Todd Smith

Square Variables XII

1972

Marcel Janco, was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. In...

Henry Spencer Moore (1898 – 1986) Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner. He became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom later endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. After the Great War, Moore received an ex-serviceman's grant to continue his education and in 1919 he became a student at the Leeds School of Art (now Leeds College of Art), which set up a sculpture studio especially for him. At the college, he met Barbara Hepworth, a fellow student who would also become a well-known British sculptor, and began a friendship and gentle professional rivalry that lasted for many years. In Leeds, Moore also had access to the modernist works in the collection of Sir Michael Sadler, the University Vice-Chancellor, which had a pronounced effect on his development. In 1921, Moore won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London, along with Hepworth and other Yorkshire contemporaries. While in London, Moore extended his knowledge of primitive art and sculpture, studying the ethnographic collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. Moore's familiarity with primitivism and the influence of sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Frank Dobson led him to the method of direct carving, in which imperfections in the material and marks left by tools became part of the finished sculpture. After Moore married, the couple moved to a studio in Hampstead at 11a Parkhill Road NW3, joining a small colony of avant-garde artists who were taking root there. Shortly afterward, Hepworth and her second husband Ben Nicholson moved into a studio around the corner from Moore, while Naum Gabo, Roland Penrose, Cecil Stephenson and the art critic Herbert Read also lived in the area (Read referred to the area as "a nest of gentle artists"). This led to a rapid cross-fertilization of ideas that Read would publicise, helping to raise Moore's public profile. The area was also a stopping-off point for many refugee artists, architects and designers from continental Europe en route to America—some of whom would later commission works from Moore. In 1932, after six year's teaching at the Royal College, Moore took up a post as the Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art. Artistically, Moore, Hepworth and other members of The Seven and Five Society would develop steadily more abstract work, partly influenced by their frequent trips to Paris and their contact with leading progressive artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. Moore flirted with Surrealism, joining Paul Nash's modern art movement "Unit One", in 1933. In 1934, Moore visited Spain; he visited the cave of Altamira (which he described as the "Royal Academy of Cave Painting"), Madrid, Toledo and Pamplona. Moore made his first visit to America when a retrospective exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[28] Before the war, Moore had been approached by educator Henry Morris, who was trying to reform education with his concept of the Village College. Morris had engaged Walter Gropius as the architect for his second village college at Impington near Cambridge, and he wanted Moore to design a major public sculpture for the site. In the 1950s, Moore began to receive increasingly significant commissions. He exhibited Reclining Figure: Festival at the Festival of Britain in 1951, and in 1958 produced a large marble reclining figure for the UNESCO building in Paris. With many more public works of art, the scale of Moore's sculptures grew significantly and he started to employ an increasing number of assistants to work with him at Much Hadham, including Anthony Caro and Richard Wentworth. Moore produced at least three significant examples of architectural sculpture during his career. In 1928, despite his own self-described extreme reservations, he accepted his first public commission for West Wind for the London Underground Building at 55 Broadway in London, joining the company of Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill..At an introductory speech in New York City for an exhibition of one of the finest modernist sculptors, Alberto Giacometti, Sartre spoke of The beginning and the end of history...

Fine lithograph on deckle edged French Arches paper. Pencil signed and numbered from edition of 150. A Surrealist Judaica scene of a bearded man (Rabbi) in a boat with Shabbat candlesticks. with blindstamp from Editions Empreinte in Paris, France. (They published, Jean Michel Folon, Sempe, Raoul Ubac, Raymond Savignac, Cesar, Bengt Lindstrom , Paul Aizpiri and many other modern masters. Naftali Bezem (Hebrew: נפתלי בזם‎‎; born November 27, 1924) is an Israeli painter, muralist, and sculptor. Bezem was born in Essen, Germany, in 1924. His early adolescence was spent under Nazi oppression, in constant fear for the safety of his parents, who perished in the Holocaust in the Polish Auschwitz concentration camp. Naftali emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939, at the age of fourteen with a Youth Aliyah group. From 1943 to 1946, he studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem with Israeli painter Mordecai Ardon. He then spent three years studying in Paris.His most famous public works include a wall relief at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the ceiling mural in the main reception room at the President's Residence, Jerusalem.In 1957, Bezem was a co-recipient of the Dizengoff Prize for Painting. Group Exhibitions Orit Art Gallery, Tel Aviv Artists: Yosef Zaritsky, Marcel Janco, Lea Nikel, Robert Baser, Bezem, Michael Druks, Israeli Painting (Watercolors and Gouache) Artists: Pinchas Abramovich, Bezem, Naftali Nachum Gutman, Haim Gliksberg, Mordechai Levanon, Avigdor Stematsky, Avshalom Okashi, Yehiel Krize...

Pablo Picasso (after) "Tete De Mort, Lampe, Cruches Et Poireaux" limited edition print on Arches paper, Hand signed by Marina Picasso lower right and numbered 318/500 lower left From the estate of Pablo Picasso with an embossed blindstamp in the lower right side of the piece. After Pablo Picasso's death in 1973, his granddaughter Marina authorized the printing of these original lithographs, which have come to be known as the Picasso Estate...

Pablo Picasso (after) "Nature Morte au Verre" limited edition print on Arches paper, Hand signed by Marina Picasso lower right and numbered 277/500 lower left From the estate of Pablo Picasso with an embossed blindstamp in the lower right side of the piece. After Pablo Picasso's death in 1973, his granddaughter Marina authorized the printing of these original lithographs, which have come to be known as the Picasso Estate...

Silkscreen Serigraph print hand signed, numbered. Michail Grobman (Russian: Михаил Гробман, Hebrew: מיכאיל גרובמן‎‎, born 1939) is an artist and a poet working in Israel and Russia....

A fine Raymond John 'Jack' Coutu (1924-2017) ARE, ARCA. color lithograph/ engraving. 'Tree Root'. 6th of a 50 handmade edition by the artist.. circa 1959. Well listed Modern Artist. Signed and presented in the original framing. Raymond John "Jack" Coutu ARE ARCA (13 September 1924 – 17 May 2017) was an English printmaker, sculptor, etcher, engraver, carver, watercolourist and teacher. He was influenced by Oriental art.Jack Coutu was born Raymond John Coutu at Farnham, Surrey, England, and was educated at Farnham Grammar School.[ On leaving school in 1940, he worked at Abbott of Farnham, a coachbuilding company in Farnham, where his father Bert Coutu was also employed painting coats of arms and heraldic shields. In 1942, at the age of 18 during World War II, he joined the Royal Corps of Signals, where after training he served in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, and Singapore. At the end of WWII, he was in Kure, Japan, in the Hiroshima Prefecture. From 1947 to 1951, Coutu studied at the Farnham School of Art, followed by the Royal College of Art in London from 1951 to 1954 and the Central School of Art from 1951 to 1955. At the Central School of Art, Merlin Evans was an influence on Coutu's printmaking. Coutu taught printmaking at the Central School of Art from 1957 to 1965 and then at the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham from 1965 to 1985. In 1968, he started to carve netsuke (as practised in Japan) and he joined the Netsuke Kenkyukai Society, based in the United StatesHe is also a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and the Printmakers Council. Jack Coutu has exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, netsuke conventions, jointly with Michael Rothenstein...

Alexander Calder- Seascape Color lithograph on creme Arches paper, 1974 Edition of 150 Signed in pencil, lower right Numbered (105/ 150) in pencil, lower left With blindstamp, lower ...

A striking piece by Moore also presented in the Tate collection. Lithograph in colours, on Rives paper. A Printer’s Proof outside of a limited edition of 50, initialed in pencil. Ye...

Some People Together, 1974 Hand-signed and dated in pencil Color lithograph and screenprint Sheet 22 x 29 3/4 inches; 559 x 756 mm. Edition 110

Marc Chagall Le Rêve de Paris (Paris Dream), 1969-70 Color lithograph on Arches wove paper 35 3/8 in x 25 1/4 in (90 cm x 64 cm) 40 1/8 in x 28 1/8 in (101.8 cm x 71.5 cm) Numbered f...

Some People Together, 1974 Hand-signed and dated in pencil Color lithograph and screenprint Sheet 22 x 29 3/4 inches; 559 x 756 mm. Edition 110