1990s Art

John Baldessari's Paradise is a thought-provoking piece that plays with the concept of utopia and the viewer’s expectations of imagery. Known for his witty and conceptual approach, B...

Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x20cm, Edition 4/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 293. Not mounted THE GREA...

Stonehenge is a bronze sculpture by French contemporary artist Martine Demal, dimensions are 43 × 43 × 12 cm (16.9 × 16.9 × 4.7 in). The sculpture is signed and numbered, it is part...

Gordes, The Luberon Valley, Provence French artist, signed and dated 95 oil on canvas, framed framed: 29 x 38 inches canvas: 24 x 32 inches Provenance: private collection, France Co...

This is an original signed figurative archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta 315 gsm paper by Scottish artist Ian Sanderson (1951- 2020) titled ‘Estelle‘ who was capt...

David Hockney, Dog 43, 1995 Original vintage exhibition posters from 1995 featuring Hockney's paintings of his beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodge, that appeared in many of his p...

Rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for John's most personal song "In My Life," first released on "Rubber Soul" by the Beatles in 1965. The lyric o...

Male Nude V (29 Palms, CA) - 1999, 20x20cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 21971. Not mounted THE ...

The 1999 Roland Garros poster by Antonio Seguí is a vibrant and whimsical work that captures the lively spirit of the French Open through a playful and satirical lens. Seguí’s use of...

Wrestlers IV is a bronze sculpture by French contemporary artist Yann Guillon, dimensions are 70 × 113 × 66 cm (27.6 × 44.5 × 26 in). A base can be created as necessary. This sculptu...

Waverly, Pennsylvania by the esteemed artist Gretchen Dow Simpson is a captivating limited edition serigraph that showcases the serene beauty and charm of Waverly, Pennsylvania. Publ...

Runaway Ride - The Getaway (The Last Picture Show) - 1999 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist Inventory #345. ...

Medium: original color woodcut. Reference: Dupin 1293. Published for the Jacques Dupin catalogue raisonne "Miro Graveur III" in 1992. Sheet size: 12 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches (320 x 248 mm)...

Lithograph in colors on vélin Exhibition Fine Art Cartridge paper. Paper Size: 12.75 x 9.75 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Hockney's ...

Signed and titled oil on canvas circa 1990 by French painter Hugues Claude Pissarro. The piece depicts a woman in a red dress collecting apples in an orchard. Signature: Signed lowe...

This is a printer’s proof of Groovin’ High, created by the esteemed artist and civil rights activist Faith Ringgold. Unlike the official edition, this p...

Total Edition of 15 signed and numbered Also available in: 90 x 120 cm / 35.4 x 47.2 in Portrait of a woman from above. Thierry Le Gouès, born in Brittany, France, is currently a f...

GARDEN ROMANCE by the artist James Denmark is an original hand drawn, limited edition lithograph(not a photo reproduction or digital print) printed on archival Somerset paper using t...

Katia , Platinum Palladium print on Arches Platine paper from Ian Sanderson, unframed. Edition 1 of 12 plus 2 AP ( small Size ) Portrait of a naked woman in a fur coat lying...

Inner Energy is a bronze sculpture by contemporary artist Yann Guillon, dimensions are 30 × 25 × 20 cm (11.8 × 9.8 × 7.9 in). The sculpture is signed and numbered, it is part of a l...

In this very large piece titled 2 Parrots, Walasse Ting captures a tender moment between two parrots sharing a moment of love on a branch. The artwork bursts with vibrant tropical hu...

Nizza (Nice, South of France) by Artan Shabani, signed and dated 1999 signed oil on canvas, framed framed: 28 x 32 inches canvas : 20 x 24 inches inscribed verso Provenance: private ...

signed and numbered lower image edition 7/40 Catalogue raisonné 00269 Internationally recognized painter and printmaker Alex Katz was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. Over a thir...

OK Corral - part 2 - (Stranger than Paradise), - 1999, 20x20 cm, Edition 5/10, digital C-Print based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 318_2.18, Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dream scapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) Exhibitions Selected (selected) 2018 Participation Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, USA (G) March Available to All, Rough Play Projects - Site Specific, Joshou Tree, USA (G) curated by Deborah Martin with Adam Berg, Doron Gazit, Kellan Barnebey, Chris Sanchez, Aili Schmelzt 2017 BLICKFELD Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog), (upcoming)
 Rosegallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica (G) Magie des Moments, Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G) 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky The Ballery in Heat, The Ballery, Berlin (G) 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth...

Bathers at Asnieres by Peter Darnell, signed and dated 1991 to the reverse after the earlier original painting by Seurat (bears that signature to the lower front corner) oil on canva...

"Of Ships and Men" - Nautical Trompe l'Oeil Composition in Oil on Board Maritime still life by Russell Tripp (American, 1942-2025). This hyper-realistic painting captures a collecti...

JUMPIN & JIVIN' is an original hand drawn, limited edition lithograph(not a photo reproduction or digital print) by the American artist James Denmark printed on archival Somerset pap...

Henri Matisse and Aimé Maeght had a close and influential relationship. Aimé Maeght, a prominent art dealer and publisher, was instrumental in supporting and promoting Matisse’s work...

Artist: Jeffrey Mayer Limited Edition: Signed and hand numbered in the margin, archival pigment print on 100% cotton paper with a Baryta finish. Authorized worldwide release of 100 ...

Janus's Heads is a bronze sculpture by French contemporary artist Martine Demal, dimensions are 54 × 26 × 17 cm (21.3 × 10.2 × 6.7 in). The sculpture is signed and numbered, it is p...

Contemporary American paper-mache artist Debbee Thibault is a master sculptor in the grand tradition of the WPA sculptors of the early 1930’s. Her belief that “like a fingerprint eac...

#5-3333 A white tulips still life ,oil on canvas applied on board, set in a vintage curved white painted wood frame .Signed lower left by P.Russo Neapolitan artist

KAWS VERY FIRST COMPANION - HISTORIC Uniquely Hand signed by the artist. (the regular edition was unsigned) KAWS Limited Edition 1st Companion (Hand Signed by KAWS), 1999 Painted Ca...

David Hockney Richard Strauss: Los Angeles Music Center Opera (Hand Signed and Inscribed), 1993 Offset Lithograph (hand signed and inscribed by David Hockney) 30 × 20 inches Signed a...

Rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's playful double portrait of Yoko and himself . "Oh My Love" was originally drawn in 1968, this limited editi...

Signed Adolfo Perez Frame size 75x64 cm.

Edition #8/15 This is the framed price listed. The photograph is also available unframed in the two additional editioned paper sizes listed. In her most recent collection of photo...

This exquisite reproduction of Mark Rothko's Untitled, originally painted in 1969 using oil on cardboard, showcases the artist's masterful use of pastel colors. Distributed by New Yo...

Samella Sanders Lewis, 'The House of Shango', lithograph, 1992, edition 60. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '31/60' in pencil. A superb, richly-inked impression, on Arches cream wove paper; the full sheet with margins (1 1/4 to 3 1/2 inches), in excellent condition. Image size 24 x 18 inches (610 x 457 mm); sheet size 30 inches x 22 1/4 inches (762 x 565 mm). Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THIS WORK “The title of this piece is an unmistakable harkening to African roots. Shango is a religious practice with origins in Yoruba (Nigerian) belief, deifying a god of thunder by the same name. Shango has been adopted in the Caribbean, most notably in Trinidad and Tobago, a fact that underscores the importance of transnationalism to Samella Lewis’s piece. Her work often grapples with issues of race in the U.S., and The House of Shango is no exception. Through a reliance on the gradual transformation of Shango—one that took place across continents and time—Lewis’s piece forms a powerful link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean counterparts. The figure depicted in the piece appears to emerge, quite literally, from the house of Shango. Given the roots and transformative process of the religion, The House of Shango can draw attention to the historical intersections to which black American culture is indebted.” —Laura Woods, Scripps College, Ruth Chander Williamson Gallery, Collection Highlights, 2018 ABOUT THE ARTIST Samella Lewis’ lifelong career as an artist, art historian, critic, curator, collector, and advocate of African American art has helped empower generations of artists in the United States and worldwide, earning her the designation “the Godmother of African American art.” Born and raised in Jim Crow era New Orleans, Lewis began her art education at Dillard University in 1941, transferring to Hampton University in Virginia, where she earned her B. A. and master's degrees. She completed her master's and a doctorate in art history and cultural anthropology at Ohio State University in 1951, becoming the first female African American to earn a doctorate in fine art and art history. Lewis taught art at Morgan State University while completing her doctorate. She became the first Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Florida A&M University in 1953. That same year Lewis also became the first African American to convene the National Conference of African American artists held at Florida A&M University. She was a professor at the State University of New York, California State University, Long Beach, and at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Lewis co-founded, with Bernie Casey, the Contemporary Crafts Gallery in Los Angeles in 1970. In 1973, she served on the selection committee for the exhibition BLACKS: USA: 1973 held at the New York Cultural Center. Samella Lewis's 1969 catalog 'Black Artists on Art', featured accomplished black artists typically overlooked in mainstream art galleries. She said of the book, "I wanted to make a chronology of African American artists, and artists of African descent, to document our history. The historians weren't doing it. It was really about the movement." From the 1960s through the 1970s, her work, which included lithographs, linocuts, and serigraphs, reflected her concerns with the values of human dignity, democracy, and freedom of expression. Between 1969 and 70, Lewis and E.J. Montgomery were consultants for a groundbreaking exhibition at the Oakland Public L designed to create greater awareness of African American history and art. Lewis was the founder of the International Review of African American Art in 1975. In 1976, she founded the Museum of African-American Art with a group of artistic, academic, business, and community leaders in Los Angeles, California. Lewis, the museum’s senior curator, organized exhibitions and developed new ways of educating the public about African American art. She celebrated African American art as an 'art of experience’ inspired by the artists’ lives. And she espoused the concept of African American art as an 'art of tradition', urging museums to explore the African roots of African American art. In 1984, Lewis produced an extensive monograph on Elizabeth Catlett, her beloved mentor at Dillard University. Lewis has been collecting art since 1942, focusing primarily on the WPA era and work created during the Harlem Renaissance. Pieces from her collection were acquired by the Hampton University Museum in Virginia, the world’s earliest collection of African American fine art...

Rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's "Family Tree" drawing, which is peaceful image of John & Yoko at rest. Originally drawn in 1976, this limited edition was released by...

This fold-out card showcases Donald Judd's Series of Ten Woodcuts in Three Color States: Cadmium Red Light, Ultramarine Blue, and Ivory Black. Published by Brooke Alexander, the card...

Jean Dubuffet painted his New Orleans Jazz Band series in 1944, but there is no specific record of him having visited New Orleans. Instead, Dubuffet was inspired by American jazz mus...

Stripper Performers, Atlanta, 1996 by Leonard Freed is an 11" x 14" vintage print, stamped on verso (back of photo) with Freed's copyright stamp and...

Limited Edition 25 More sizes on request The photographic work of the internationally well-known Austrian photographer Andreas H. Bitesnich is captivating by its beauty and aestheti...

Vintage American school modernist abstract painting. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a wood molding. Excellent condition, ready to hang and enjoy.

This print, Nude Reading from Roy Lichtenstein’s Nudes portfolio, showcases his signature fusion of Pop Art and comic-book aesthetics. Published by Tyler Graphics, the piece is part ...

Paper Size: 10.25 x 39.5 inches ( 26.035 x 100.33 cm ) Image Size: 6 x 35.5 inches ( 15.24 x 90.17 cm ) Framed: No Condition: B: Very Good Condition, with signs of handling or age...

Theodore Waddell Midnight Angus Drawing #3 (Midwest, Cattle, Mid-Century, Prairie, Blue) Oil on Paper Year: 1990 Sheet Size: 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm) Mat Size: 33.5 x 43.5 in...

Total Edition of 15 signed and numbered Also available in: 90 x 120 cm / 35.4 x 47.2 in 120 x 160 cm / 47.2 x 63 in A black naked model from the front. Thierry Le Gouès...

Paper Size: 19 x 27 inches ( 48.26 x 68.58 cm ) Image Size: 19 x 27 inches ( 48.26 x 68.58 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Det...

This piece, titled "Groovin' High", is a printer's proof created by the renowned artist and civil rights activist Faith Ringgold. The print is signed and numbered, printed on heavy p...

Paper Size: 31.5 x 23.5 inches ( 80.01 x 59.69 cm ) Image Size: 31.5 x 23.5 inches ( 80.01 x 59.69 cm ) Framed: No Condition: B: Very Good Condition, with signs of handling or age...

Agnes Martin Untitled #10, 1990 Lithograph on vellum transparency paper Unsigned Limited Edition of 2500 Publisher: Nemela & Lenzen GmbH, Monchengladback & Stedelijk Museum, Amsterda...

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

Paper Size: 4.25 x 6 inches ( 10.795 x 15.24 cm ) Image Size: 3.75 x 5.75 inches ( 9.525 x 14.605 cm ) Framed: Yes Frame Size: H: 17.25 x W: 13 x D: 1.25 in. Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Details: This vintage blank...

In October of 1991 Christo and his collaborator Jean-Claude constructed an installation in two valleys, in Japan, north of Tokyo and one in California, north of Los Angeles. 960 yell...

In "Le Saint Tropez," Buffet captures the lively and colorful atmosphere of this iconic French Riviera town. This piece, like many of his works, is unframed and in near-mint conditi...

Wayne Thiebaud Cake Slices, for the New SFMOMA (Hand signed by Wayne Thiebaud), 1996 Color Offset lithograph (hand signed by Wayne Thiebaud) B...

Printed on silk in 1993 under the supervision of the Yves Klein Archives, Abstraction N. 37 revives the artist’s most radical and visceral innovation: the Anthropométries—paintings m...

SHARING THE CHORES is a hand drawn, limited edition lithograph by the acclaimed Charleston SC artist JONATHAN GREEN printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Arches paper...