Jules Olitski

Elegy, September 11, 2001, screenprint, signed/N, Framed abstract expressionist

2002

Walter Darby Bannard Siciliian Magician, 1980 Silkscreen on wove paper Pencil signed, titled and dated by the artist on the front Unframed Provenance: Bart Gallery, Providence, RI Th...

Nancy Graves 5745, for the Jewish Museum, 1984 Silkscreen on paper Signed, numbered 5/90 and dated in graphite pencil on the front; bears publishers' blind stamp front left corner 30 1/4 × 40 1/2 inches Unframed Commissioned by the Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. List Graphic Fund for The Jewish Museum, New York Signed, numbered and dated in graphite pencil on the front; bears publishers' blind stamp front left corner. Commissioned by the Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. List New Year's Graphic Fund for The Jewish Museum, New York. During the 1980s, various artists were commissioned to create a print celebrating the Jewish New Year. This is the silkscreen renowned sculptor Nancy Graves created to celebrate the year 5745 of the Jewish Calendar, beginning in September 1984 (Rosh Hashanah). This work was published in a limited edition of 90. The number 90 has special significance in Jewish gamatria (numerology) for several reasons, including the fact that it equals five times life - or Chai. The number for Chai, meaning "Life " s 18, and 18 x 5 = 90. This is a magical number in Judaism. All of the works were published in editions that were multiples of 18, or the Life. In her lifetime, Nancy Graves did not receive the renown or acknowledgement that her ex-husband and former Yale School of Art classmate Richard Serra did, but she is finally getting the recognition she richly deserves. Biography: Nancy Graves (1939 – 1995) is an American artist of international renown. A prolific cross-disciplinary artist, Graves developed a sustained body of sculptures, paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints. She also produced five avant-garde films and created innovative set designs. Born in Pittsfield Massachusetts, Graves graduated from Vassar College in 1961. She then earned an MFA in painting at Yale University in 1964, where her classmates included Robert Mangold, Rackstraw Downes, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, as well as Richard Serra with whom she was married from 1964 to 1970. Five years after graduating, her career was launched in 1969 when she was the youngest artist — and only the fifth woman — to be selected for a solo presentation at the Whitney Museum of Art. Graves’ work was subsequently featured in hundreds of museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide, including several solo museum exhibitions. She was awarded commissions for large-scale site-specific sculptures and her work is in the permanent collections of major art museums. A frequent lecturer and guest artist, her work was widely documented during her lifetime. In 1991 she married veterinarian Dr. Avery Smith. Graves travelled extensively and was fully engaged with the cultural and intellectual issues of her times. Her brilliant career and life were cut short by her untimely death from cancer at age 54. From a point of view that she described as “objective,” Graves transformed scientific sources, such as maps and diagrams, into artworks by re-producing their complex visual information in detailed paintings and drawings. Investigating the intersections between art and scientific disciplines, Graves created compelling, formally rigorous, yet ultimately expressive works of art that examine concepts of repetition, variation, verisimilitude, and the presentation and perception of visual information. Based in SoHo, New York, Graves gained prominence in the late 1960s as a post-Minimalist artist for innovative camel, fossil, totem, and bone sculptures that were hand formed and assembled from unusual materials such as fur, burlap, canvas, plaster, latex, wax, steel, fiberglass and wood. Made in reaction to Pop and Minimalism, these works reference archaeological sites, anthropology, and natural science displays. Suspended from the ceiling or clustered directly on the floor, these early sculptures also engage with Conceptualist ideas of display. For her Whitney Museum presentation Graves exhibited three seemingly realistic sculptures of camels in an installation that evoked taxidermy specimens and questioned issues of verisimilitude in art and science, particularly in light of their hand patched and painted fur surfaces. The exhibition elicited wide spread critical responses and established her artistic significance. After intensely engaging with sculpture in the early 1970s, Graves returned to painting. Her detailed pointillist canvasses re-produced — in paint — images culled from documentary nature photographs, NASA satellite recordings, and Lunar maps, commingling scientific exactitude with abstraction. Resuming sculpture in the late 1970s, Graves was among the first contemporary artists to experiment with bronze casting. She re-invigorated the traditional lost wax technique by assembling cast found objects into unique improbably balanced sculptures, with bright polychrome surfaces and distinctive patinas. Throughout the 1980s Graves became widely recognized for her increasingly large and graceful open-form sculpture commissions. At the same time, she also expanded her drawing, painting, and printmaking practice and made large gestural watercolors. Then, in the late 1980s she created wall-mounted works that combined her explorations of sculpture, painting, form and color. In these large-scale pieces, she mounted high relief polychrome sculptural elements to the surfaces and edges of painted shaped canvases so that patterned shadows were cast onto the paintings and surrounding wall. By the 1990s Graves was casting in glass, resin, paper, aluminum, and bronze, combining these varied materials and colors into daring sculptures with moving parts. As she proceeded in all the media she mastered, Graves increasingly re interpreted and transmuted forms sourced from her own earlier artwork — rather than from outside research — creating elaborate compositions that form a layered a-temporal archaeology of her own visual production. Nancy Graves’ pioneering art...

SAM FRANCIS Affiche Moderna Museet Stockholm (Catalogue Raisonne Lembark-16, p.66), 1960 Color lithograph on Rives BFK Paper with deckled edges Pencil signed lower right of center; n...

Adolph Gottlieb Guild Hall is for Everyone, 1970 Rare Abstract Expressionist Offset Lithograph poster Vintage metal Frame included Rare vintage, limited edition, offset lithograph ...

A very good impression of this color screenprint on white wove paper. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 75. Signed and inscribed "color trial proof." Printed by Kelpra Studio...

A very good impression of this scarce color screenprint on white wove paper. Signed, dated and numbered 44/75 in pencil. Published by Marlborough Graphics, Inc., New York.

Red Angel, intensely and seductively colored: swooning purples and reds, ecstatic lemon yellows, and black construction paper. Jostling shapes, geometric and biomorphic, lyrical and hard-edged, refuse to resolve neatly Assemblage, a bold strategy to keep viewers unsettled and curious, the reward for which are profuse and luscious details: varied incidents of refinement, suggestive signs, most in a private code, not merely ornamental but integral to the overall message. William Scharf (born 1927, Media, PA) is an American artist from New York, he teaches at The Art Students League of New York. Painting with acrylics, he was a member of the New York School movement. Often categorized as a late generation Abstract Expressionist, Known for producing paintings with abstract compositions incorporating biomorphic and geometric forms in vivid colors, the artist was influenced by Surrealism, the Color Field painters, and symbolism. He apprenticed with Mark Rothko and was influenced by his color field paintings. The surrealist painter Arshile Gorky and the Abstract expressionism style found in 1950s New York City also influenced Scharf. His exhibits include San Francisco Art Institute (1969), the Pepperdine University's Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (2001), and Richard York Gallery in New York City (2004). In the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, being serious meant following the tenets of the New York School, which required abstract paintings to be spontaneous improvisations, the messier the better. At once hedonistic and disciplined, his brazen paintings are nothing if not promiscuous. The best ones mix the dynamism of gestural abstraction with sensual rhythms of decorative patterning, sometimes souping up the stew with cartoonish symbols and flourishes so ripe they belong in a dandy's fantasies. His exhibits include San Francisco Art Institute (1969), the Pepperdine University's Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (2001) and Richard York Gallery in New York City (2004). Scharf's work has been exhibited in a number of galleries, including the Anita Shapolsky Gallery, Meredith Ward Fine Art, and Hollis Taggart Galleries in New York City. Scharf has been an instructor of art at various institutions including The Art Students League, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is a member of the Society of Illustrators and the Artists Equity Association. EDUCATION 1944-49 The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts — Philadelphia, PA (1948 Cresson Scholar) 1949 The University of Pennsylvania — Philadelphia, PA 1948 The Academie de la Grand Chaumiere — Paris, France 1947 The Barnes Foundation — Merion, PA 1939-41 Samuel Fleisher Memorial School— Philadelphia, PA (also known as Graphic Sketch Club) TEACHING HISTORY Instructor: Painting & Drawing 1987-Present Art Students League, New York, NY 1989, 74, 69, 66, 63 San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA 1965-69 he School of Visual Arts, New York, NY 1964 Art Center of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Guest Lecturer 1979 Pratt Institute, New York, NY 1974 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 1974 California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco, CA Recent Solo Exhibitions: 2005 Meredith Ward Fine Art, New York, NY 2004 Richard York Gallery, New York, NY 2002 P.S.1/MOMA, Queens, NY 2001 The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, CA 2000-2001 The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC Selected Group Exhibitions: 2005 National Academy of Design, New York, NY 2005 Peter McPhee Fine Arts, Stone Harbor...

A very good impression of this color screenprint on white wove paper. Signed, dated and numbered 83/200 in pencil. Printed by Styria Studio, Inc., New York, with the blind stamp lowe...