1940s Art

Landscape is an Original drawing in Pen and China Ink realized in 1940 by Paulette Humbert. Good conditions. The artwork is depicted through soft strokes in a well-balanced composi...

Original lithograph printed in four colors (blue, yellow, red, black) on wove paper. “After Matisse” La Chute d’Icare, pochoir, from Verve, Vol. IV, No. 13, ...

Antique impressionist still life painting by Irene ( I. Stry) Stry (1899/1904 - 1963). Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed. Image size, 24L x 20H.

Gorgeous heavily impasto landscape that captures the high summer charm. Unknown artist, (Edda or Edde) Partial illegible signature/inscribed lower r...

NYC Watercolor Drawing American Modern 20th Century Modernism Mid-Century WPA. David Fredenthal (1914-1958) "View of New York from New Jersey,"7 x 10 inches. Watercolor on Paper, c. 1948. Signed lower right. David Fredenthal (1914 - 1958) was one ot America's most respected watercolor artists. He was famous for his bold, intensely vigorous and complex paintings and drawings that expressed his deep feeling for excitement with life and living. He was a draftsman with seemingly a special gift for catching anything, physically and emotionally on the spot, and he never went anywhere without three or four loaded pens and a sketchbook in his pocket. As part of the WPA project he executed a number of murals including the Sports Pavilion on the Heinz Building of the New York World's Fair 1939. Some of his fresco and mural techniques were inspired by his friendship with Diego Rivera who had admired and encouraged him in the early 1930's. After he won a traveling scholarship to Europe from The Museum of Modern Art at age 19, he was the recipient of two Guggenheim grants in Painting. He had his first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1937 at age 23, and many others after that including the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1947. Because of Fredenthal's prodigious drawing gifts, he was chosen by Erskine Caldwell to illustrate his novel "Tobacco Road...

Barrer, Gertrude (American, 1921-19920. UNTITLED. Pencil and ink on paper. 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches, 223x298 mm., framed to 16 x 19 inches. Provenance: The Artist; Gary Snyder Fine Art, NY. This work was exbibited at Snyder Fine Art, NY, Works on Paper from the 1940s by Gertrude Barrer...

Work on wood Golden wooden frame 41 x 57 x 3.5 cm

Gorgeous European figurative of a simpler time. Horses being watered in the plains by Janos Viski (Hungarian/American 1891-1965), circa 1940. Signed lower ...

Beautiful original poster for the airline Air France printed by the workshop Perceval in 1946. Airline - Aviation - Tourism Constellation Perceval Paris

Nude figure study of a female model by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). Circa 1940. Unsigned. Unframed. Image size: 25"H x 19"W.

Astrid is an original modern artwork realized Carlo Carrà on a text by Vincenzo Cardarelli. Good conditions except for some folds, foxings and yellowing of paper. Edition of 34/80...

Antique American modernist landscape painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1930. Signed. Housed in period frame. Image size 45L x 32H.

Original vintage World War Two poster - Salute to the Resistance and forward / Salut a la Resistance et en avant! - featuring artwork of resistance fighters in the foreground, two me...

Fragments for the promised land is an original modern artwork realized by Pericle Fazzini on a text by Giuseppe Ungaretti Good conditions except for some folds, foxings and yellowin...

Original vintage travel advertising poster - World's Fair of 1940 New York For Peace and Freedom - featuring a colourful illustration of people walking by a display of flags with two children holding American flags and the statue of the founding father and first President of the United States George Washington (1732-1799) by the sculptor James Earle Fraser...

Watercolor on paper titled "Horse and Boy" painted by Douglas Denniston (1921-2001) from 1945. Semi abstract picture of a young boy and his horse, painte...

Signed upper left, 'O. Foss' for Olivier Foss (French, 1920-2002) and painted circa 1945. Born in Hanover, Germany, Olivier Foss first studied art in Ber...

Original vintage winter sport poster for the Dartmouth Winter Week End Ski Jumping 8-10 February 1946. Great design featuring a black and white photo of a ski...

Black and white lithograph realized by Antonio Scordia, with a text by Mino Maccari. Good conditions except for some folds, foxings and yellowing of paper. The text is hand signed ...

Here for your consideration is a wonderful original etching on archival paper by the well known American artist, Ralph Fabri. Strong impression; signed in pencil by the artist lower right margin. Titled and dated bottom left of the sheet “1947-Americana”. Condition of the etching is excellent. Top corner of sheet and bottom right corner of sheet have tiny creases. Not visible, under the mat. Sheet size is 12 by 15 inches. Image size is 8 by 9.75 inches. Matted but not framed. Provenance: A Long Island, New York collector. Painter and printmaker, commercial artist, writer, and teacher, Ralph Fabri was born Fabri Reszo in Hungary in 1894. He was educated in Budapest, first studying architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1912 to 1914. He then enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1918 with a Professor's Diploma (M.A.) "for teaching drawing, painting and geometry – including descriptive and projective geometry – in schools of higher education." Fabri arrived in New York City in 1921 and soon adopted the anglicized version of his name, Ralph Fabri. He began doing commercial design work and during the academic year of 1923/24 was enrolled as an evening student at the National Academy of Design. After becoming an American citizen in 1927, he traveled extensively in Europe. Upon returning to New York that same year, Fabri decided his financial situation was stable enough to allow him to focus his attention on fine art. During the Great Depression, Fabri's already inadequate portrait commissions and art sales further declined and he returned to commercial work. He established a workshop known as the Ralph Fabri Studios, that designed theatrical and movie sets, window displays, and retail interiors. But Fabri found the workshop dirty and distasteful, and eventually was able to concentrate on advertising work which could be done from home. The largest clients for his pen and ink drawings were The Stamp and Album Co. of America, Inc. (for which he designed covers for stamp albums and produced illustrations for envelopes housing sets of stamps sold to collectors), Geographica Map Co., and Joseph H. Cohen & Sons (for whom he designed and illustrated mail order catalogs). Another source of income during this period was the design and construction of an addition to "Iroki," Theodore Dreiser...

"Dinner Jazz" by Slim Aarons 1949: American Jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1898 - 1971) enjoys a plate of spaghetti in Rome. Unframed Paper S...

To see our other Modern British Art, and our other Peter Collins works, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message...

This painting of a lush, wooden landscape with a house by a lake was painted by New Mexico, female artist Mabel Dodge Lujan in the 1940's. It signed "M...

Lithograph on vellum paper, Edition of 25 Paper size: 33 x 26.5 cms (13 x 10 1/2 ins) Image size: 31.5 x 21.2 cms (12 3/8 x 8 3/8 ins)

Nude figure study of a seated female model by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). Circa 1940. Unsigned. Unframed. Image size: 25"H x 19"W.

Work on canvas

Filipowski, Richard (American, born Poland, 1923-2008). UNTITLED. Graphite and colored pencils on illustration board, 1947. Signed and dated, lower right. 19 1/2 x14 1/2 inches. 495x368 mm. Framed to 26 x 22 inches. Provenance: Private Collection, Illinois; Gary Snyder...

Black and white lithograph realized by Orfeo Tamburi on a text by Giorgio Vigolo. Good conditions except for some folds, foxings and yellowing of paper. The text is hand signed by ...

'The Town Hall of Les Baux-de-Provence', oil on canvas, by Yves Brayer (1946). Having spent several months a year in Provence, the artist created dozens of wo...

Original vintage World War Two poster for the 20-Ton Giant Of The Coastal Command - A Short Sunderland Flying Boat featuring an annotated technical cut-out...

Whitehead, Buell (American, 1919-1993) SHASTA DAISIES. Newsom pg 32. Lithograph in colors, 1946. Edition size not known. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right. In excellent conditi...

Original vintage movie poster: Doughboys in Ireland, the 1943 Lew Landers romantic musical ("The singing star of Jack Benny and Fred Allen radio programs!"...

Signed Lower Right Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...

Work on paper Silver wooden frame with glass pane 44 x 33 x 1 cm

HAROLD LUKENS DOOLTTLE (1883 - 1974) WESTERN GRANDEUR c. 1945 Aquatint, signed titled and dedicated. Image 9 ¾ x 13 5/8 inches. Large full sheet with deckle edges 15 ½ x 19 inches...

Oil on burlap. Oil measures 50x65 cm. Frameless.

"Ortez (Modernist Family Portrait)" is a gouache on paper abstract painting by Lewis Lee Tilley (1921-2005) from 1947 of five family members sitting on a couch. Painted in jewel tone...

Signed lower right, 'Wm. P. Krehm' for William Krehm (American, 1901-1968) and painted circa 1940. A period oil painting showing a mountainous, desert landscape at dusk, most likely a view of a Santa Ana River tributary in Southern California's Inland Empire...

Charles Bunnell original vintage 1941 signed painting from the artist's Black and Blue Series, Abstract Structure style. Watercolor, Ink and Charcoal on paper in colors of black, wh...

"Cafe De Flore, Paris In 1948" by Keystone-France Cafe De Flore, Paris, France, 1948. Unframed Paper Size: 16" x 16'' (inches) Printed 2022 Silver Gel...

Original vintage Belgian World War Two poster - Belgium Resists - issued by The Belgian War Relief Society Inc of the United States of America Member Agenc...

Le Coup de Vent by Paulémile Pissarro (1884-1972) Oil on canvas 65 x 92 cm (25⁵/₈ x 36¹/₄ inches) Signed lower left, Paulémile Pissarro; signed and titled on the reverse Executed cir...

Original vintage World War Two poster - The Attack Begins in the Factory - depicting soldiers working together to pull heavy artillery guns up a hill with ropes and pulleys in the ju...

Carl Johansson (1863-1944) Sweden A wooded lakeland view oil on canvas signed Carl Johansson painted c. 1940 canvas dimensions 14.96 x 21.85 inches (3...

Edipe is an original Etching print realized by the artist Paul Titeux de La Croix. Hand Signed and dated on the right corner. On the left corner titled "E...

"The Chicken", is ink on paper by Denver artist Edward Marecak (1919-1993) from the 1940's of an abstract depiction of a chicken in black and red. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 23 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches. Image size measures 15 ¾ x 11 ½ inches. Drawing is clean and in very good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Edward Marecak Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier ouevre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee, and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish, foreshadowed the output of his entire Colorado-based career, distinguished by a dramatic use of color, intricacy of execution and attention to detail contributing to their visual impact. He once observed, "Each time I start a new painting I always fool myself by saying this time keep it simple and not get entangled with such complex patterns, color and design; but I always find myself getting more involved with richness, color and subject matter." An idiosyncratic artist proficient in oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache and casein, he did not draw upon Colorado subject matter for his work, unlike many of his fellow painters in the state. Instead he used Midwest landscape imagery, bringing to life in it witches and spirits adapted from the Slovakian folk tales he heard growing up in Ohio. A number of his paintings depict winter witches derived from the Slovak custom in the Tatra Mountains of burning an effigy of the winter witch in the early spring to banish the memory of a hard winter. The folk tale element imparts a dream-like quality to many of his paintings. A devote of Greek mythology, he placed the figures of Circe, Persephone, Sybil, Hera and others in modern settings. The goddess in Persephone Brings a Pumpkin to her Mother, attired as a Midwestern farmer’s daughter, heralds the advent of fall with the pumpkin before departing to spend the winter season in the underworld. Train to Olympus, the meeting place of the gods in ancient Greece, juxtaposes ancient mythology with modernity creating a combination of whimsy and thought-provoking consideration for the viewer. Voyage to Troy #1 alludes to the ancient city that was the site of the Trojan Wars, but has a contemporary, autobiographical component referencing the harbor of the Aleutian Islands recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. In the 1980s Marecak used the goddess Hera in his painting, Hera Contemplates Aspects of the Art Nouveau, to comment on art movements in the latter half of the twentieth century Marecak’s love of classical music and opera, which he shared with his wife and to which he often listened while painting in his Denver basement studio, is reflected in Homage of Offenbach, an abstract work translating the composer’s musical colors into colorful palette. Pace, Pace, Mio Dio, the title of his earliest surrealist painting, is a soprano aria from Verdi’s opera, La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny or Fate, a favorite Marecak subject). His Queen of the Night relates to a character from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. In addition to paintings and works on paper, he produced hooked rugs, textiles and ceramics. He likewise produced designs for ceramics, tableware and furniture created by his wife Donna, an accomplished Colorado ceramist. Both of them generally eschewed exhibitions and galleries, preferring to quietly do their work while remaining outside of the mainstream. He initially exhibited at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 1948 receiving a purchase award. The following year he had his first one-person show of paintings and lithographs at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs. In the 1950s and early 1960s he participated in group exhibitions at the Print Club (Philadelphia); Amarillo Public Library (Texas); annual Blossom Festival Show (Canon City, Colorado); Adele Simpson’s "Art of Living" in New York; Denver Art Museum; and the Fox Rubenstein-Serkey Gallery (Denver); but he did not have another one-person show until 1966 at the Denver home of his friends, John and Gerda Scott. They arranged for his first one-person show outside of Colorado held two years later at the Martin Lowitz Gallery in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, California. That same year his work was featured at the Zantman Galleries in Carmel, California. Thereafter he became an infrequent exhibitor after the 1970s so that his work was rarely seen outside his basement studio. In 1980 he, his wife and Mark Zamantakis exhibited at Denver’s Jewish Community Center, and four years later he had a one-person show at the Studio Gallery in Denver. In 1992 he was included in a group show at the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery in Denver, and a year later received a large, posthumous retrospective at the Emmanuel...

A magnificent oil on canvas by Russian American WPA artist Nahum Tschacbasov (1899-1984), dating from 1943. Depicting a Maternity scene - or possibly a m...

Oto Pladers (1897.8.III – 1970.2.V) Oto Pladers learned in Riga city school of art (1913 – 15). He was called into the army in 1916 and continued studies after the war in Latvia Art ...

Oil on artist board signed and dated lower right featuring pool players playing a point match in the pool hall. Great WPA feel and texture impasto. Most likel...

Slim Aarons Cricketers on the pitch, Belfast 1962 (printed later) Silver gelatin print estate signature stamped edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity Cricketers on the pi...

Oil on panel painting by Lewis Lee Tilley (1921-2005) titled "Opera Matinee" from 1948. Image presents two women at an opera, one in pink leans over to the other in blue to whisper i...

Les Croates is an original drawing in ink and watercolor realized by Herbert Knotel in 1930/40s. Good condition except for being aged. The artwork is depicted through strong lines ...

This piece is comprised of two original photographs, from the original negatives, by George Barris and Bill Carroll, framed side by side. These photographs represent the first and l...

Work on watercolor paper Gray wooden frame with glass pane 94 x 73 x 3 cm

Packard, Emmy Lou (American, 1914 - 1998). WOMAN DRAWING. Color Woodcut, not dated. Edition size not known. Signed in pencil. 18 1/16" x 14 1/8" inches (...

A color, stone lithograph titled 'Edward' by Nura Woodson Ulreich (American, 1899–1950) with certification of authenticity stamped verso. A fresh ...

Threshing 1940. Canvas, oil. 54.5x73.5 cm Artist painted scene of every day life of countryside people in working atmosphere - threshing and haying. There is captured two haystacks, tractor, barn, and people in working process. Information about artist...

Work on paper