1950s Art

Guido Molinari (1933-2004) is one of Canada's most beloved abstract painters. Among his accomplishments, Molinari represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1968. A disciple of Barnett Newman, Molinari's most iconic works depict alternating bands or blocks of solid color. While Molinari is not immediately associated with international movements such as "Hard-Edge Abstraction", Minimalism, or Op Art; his work can be understood in relation to either. (With this in mind, it would be interesting to compare and contrast Molinari with Gene Davis, another artist famous for stripes). Molinari was one of the key figures (along with Yves Gaucher...

Portfolio of 6 hand signed black and white Woodcuts. Introduction and biography by Giusta Nicco Fasola. Edition of 150 prints. Very good conditions. Piero Rambaudi (Torino, 1906- T...

Travail D'usure is an original lithograph on watermarked paper "Arc". Abstract composition by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. From the album of "Cites et Chaussees" (1953-1959). I...

Venice is an original modern artwork realized by Zoran Mušic in 1959. Mixed colored pastel drawing. Includes frame. Hand signed and dated on the lower m...

Pouls Fievreux de l'ombre is an original lithograph on watermarked paper "Arc". Abstract composition by the French artist Jean Dubuffet . From the album of "Anarchitecte " (1953-1959). In excellent conditions. Referements: Cat. Silkeborg n° 491/ Cat. S. Webel n°724. Edition of 23 tests. Jean Dubuffet (Le Havre 1901 - Paris 1985) Best known as the founder of the contemporary art movement called Art...

Charles Green Shaw (American, 1892-1974) By the Dawn's Early Light, 1955 Oil on masonite Signed lower left, dated and titled verso 35.5 x 23.75 inches 38 x 26.25 inches, framed Provenance: The estate of the artist to Charles H. Carpenter Charles Green Shaw, born into a wealthy New York family, began painting when he was in his mid-thirties. A 1914 graduate of Yale, Shaw also completed a year of architectural studies at Columbia University. During the 1920s Shaw enjoyed a successful career as a freelance writer for The New Yorker, Smart Set and Vanity Fair, chronicling the life of the theater and café society. In addition to penning insightful articles, Shaw was a poet, novelist and journalist. In 1927 he began to take a serious interest in art and attended Thomas Hart Benton's class at the Art Students League briefly in New York. He also studied privately with George Luks, who became a good friend. Once he had dedicated himself to non-traditional painting, Shaw's writing ability made him a potent defender of abstract art. After initial study with Benton and Luks, Shaw continued his artistic education in Paris by visiting numerous museums and galleries. From 1930 to 1932 Shaw's paintings evolved from a style imitative of Cubism to one directly inspired by it, though simplified and more purely geometric. Returning to the United States in 1933, Shaw began a series of abstracted cityscapes of skyscrapers he called Manhattan Motifs which evolved into his most famous works, the shaped canvases he called Plastic Polygons. The 1930s were productive years for Shaw. He showed his paintings in numerous group exhibitions, both in New York and abroad, and was also given several one-man exhibitions. Shaw had his first one-man exhibition at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery in New York in 1934, which included 25 Manhattan Motif paintings and 8 abstract works. In the spring of 1935 Shaw was introduced to Albert Gallatin and George L.K. Morris. Gallatin was so impressed with Shaw's work, he broke a policy against solo exhibitions at his museum, the Gallery of Living Art, and offered Shaw an exhibition there. In the summer of 1935 Shaw traveled to Paris with Gallatin and Morris who provided introductions to many great painters. Shaw regularly spent time with John Ferren and Jean Hélion. The following year Gallatin organized an exhibition called Five Contemporary American Concretionists at the Reinhardt Gallery that included Shaw, Ferren, and Morris, Alexander Calder, and Charles Biederman...

Signed lower right: "Kupferman". Inscribed lower right: "1204". Titled, signed, dated, and inscribed verso: "EG: 1,204.J / "September Landscape, 1967" / Lawrence Kupferman". From the...

Texture Profuse is an original lithograph. Abstract composition by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. From the album of "Theatre du sol" (1953-1959). In excellent conditions. Referenc...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 96 x 78 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...

Ernest A. Dieringer, Untitled ('Color is Life'), watercolor, 1959. Initialed 'ED' and dated ' '59' in red pencil at the top and bottom sheet edges—the artist's indication that the work can be viewed from either side. Signed 'Dieringer' in pencil, in the bottom support board margin. A fine abstract expressionist work; watercolor on white wove paper, with fresh, bright colors; the image extending to the sheet edges, spot glued to the original cream wove backing board, in very good condition. Image size 9 x 10 15/16 inches; backing board size 13 1/2 x 16 3/4 inches. Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. Provenance: ex. Collection Alexander Raydon. The collector/dealer's well-known 'Raydon Gallery' was established in 1962 on 82nd Street and Madison Avenue, New York City. ABOUT THE ARTIST Ernest Dieringer studied at the Art Institute of Chicago on a National Scholastic Scholarship, beginning his career with the Chicago-based Wells Street Gallery in 1957. He showed his work with other abstract artists, including Robert Natkin and John Chamberlain. The gallery was considered a vanguard space in Chicago for exhibiting emerging abstract artists from the surrounding area. Artists associated with the gallery eventually became known as the Wells Street Group. Due to the success of the gallery, Dieringer and other group members were invited by the Manhattan-based contemporary art dealer...

Vintage American modernist landscape abstract painting. Oil on board, circa 1952. Signed. Image size, 21.5"L x 7.5"H. Housed in a period modern frame.

"Imprints" by Don Totten is an abstract oil painting on canvas circa 1950 and measures 24 in x 30 in. There is foxing on verso but otherwise in good condition. Donald C. Totten (19...

Pierre TAL-COAT Abstract Composition Original vintage lithograph poster On paper 62 x 48 cm (c. 25 x 19 in) Edited for the artist exhibition at Maeght Gallery in 1956 Excellent co...

Lithograph, 1959 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 1/125 74.00 cm. x 51.50 cm. 29.13 in. x 20.28 in. (paper) 36.00 cm. x 44.00 cm. 14.17 in. x 17.32 in. (image) LCD5253

Artist Freddy Caston, "Untitled" (Suburban Backyard), Abstract Impressionist/ Landscape Oil on Canvas, 30.50 x 38.50, Late 20th Century, 1959 Framed by Joseph Grippi (best known as J...

One of the "Women of Abstract Expressionism" Caradoc Ehrenhalt would often accompany his mother, the artist Amaranth Ehrenhalt, on her visits to the Louvre in Paris and the Metropoli...

Mid Century Modern East Bay II Abstracted Landscape by Erle Loran Dynamic mid century abstracted geometric landscape drawing of the East Bay California lands...

Wonderful mid century modern mixed media abstracted Northern California landscape by Hilda Davidson Kaster (American, 1912-2008), circa 1950. The artist uses layers of mixed media earthtones and natural textures such as leaves and bark to create the aesthetic of the deep forest of Sebastopol, California. Signed lower left corner, on verso with exhibition and gallery labels. Presented in rustic wooden frame of period (fair condition), Image size: 18"H x 24"W. Hilda Davidson Kaster was born in Oakland, California in 1912 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. She went to New York in the early 1930s to study art. At the Traphagen School of Design, she was a student of Moses Soyer and William Gropper, who were founders of the Ashcan School. Later in the 1930s she worked as a commercial artist and designer for I. Miller Shoes...

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Blue Wall, c. 1959 oil on canvas signed and titled verso 42 x 60 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1950, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University. Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century-modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children – only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended high school. They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were - unlike Richard- rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages. At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings. He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self-teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners – each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute). He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends – which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred-dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before... the color...It just glowed.” Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller designed and made the simple gold wedding ring Avis wore for their 65 years of marriage. During those 65 years neither wavered in their mutual love, nor in the respect they shared for one another’s art. The couple lived in a converted chicken coop in Missouri while Richard was in boot camp. At the camp, he would volunteer for any job offered and one of those jobs ended up being painting road signs. His commander noticed how quickly and neatly he worked and gave him more painting work to do - eventually recommending him for a position painting murals for Army offices in Panama. Until her dying day, Avis remained angry that “The army got to keep those fabulous murals and they probably didn’t even know how wonderful they were.” In Panama, their first son, Mark, was born. After Richard’s discharge in 1953, they moved back to the Cleveland area and used the GI bill to attend Kent State gaining his BA in education. The small family then moved briefly to Buffalo, where Richard taught at the Albright Art School and the University of Buffalo – and their second son, Peter, was born. Richard had exhibited work in the Cleveland May Show and the Butler Art Museum during his art school years, and during the years in Buffalo, his work was exhibited at the gallery he had so loved as a child, the Albright Art Gallery. In 1956, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and Richard began teaching art at Lincoln West High School during the day while working toward his MA in art at Kent State in the evenings. Avis and Richard, with the help of an architect, designed their first home - a saltbox style house in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1958, their third son, Max (after Max Beckmann) was born. Richard enjoyed the consistency of teaching high school as well as the time it gave him to paint on the weekends and during the summer months. In 1961, he received his MA and his daughter, Claire, was born. With a fourth child, the house was much too small, and Avis and Richard began designing their second home. An admirer of MCM architecture, Richard’s favorite example of the style was the Farnsworth house – he often spoke of how the concepts behind this architectural style, particularly that of Mies van der Rohe, influenced his painting. Andres described himself as a 1950’s...

Oil on board painting of abstracted New York City skyline by Charles Ragland Bunnell from 1951. Nocturne cityscape painted in colors of black, shades of blue, and yellow. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 30 ¼ x 12 ¼ x ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 12 ¼ inches. Painting is in good vintage condition - please contact us for detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of Charles Ragland Bunnell Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Charles Bunnell developed a love for art at a very young age. As a child in Kansas City, Missouri, he spent much of his time drawing. When he was unable to find paper he drew on walls and in the margins of textbooks for which he was often fined. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer...

Well painted 1950's mid-century modern English portrait of a nude woman laying on a bed. The artist was a portrait and figure painter active during the 1950s-1960s Oils on artists ...

Serge Poliakoff (after) - Composition - Pochoir Published in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle 1956 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Publisher: G. di San Lazzaro. Unsigned and unumbered as is...

Feu is an original B/W lithograph on watermarked paper "Hes". Abstract composition by the French artist Jean Dubuffet. From the album of "Theatre du sol" (1953-1959). In excellent c...

Francisco Narváez Forma (BFM-049), 1956 Bronze (1970) Edition of 25 30 x 8 x 10 cm 11.8 x 3.1 x 3.9 in. LITTERATURE Registro General de la obra de...

Lithograph, 1954 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 59/75 Publisher : Galerie Louise Leiris (Paris) Printer : Mourlot (Paris) Catalog : Saphire 138 50.00 cm. x 65.00 cm....

1950's Mid Century modern oil portrait of a nude black woman seated on a chair The artist was a portrait and figure painter active during the 1950s-1...

Dynamic abstracted geometric landscape drawing of the East Bay California landscape by Erle Loran (American, 1905-1999), circa 1950. From a collection of esta...

Le vent et l'eau Signed, dated, titled and numbered in the lower margin (see photos) Edition: 10 (see photo) There were also 25 impressions with the typeface caption of the title below the image From: Eaux, pierres, sables (Wayer, Stones and Sand) Portfolio From the series Phenomena, Portfolio 10 This No. 3 from Portfolio Eaux, pierres, sables Edition: 10 (7/10), there were 25 other impressions with typeface inscriptions below image Other impressions can be found in the following museum collection: An unsigned impression is in the collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris, with the typeset title caption below Accession No. AM 1976-1118 (3) A signed impression is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art From the MMA entry: "Edition without typography printed...

Abstract painting in blue, pink, yellow, green, and black by Paul Kauvar Smith (1893-1977). Oil on board. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 29 ½ x 23 ¾ x 2 inche...

abstract, yellow ,orange,grey,geometric,1954 Edgardo CORBELLI (Turin, 1918 - 1989) From the traditional composition of the 1930s, the painting of Corbelli leads to technical and exp...

Lithograph, 1954 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 4/75 Publisher : Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Printer : Mourlot, Paris Catalog : Saphire 138 50.00 cm. x 65.00 cm. 1...

"Untitled (Sacred Family)" is an abstract oil painting on board by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968) circa 1950. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Abstracted view of several figures standing together in a group, painted in colors of black, red, blue, green, orange, yellow, and white. Presented in a vintage frame, outer dimensions measure 34 ½ x 29 x 1 ¼ inches. Image size is 23 ½ x 18 ¾ inches. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the artist: Charles Bunnell developed a love for art at a very young age. As a child in Kansas City, Missouri, he spent much of his time drawing. When he was unable to find paper he drew on walls and in the margins of textbooks for which he was often fined. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widely recognized for their demanding yet understated means of revealing a serious and sober essence. He identified greatly with Mark Rothko, a friend, as well as Adolph Gottlieb and Jack Tworkov, with whom he had studied privately. Fenton painted in New York City in the late 50's as the explosion of Abstract Expressionism turned into a rebellion against gestural, emotional painting. More concerned about his art than his posture, he expanded upon a tradition in painting with influences as diverse as Whistler and Turner as well as Ad Reinhardt and Joseph Albers. Alan Fenton was born in Cleveland in 1927, studied at the Cleveland School of Art, The Arts Students League, The New School, and at NYU, earning his BFA at Pratt Institute, where he later taught painting for many years. At seventeen, Fenton served in the Merchant Marines where he began a career as a professional boxer, a skill he had honed on the streets. He moved successfully through the graphic design business en route to becoming a painter in New York at the height of the art revolution of the fifties and sixties. Fenton enjoyed success with his subtle washes and pencil drawings as well as large abstract...

Mixed media on laid paper by Hubert Brake. "Abstrakte Komposition I", 1952 48,6 x 62 cm signed and dated

Original SAS India vintage European travel poster created by Otto Nielsen. Scandinavian Airline System (S.A.S.) Here Nielsen depicts ...

Jacques Zimmermann was born in Antwerp in 1929. He said: "The abstraction is not for me or a genre painting, nor a limit. It is a starting point. From there, by the automatic gesture...

Joseph Glasco (American, 1925-1996) Figure 1955 Ink on paper Signed and dated lower center 9 x 12 inches Joseph Glasco was born in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma and grew up in Texas. In 1...

Estate of the artist Exhibited: Berry Campbell Gallery Includes documentation from the gallery A first-generation action painter, Raymond Hendler started his career as an Abstract Expressionist in Paris as early as 1949. In the years that followed, he played a significant role in the movement, both in New York, where he was the youngest voting member of the New York Artist’s Club. Hendler became a friend of Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Harold Rosenberg in Philadelphia, where he ran an avant-garde gallery between 1952 and 1954. Hendler differed from Rosenberg’s belief that American post-war painting should have a clear break from the past. His work often recalls the autonomism and nonobjectivism of his European predecessors. However, Stuart Preston noted in The New York Times that Hendler had a “totally different approach to nonobjectivism….He excels in bright hard explicit pattern-making, in straightforward parades of independent shapes, not unlike those in Matisse’s collages. There is something reminding of Leger here as well, particularly in the unambiguous glare of contrasted color and in the robust refusal to allow shapes to suggest anything beyond their merry self." Raymond Hendler was born in Philadelphia in 1923. In 1949, he continued his art training in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière on the G.I. Bill. Immersing himself in the Left Bank art...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...

Taro Yamamoto, (American, 1919-1994) "La Gatta Miso" Oil or Acrylic/Canvas 32" x 50" Hand signed lower right, dated 1990, Titled on the stretcher verso, unframed. Taro Yamamoto (1919 – 1994) belonged to the New York School Abstract...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 90 x 84 inches Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widel...

1950's Mid Century modern oil portrait of a nude woman laying on a bed The artist was a portrait and figure painter active during the 1950s-1960s ...

1950's Mid Century modern English oil portrait, two women in an artists studio The artist was a portrait and figure painter active during the 1950s-1960s Great use of color and abstract brush strokes...

From Joan Miro by Jacques Prévert and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Unknown publication size Plate I, from Joan Miro by Jacques Prévert and Georges Ribemont...

Engraving, 1953 Handsigned by the artist in pencil and numbered 210/250 Catalog : Schmücking 15 65.00 cm. x 50.00 cm. 25.59 in. x 19.69 in. (paper) 41.00 cm. x 32.50 cm. 16.14 in. ...

Joseph Glasco (American, 1925-1996) Leda 1956 Oil on paper Signed and dated lower left 60 x 39 inches Exhibited: Viviano, 1956, no. 3; Princeton, 1961, no. 73; Houston, CAM, 1986 A...

Flétissure Allègre, From Territoires is an original black and white lithograph realized by Jean Dubuffet (1901 Le Havre - Paris 1985). The artwork is the plate n. 8 from the portf...

The Pinks and the Blues Watercolor, pen and ink on paper, 1954 Signed and dated in ink lower left, titled in pencil verso. Provenance: Gift of the Artist Privat...

Well painted 1950's mid-century modern English portrait of a nude woman laying on a bed. The artist was a portrait and figure painter active during the 1950s-1960s Oils on artists ...

Oil and newspaper collage on paper mounted to masonite. From the estate of the artist. The history of the New York School painters is still being written, but Price earned a well-deserved place from the beginning. Price was one of the youngest of the first generation Abstract Expressionist circle of painters working in New York after WWII. Though only in his late twenties he began exhibiting in 1948 in New York at Hugo, Bodely, Iolas and Egan galleries. In a 1949, showing at Peridot galleries, Price was hailed for his breakthrough "Maze Series." A complex interweaving of organic shapes, automatic in nature and sometimes resembling bones or body parts, the "Maze" paintings exuded a pulsating energy that brought him critical acclaim. He received rave reviews in Art Digest, the New York Times and the New York Tribune. Price's earliest work was biomorphic or surrealist in nature, influenced by the automatism of Andre Breton and his school. By 1946, his work began to move away from this style to an all-over, decentralized style which became the "Maze" works and ultimately AbEx works which saw their culmination in the "Black Warrior...

Small longitudinal dark green and yellow toned portrait by Houston, TX artist Pat Colville depicting a young pregnant woman with short hair and a sleeveless top. The subject's striki...

Abstract Composition is a beautiful original drawing in china ink and watercolor, realized by an unknown artist and signed "La Cabane". Hand dated 1951. In very good conditions. Sh...

PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) Joueur de flûte et chèvre (A. R. 382) Terre de faïence plaque, 1956, from the edition of 450, partially glazed and painted, with the Empreinte Originale ...

Charles Lapicque - Composition - Original Lithograph Published in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle 1951 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Publisher: G. di San Lazzaro. Unsigned and unnumbered...

Bronze sculpture of a musician by Nathaniel Kaz, signed and dated 1952. Measures 23” x 10” x 19” including the plinth base. Nathan Katz was born in the Bronx, NY in 1917, and he die...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 88 x 82 1/2 inches Signed on the stretcher Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widely recognized for their demanding yet understated means of revealing a serious and sober essence. He identified greatly with Mark Rothko, a friend, as well as Adolph Gottlieb and Jack Tworkov, with whom he had studied privately. Fenton painted in New York City in the late 50's as the explosion of Abstract Expressionism turned into a rebellion against gestural, emotional painting. More concerned about his art than his posture, he expanded upon a tradition in painting with influences as diverse as Whistler and Turner as well as Ad Reinhardt and Joseph Albers. Alan Fenton was born in Cleveland in 1927, studied at the Cleveland School of Art, The Arts Students League, The New School, and at NYU, earning his BFA at Pratt Institute, where he later taught painting for many years. At seventeen, Fenton served in the Merchant Marines where he began a career as a professional boxer, a skill he had honed on the streets. He moved successfully through the graphic design business en route to becoming a painter in New York at the height of the art revolution of the fifties and sixties. Fenton enjoyed success with his subtle washes and pencil drawings as well as large abstract canvases...

The art market--collectors, curators and museums--is in the early stages of a broad reappraisal of the contribution of previously overlooked groups to the development of post-war mod...

Alan Fenton (1927 - 2000) Untitled, 1958-1960 Oil on canvas 89 x 83 inches Signed on the stretcher Fenton's quiet and contemplative nonobjective paintings and drawings were widely r...