1990s Art

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...

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 ...

This reproduction is part of the 1993 portfolio American Art in the 20th Century, published by Te Neues Verlag and printed in Germany. It presents six miniature posters that highligh...

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...

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941) Imperial Iris Persian Seaform Set, Dated 1999. Blown glass Incised Chihuly, PP99 to underside of smaller piece. Large piece measures 13.5 " Wide x 8"...

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 ...

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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

Running with Guns (Long Way Home) - 1999, 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signed on back with certificate. Artist I...

Etching in colors on vélin de Lana Royal paper. Paper Size: 11.93 x 9.81 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Heart of Darkness, 1992. Publ...

Kate 4 Ever Inkjet print 20 x 24 inches Edition of 500 photographed in 1999, printed in 2023 Comes with a signed COA from Rankin. Rankin (born John Rankin Waddell in 1966) is a ren...

Lithograph on vélin paper. Paper size: 23.5 x 31.5 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and unnumbered A.P., as issued. Notes: Published and printed by Galerie La Vigne, Paris, in an edi...

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...

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...

Impasto Oil Painting of River Tree Scene British Postwar & Contemporary Artist, Terry Evans Terry Evans is a British Postwar & Contemporary Painte...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

Artist: Mihail Chemiakin Title: Equestrian Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil
 Edition: 178/225 Size: 30 x 21 Inches Mihail Chemiakin is a renowned Russian-born paint...

This limited edition serigraph titled Westport, Massachusetts by renowned artist Gretchen Dow Simpson is a meticulously crafted piece that captures the serene and picturesque landsca...

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 ...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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...

Lilac, garden, flowers, violet,Ukraine Very important work Georgij MOROZ (Dneprodzerzinsk, Ucraina, 1937 - St. Petersburg, 2015) 1937: he was born in Dneprodzerzinsk, Ucraina. 1949...

This original museum poster titled Two Candles was created for the Fast Forward exhibition at the Dallas Art Museum in 1995. The artwork featur...

Rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for the song "Nowhere Man," first released on "Revolver" by the Beatles in 1965. This limited edition was releas...

Signed Adolfo Perez Frame size 75x64 cm.

Hand signed by the artist. KAWS Limited Edition 1st Companion (Hand Signed by KAWS), 1999 Painted Cast Vinyl (Hand Signed & Dated by KAWS) 7 3/4 × 4 1/4 × 2 1/4 inches Edition of 50...

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...

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

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...

Chromogenic print, front-mounted to acrylic, flush-mounted to aluminum, as issued. Photograph Size: 17 x 24 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and numbered 1/11, verso, as issued. Note...

Male Nude VI (29 Palms, CA) - 1999, 20x20cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 23700. Not mounted. ...

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...

-In light of new tariffs, we’ve applied a 20% discount off the market price of this piece to support our collectors in facing potential added costs. At the gallery, we work closely w...

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...

This is a reproduction of Favor Rites by Robert Rauschenberg, from a rare exhibition poster in the Collection of European Masters series, published by Achenbach Editions for the Kuns...

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...

Paper Size: 22 x 28 inches ( 55.88 x 71.12 cm ) Image Size: 22 x 28 inches ( 55.88 x 71.12 cm ) Framed: No Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Additional Det...

Original oil on board still life painting of roses in a blue and white porcelain pitcher. Signed lower right by the artist and dated 1999. Condition is excellent. The painting is housed in a gold gallery frame with narrow linen liner. Overall framed measurements are 17.5 by 14.5 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota, Florida collector. John C. Traynor combines the 19th century element of atmosphere with the realistic, yet soft rendering of color and light reminiscent of the Dutch Masters to create his own distinctive style. John was born in 1961 and spent his early years growing up in Chester and Mendham, New Jersey. His classical training began at the Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, and afterward he continued his art education at Paier College of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. As a merit scholar, John studied figure painting with Frank Mason at the Art Students League of New York. He concentrated on his understanding of form while studying drawing with Carroll Jones...

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...

Paper Size: 37.75 x 54.5 inches ( 95.885 x 138.43 cm ) Image Size: 27.5 x 54.5 inches ( 69.85 x 138.43 cm ) Framed: No?Condition: A-: Near Mint, very light signs of handling Shipping...

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...

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...

Willy Oster Untitled Geometric Abstract Mixed Media Collage; Acrylic, Paper 1990 27.55 x 39.37 inches (70 x 100 cm) Signed, dated and annotated by hand on verso COA provided *Condit...

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