 24 by 30 painting alone.

Albert Heckman (1893-1971), 'Bridge at Poughkeepsie', lithograph, 1934, edition 30. Signed, titled, and annotated '30 Impressions' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cr...

Step into the glamour of 1930s France with the enchanting poster created by René Ravo for the Loterie Nationale in 1935. Renowned for his captivating illustrations, Ravo brings to li...

Madame in the blossom garden is an original painting realized by Lucie Navier in the 1931. Original tempera on paper. Very good conditions. Colorful composition representing a f...

Attributed to Vally Wieselthier (Austrian-American, 1895-1945) Bust of Josephine Baker, c. 1930 Ceramic Stamped on base 11.5 x 5.5 x 5.5 inches Vally Wieselthier (1895 Vienna--1945 ...

A beautiful 1930's French impressionist oil on canvas depicting a landscape in the Haute Loire region with hay bale and hilltop village, by René Aubert. ...

Juan Gil y Gil (1900-1984) - Landscape with Spanish village - Oil on canvas Oil measures 38x46 cm. Frameless. Painter. He began his artistic training ...

Maurice Chevalier, French superstar of theatre, film, and stage, is also the star of this charming 1930s poster. The cherry flavored extra-dry brandy is dwarfed by Chevalier's charm ...

This vibrant French Art Deco floral oil painting is by noted French artist Jacques Emile Blanche. Painted circa 1930, the palette is of wonderful tones of yellow and orange with spla...

James Allen, 'Spiderboy', 1937, etching, edition 40, Ryan 86. Signed in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on cream laid paper, with full margins (1 1/4 to 2 7/8 inches). A s...

A. E. Halliwell (1905-1987) Presents for George, Mary & Gladys Gouache and collage 46 x 33 cm c.1930 Provenance: Family of the artist A.E. Halliwell (1905–1986) was a British artist...

Medium: original woodcut. Catalogue reference Roethel 105. Printed in Paris in 1938 for the art revue XXe Siecle (issue number 3). Image size: 8 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches (217 x 220 mm). Sh...

Antique American impressionist landscape oil painting. Oil on board. Appears to be signed illegibly lower right. Framed. Measuring 28 by 32 inches and 20 by 24 painting alone. In exc...

Otto Kuhler, 'Cargo Carriers', etching and drypoint, c. 1932, edition 10, Kennedy 44. Signed in pencil. A superb, atmospheric impression with rich burr and selectively wiped overall plate tone, in dark brown ink, on Arches cream laid paper; wide margins (2 to 2 3/4 inches), in very good condition. Printed by the artist. Original Kennedy Galleries mat and label. Very scarce. "On my trips up and down N.Y. harbor on the Weehawken Ferry, the late evening sun playing on the side of the big liners has always intrigued me... The liner shown I believe to be the Vaterland of the North German Lloyd...

De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965). Christopher Street, 1939. Watercolor on Arches wove paper. Signed and dated in pencil by artist lower margin. Sheet measures 15.5 x 20 inches. Window in matting measures 15 x 19 inches. Framed measurement: 23 x 30 inched. Bears fragment of original label affixed on verso. Incredibly vibrant and saturated color with no fading or toning of sheet. Provenance: Babcock Galleries, NYC Exhibited: The American Federation of Arts Traveling Exhibition. From the facade of The Waverly at Christopher is depicted One Christopher Street, the 16-story Art Deco residential building erected in 1931. It is not a casual coincidence that the structure appears in this cityscape: 1 Christopher Street is the subject. The original intention of this project was to transform the neighborhood, bring a bit of affluence and make a bid to rival the Upper West Side. Margules, a sensitive aesthete, understood how a massive piece of architecture such as One changes a neighborhood. Sound, scale and focal points are forever altered. A pedestrian's sense of depth and distance becomes pronounced. All of these factors contribute to the intent behind this image. Tall buildings disrupt the human scale, change the skyline and carve up space. In this piece, negative space conforms to the man-made geometries. Clouds become gems fixed in settings. De Hirsh Margules (1899–1965) was a Romanian-American "abstract realist" painter who crossed paths with many major American artistic and intellectual figures of the first half of the 20th century. Elaine de Kooning said that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country". The New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium" Margules was also a well-known participant in the bohemian culture of New York City's Greenwich Village, where he was widely known as the "Baron" of Greenwich Village.[1] The New York Times described him as "one of Greenwich Village's best-known personalities" and "one of the best known and most buoyant characters about Greenwich Village. Early Life De Hirsh Margules was born in 1899 in the Romanian city of Iași (also known as Iasse, Jassy, or Jasse). When Margules was 10 weeks old, his family immigrated to New York City. Both of his parents were active in the Yiddish theater, His father was Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, a "renowned Jewish actor-impresario and founder of the Yiddish stage." Margules' mother, Rosa, thirty-nine years younger than his father, was an actress in the Yiddish theater and later in vaudeville. Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family[11] and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules, somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad Tondelayo (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo. Annette herself faced stereotyping as an exotic flower: writing about her publicist Charles Bouchert stated that "Romania produces a stormy, temperamental type of woman---a type admirably fitted to portray emotion." His brother Samuel became a noted magician who appeared under the name "Rami-Sami." Samuel later became a lawyer, representing magician Horace Goldin, among others. A family portrait including a young De Hirsh, a portrait of Rosa and Annette together, and individual photos of Rosa and Edward can be found on the Museum of the City of New York website. At around age 9 or 10, Margules took art classes with the Boys Club on East Tenth Street, and his first taste of exhibition was at a student art show presented by the club. By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamakers. As a young teenager, Margules was already displaying a characteristic kindness and loyalty. Upon hearing that two friends (one of them was author Alexander King), were in trouble for breaking a school microscope, the nearly broke Margules gave them five dollars to repair the microscope . Margules had to approach a wealthy man that Margules had once saved on the subway from a heart attack. Margules didn't reveal the source of the five dollars to King until twenty-five years later. In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington. Thereafter he pursued a two-year course of studies in architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design, while working as a clerk during the day at Stern's Department Store. He was encouraged in these artistic pursuits by his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein (who later went by the name of Benjamin Benno). Artistic career In 1922, Margules began work as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York .Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?" This led to study with Lechay and a flurry of painting. Margules' first show was in 1922 at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery. Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe. Jane Heap, left, with Mina Loy and Ezra Pound During the 1920s, Margules traveled outside of the country a number of times. In 1922, with the intent of reaching Bali, he took a job as a "'wiper on a tramp steamer where [he] played nursemaid to the engine." He reached Rotterdam before he turned back. He would return to Rotterdam shortly thereafter. In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water." He studied at the Louvre and traveled to paint landscapes in provincial France and North Africa. Margules also joined the "Noctambulist" movement and experimented with painting and showing his artwork in low light.Jonathan Cott wrote that: the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark. In fact, the first exhibition of these paintings, which could be seen only in a darkened room, took place in [ Walter Lowenfels'] Paris apartment. Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow." It was also in Paris that Margules initially conceived his idea of "Time Painting", where a painting is divided into sectors, each representing a different time of day, with color choices meant to evoke that time of day. In Paris, his social circle included Lowenfels, photographer Berenice Abbott, publisher Jane Heap, composer George Anthiel, sculptor Thelma Wood, painter André Favory, writer Norman Douglas, writer and editor George Davis, composer and writer Max Ewing, and writer Michael Fraenkel. Upon his return to New York in 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin's paintings. While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The famous photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends." Alfred Stieglitz Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "indebted to Marin and through Marin to Cézanne for his initial conceptual approach - for his constructions of scenes with no negative elements, for skies that loom with the impact of mountains." Margules himself said that Marin was his "father and ... academy." The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing." Stieglitz also introduced Margules to many other artistic and intellectual figures in New York. With the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Margules in 1936 opened a two-room gallery at 43 West 8th Street called "Another Place." Over the following two years there were fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and others, and the gallery was well-respected by the press. It was in this gallery that the painter James Lechay, Myron's brother, exhibited his first painting. In 1936, Margules first saw recognition by major art museums when both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased his works. In 1942, Margules gave up working as a police reporter, and apparently dedicated himself thereafter solely to an artistic vocation. "The Baron of Greenwich Village"[edit] Margules made his mark not only as an artist, but also as an outsized personality known throughout Greenwich Village and beyond. To local residents, Margules was known as the "Baron", after Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a prominent German Jewish philanthropist. Margules was easily recognizable by the beret he routinely wore over his long hair. Writer Charles Norman said that he "dressed with a flair for sloppiness." He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body. Margules' letters show him interacting with art world figures such as Sacha Kolin, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as with prominent figures outside the art world such as polymath Buckminster Fuller and writer Henry Miller. Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty. In 1929, he exhibited an example of this loyalty and fellow-feeling when he appeared in court to fight what the wrongful commitment of his friend, writer and sculptor Alfred Dreyfuss, who appeared to have been a victim of an illicit attempt to block an inheritance. The Greenwich Village chronicler Charles Norman described the bone-crushing hugs that Margules would routinely bestow on his friends and acquaintances, and speaks of the "persuasive theatricality" that Margules seemed to have inherited from his actor parents. Norman also wrote about Margules' routine acts of kindness, taking in homeless artists, constantly feeding his friends and providing the salvatory loan where needed. Norman also notes that Margules was blessed with a loud and good voice, and was apt to sing an operatic air without provocation. The writer and television personality Alexander King said I think the outstanding characteristics of my friend's personality are affirmation, emphasis, and overemphasis. He chooses to express himself predominantly in superlatives and the gestures which accompany his utterances are sometimes dangerous to life and limb. Of the bystanders, I mean. King also spoke with affectionate amusement about Margules' pride in his cooking, speaking of how "if he should ever invite you to dinner, he may serve you a hamburger with onions, in his kitchen-living room, with such an air of gastronomic protocol, such mysterious hints and ogliing innuendoes, as if César Ritz and Brillat-Savarin had sneaked out, only a moment before, with his secret recipe in their pockets." Margules was such a memorable New York personality that comic book writer Alvin Schwartz imagined him at the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria in a risible yet poignant debate with Clark Kent about whether Superman had the ability to stop Hitler. Margules' entrenchment in the Greenwich Village milieu can be seen in a photograph from Fred McDarrah's "Beat Generation Album" of a January 13, 1961 writers' and poets' meeting to discuss "The Funeral of the Beat Generation", in Robert Cordier [fr]'s railroad flat at 85 Christopher Street. Among the people in the same photograph are Shel Silverstein...

Howard Cook, 'Soaring New York', aquatint, soft-ground etching, roulette, 1931-32, edition 25, Duffy 165. Signed, dated, and annotated 'imp' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked, atmosp...

The Castle By Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), Watercolour painting on canvas mounted on board and framed signed to lower right painting measures: 30.5cm x 23.5cm framed: 77.5cm x 70.5cm ...

Times Square by Night (1953) - Oversized (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/Alamy) 1930, Golfer teeing off circa Additional Information: Unframed Paper Size: 40x60'' Printed Later NOTE OTHER SIZES OF THIS IMAGE AVAILABLE 10 x 12'' 12 x 16'' 16 x 20'' 20 x 24'' 20 x 30'' 30 x 40'' 40 x 60'' FRAMING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST About the Artist: H. Armstrong ROBERTS (1883-1947) is an artist born in 1883 The oldest auction result ever registered on the website for an artwork by this artist is a photography sold in 2012. ACTORS ON SET, Bette Davis, Ladies Fashion...

Martin Lewis, 'Tree, Manhattan', drypoint, 1930, edition 91 (including 10 trial proofs), McCarron 87. Signed in pencil. A superb, atmospheric impression, in warm black ink, on cream...

Le Pont Neuf, Paris by Edouard Henri Leon (French 1873-1968) signed lower front corner inscribed and titled verso oil on canvas in wooden surround slip frame wooden frame: 18.5 x 25....

Henri Matisse, French (1869 - 1954) - Nu au Fauteuil, Year: 1935, Medium: Etching on Arches, Image Size: 5.5 x 4.25 inches, Size: 17.75 x 12.25 in. (45.09 x 31.12 cm), Reference: Du...

Presenting an absolutely stunning and large original oil by French artist Paul Alex Deschmaker. "Backstage" is an original oil on canvas, signed, dated 1931, beautifully framed an...

Rockwell Kent, 'Sea and Sky', wood engraving, edition 150, 1931 (published 1932). A brilliant, richly-inked impression on cream wove Japan; the full sheet with margins (2 to 2 1/2 in...

Here for your consideration is a beautiful oil on canvas painting laid down on board by the well known Scottish artist, David Foggie. This still life of poppies in a ceramic pitcher...

Nude Woman is a modern artwork realized by Antonio Feltrinelli in 1930s. Mixed colored oil painting on canvas Antonio Feltrinelli (Milan, 1887 – Gargnano, 1942) He was born in Mila...

Etching on vélin Canson et Montgolfier paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Published by L'Imprimerie Daragnès, Paris; printed by Jean Gabriel Daragnès, Paris, ...

Ohio-born Walter DuBois Richards (1907-2006) was educated at the Cleveland School of Art. He re-located to New York around 1933 where he had a successful career as a commercial artis...

Greta Garbo - Black and White Photograph by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1930 1930 Black and white portrait photograph of Swedish/American actress Greta Garbo (Swedish, 1905-1990) by Clarence Sinclair Bull (American, 1896-1979). Greta Garbo poses in a top hat and collard shirt while gazing away from the camera. Printed by the artist circa 1970's. A black and white photograph, matte finish, double-weight paper, depicting a 1931 shot of the star titled 'Mata Hari,' printed decades later from the original negative, pencilled in the lower left corner "A.P.," Estate stamped and blind embossed in the lower right corner "Clarence Sinclair Bull," further blind embossed in same corner "The Kobal / Collection," verso with the photographer's black ink credit stamp, verso further with two "Edward Weston" black ink credit stamps dated "1981" and "1992," originally from the John Kobal Collection. Greta Garbo was a Swedish-American actress. Regarded as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, she was known for her melancholic, somber persona, her film portrayals of tragic characters, and her subtle and understated performances. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on its list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Clarence Sinclair Bull was born in Sun River, Montana, in 1896. His career began when Samuel Goldwyn hired him in 1920 to photograph publicity stills of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio's stars. He is most famous for his photographs of Greta Garbo, taken between 1926 and 1941. Bull's first portrait of Garbo was a costume study for the silent romantic drama film Flesh and the Devil in September 1926. Bull was able to study with the great Western painter...

Sailboats, Ocean, France , grey, blue, azure,landscape France Henry Maurice CAHOURS (Paris, 1889 – Vence, 1974) He was born in Paris but spent his childhood and adolescence in Amie...

Beautiful original drawing by American artist, Albert Sway (b.1913). Cincinnati Cityscape, ca. 1935. Ink on paper measures 11 x 17 inches. Signed lower right. Good condition with no ...

Perfect for your cycling enthusiast! A 1930s charcoal on paper drawing of a bicycle race by artist Francis Chapin. Image size: 11" x 14". Archivally matted to 16" x 20". Provenance: Estate of the artist. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of the city’s most popular and celebrated painters in his day. Born at the dawn of the 20th Century in Bristolville, Ohio, Chapin graduated from Washington & Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong study trip to Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists have in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the Art Institute, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (now called Oxbow) between 1934 – 1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright...

6023 Antique English seascape .Signed Image size 7.5x9.5" Set in a period frame

"Cheetah Who Shops" by B C Parade American silent film actress Phyllis Gordon (1889 - 1964) window-shopping in Earls Court, London with her four-yea...

Artist: Kyohei Inukai (aka Earle Goodenow), American (1913–1985) Title: Three Nudes Year: 1938 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed l.l. Size: 14.5 x 10 inches Frame Size: 18 x 14 inches

"Painter" 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Working Man Modern WPA Era Jo Cain (1904 - 2003) Painter 41 ½ x 36 3/4 inches (sight) Gouache on paper c. 1930s Signed lower rig...

This print was made for the American Abstract Artists Portfolio, 1937. All the images were lithographs made on zinc plates. Usually they were signed in the image -- on the plate, as ...

Work on canvas Wooden frame and gilded plaster 70 x 86 x 6 cm

Thames Divers (1934) - Silver Gelatin Fibre Print (Photo by H F Davis/Getty Images Archive) Two divers jumping off the Embankment into the River Thames in London, near Westminster...

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...

Nude woman is a beautiful and impressive oil on canvas by Antonio Feltrinelli. It was realized between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of t...

This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness. Oil on canvas, 29 x 22 inches, Signed on frame verso “Painted by Charles L. Goeller” Exhibited: (Perh...