Al Held

Untitled - 20th Century Brightly Colored Print, Yellow, Red, Green + Grey Circle

1968

Gordon House was born in 1932 in Pontardawe, South Wales. Early exposure to art on trips to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery as a young boy inspired House towards creative endeavors and at the age of fourteen he was awarded a grant to enter art school which he accepted. From 1947 to 1950 he studied at Luton School of Art, Bedfordshire, and St. Albans School of Art, Hertfordshire. House's contemporaries included Richard Smith and John Plumb with whom he remained close. During the early fifties, after finishing art school, House began work as assistant to the ecclesiastical sculptor Theodore Kern. He also spent time at an advertising studio where he honed his burgeoning skills in typography and graphic design. In 1952 House was offered the position of designer for Imperial Chemical Industries Plastics Division where he stayed until 1959. This was followed by two years spent as graphic designer for the Kynoch Press in London. In 1961 House set out on his own as a self-employed designer and typographer. Initially this was supplemented by part-time teaching at art schools in and around London but by 1964 House was able to devote himself entirely to his design work which freed up valuable time to concentrate on his own artistic output in the studio. In the late fifties, informed by the new art emerging from America and that of his contemporaries in England, House began to create large-scale abstract works which he was invited to show in 1959 at Dennis Bowen's legendary New Vision Centre in Marble Arch. House was an active participant in the vibrant London art scene of the sixties, regularly attending lectures, exhibitions and discussions. In 1960 he exhibited in 'Situation' the key abstract exhibition of the decade held at the RBA Galleries. Other participating artists included Robyn Denny, Bernard and Harold Cohen, Gillian Ayres, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and William Turnbull among others. These artists, united by a common admiration for American Abstract Expressionism, were frustrated by the lack of exposure given to large-scale abstract works in commercial galleries so they organised their own exhibition. The name was derived from the participants' idea that an abstract painting that occupied the whole field of vision would involve the spectator in an 'event' or 'situation'. This exhibition was followed by 'New London Situation' in 1961 and a nationwide touring Arts Council presentation in recognition of the significance of the two earlier shows. In 1961 House began producing his first prints at the Kelpra Studio, run by Chris and Rose Prater, where he made the earliest fine art screenprint ever to be produced in Britain. Artists such as Paolozzi and Hamilton followed in his footsteps and together they started a printmaking revolution in Britain. They cemented the medium of the screenprint in the world of fine art as opposed to the commercial sphere and secured the reputation of Kelpra in the process. Later, together with Cliff White, House set up the White Ink (Ltd.) print studio in London, where he produced etchings and wood engravings on a series of magnificent antique printing presses...

Florentine 2 by Richard Smith, 1973 Additional information: Medium: lithograph on heavy wove paper, with carbon tracing paper and plastic strings 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in 50 x 70 cm signed, dated and numbered 46/75 in pencil Charles Richard "Dick" Smith was an English printmaker and painter. Smith was born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, to Doris (née Chandler), a nurse and daughter of a chemical company director. He studied at Hitchin Grammar School and Luton School of Art. After military service with the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong, he attended St Albans School of Art followed by post-graduate studies at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1954-57. Smith shared a flat-cum-studio with Peter Blake in his second year at the RCA, and then again for two years after he left the college in 1957. When Terence Conran's Soup Kitchen opened on Fleet Street in the late 1950s, it featured a letter-collage mural by Smith and Blake. Michael Chow would later commission Smith to design installations for his restaurant in Los Angeles, and Chow and Conran have remained two of his biggest supporters. In 1959 he moved to New York to teach on a Harkness Fellowship, staying for two years, where he produced paintings combining the formal qualities of many of the American abstract painters which made references to American commercial culture. The artist's first solo exhibition was at the Green Gallery. As his work matured it tended to be more minimal, often painted using one colour with a second only as an accent. In trying to find ways of transposing ideas, Smith began to question the two-dimensional properties of art itself and to find ways by which a painting could express the shape of reality as he saw it. He began to take the canvas off the stretcher, letting it hang loose, or tied with knots, to suggest sails or kites - objects which could change with new directions rather than being held rigid against a wall, and taking painting close to the realm of sculpture. These principles he carried into his graphic work by introducing cut, folded and stapled elements into his prints; some works were multi-leaved screenprinting, and others printed onto three-dimensional fabricated metal. Smith returned to England in 1963 - specifically East Tytherton, Wiltshire where Howard Hodgkin was a neighbour - and gained critical acclaim for extending the boundaries of painting into three dimensions, creating sculptural shaped canvases with monumental presence, which literally protruded into the space of the gallery. Evocative titles such as Panatella and Revlon, and cosmetic, synthetic colours alluded to the consumer landscapes of urban America which had proved so influential. He showed at the Kasmin Gallery, a venture between Kas and the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava in New Bond Street, throughout the 60s, more-widely known as David Hockney's first gallery. After being awarded the Grand Prize at the 9th São Paulo Biennial in 1967 and important exhibitions at Kasmin in 1963, Tate in 1964, and Richard Feigen Gallery in 1966, Smith was invited to exhibit at the XXXV Venice Biennale as the official British artist in 1970. Smith was chosen by a committee of art experts, who were Director of Tate Norman Reid, art historian Alan Bowness, art collector David Thompson, the British Council’s Lilian Somerville and art historian Norbert Lynton. Smith taught with Richard Hamilton at Gateshead in 1965, where he met Mark Lancaster and Stephen Buckley, and again in 2000, becoming close to the artist and his wife, Terry. By the late 1960s Smith's ambition to produce paintings which shared a common sensibility with other media, such as film and photography, began to wane and he focused on the formal qualities of painting. The freestanding installation Gazebo exhibited at the Architectural League of New York in 1966, and a tent project at the Aspen Design...

French painter, writer and sculptor. He began painting at the age of 12 and was producing pointillist works at the age of 18. He studied architecture for two years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a preparation for his painting. In about 1943 he began painting abstract works, and he remained an abstract painter for the rest of his career. He was associated with the group of abstract artists who exhibited at the Galerie Denise René in Paris, including Hans Hartung, Nicolas de Stäel and Serge Poliakoff, and he himself exhibited there from 1945 to 1956. Together with Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp, Antoine...

Signed, titled and dated verso 1980 (11–’80) "RBY" oil on canvas Provenance: Irving Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida 1985; Private Collection, Palm Springs, CA ...