Wassily Kandinsky

Allerheiligen- All Saints Day.

1911

WADSWORTH, Edward. Scene for a Fairy Tale, ca 1918. Woodcut printed in black on cream wove paper, Signed in pencil (which is rare for a Wadsworth rarely signed his woodcuts). Ref: Colnaghi 126. [Exhibited as Untitled Abstract] Edward Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life. He was also an engraver on wood and copper. In the First World War he was involved in transferring dazzle camouflage...

Signed J. Crash Matos, numbered in pencil 38/100 . Serigraph on paper CRASH (American, b.1961) John Matos is a Graffiti artist best known for his three-dimensional representation of lettering. Born John Matos in the Bronx, NY, he began spray painting on subway trains in his early teens, working alongside other pioneering American Graffiti artists, such as Dondi White...

Vintage Typographical Exhibition poster for the Kunstgewerbemuseum Sept 1979, Zurich, Switzerland. Fritz Gottschalk is a leading exponent and proponent of Swiss graphic design...

Rauschenberg, Robert. Poster Galerie Beyeler, Basel 2/84-4/84 screenprint in colors, 1984, on wove paper, from an unknown edition size, published by ...

'Improvisation 7' second ed. woodcut from 'Klänge' is a woodcut print created by Wassily Kandinsky. The present woodcut print comes from the second edition of 'Klänge (Sounds),' a book of original graphics and poetry by Wassily Kandinsky. The title of the album and of this print, 'Improvisation,' demonstrated Kandinsky's interest in music and how abstract musical forms could be translated into images on a two-dimensional surface. This particular composition is difficult to read, but through the abstraction, one can make out various figures and a landscape beyond. Originally carved and printed in 1911, this second edition print was done ca. 1938. It is a woodcut in black ink on woven paper. Signed with encircled 'K' in the block, lower right (from the book, signed in ink, ed. 117/300) Image Size: 7 1/2" x 5 inches Frame Size: 22 1/4" x 18 3/4" Ref. Roethel 124 Artist Bio: The Museum of Modern Art described 'Klänge (Sounds)' as follows: Vasily Kandinsky's self-described "musical album," Klänge (Sounds), consists of thirty-eight prose-poems he wrote between 1909 and 1911 and fifty-six woodcuts he began in 1907. In the woodcuts Kandinsky veiled his subject matter, creating increasingly indecipherable images (though the horse and rider, his symbol for overcoming objective representation, runs through as a leitmotif). This process proved crucial for the development of abstraction in his art. Kandinsky said his choice of media sprang from an "inner necessity" for expression: the woodcuts were not merely illustrative, nor were the poems purely verbal descriptions. Kandinsky sought a synthesis of the arts, in which meaning was created through the interaction of, and space between, text and image, sound and meaning, mark and blank space. The experimental typography shows his interest in the physical aspects of the book. Klänge is one of three major publications by Kandinsky that appeared shortly before World War I, alongside Über die Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) and the Blaue Reiter almanac...

This poster, published in 1971 for the Fondation Maeght, proudly boasts a lithographic rendering of Wassily Kandinsky's 1922 mural plans for the Juryfreie exhibition in Germany. It w...

Plate 12 From: 10 Origi, 1942 Signed in the block with the artist's initials lower left (printed) From: 10 Origin Not from the First edition 100, published by Allianz-Verlag, Zurich,...

Ecce Homo VII Woodcut, 1921 Signed, titled, and dated in pencil by the artist One of only three known impressions Created while the artist was studying at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. Extreme rarity-One of three know impressions Note: In 1921 Drewes went to the Bauhaus in Weimar, where, after completing the compulsory preliminary course with Johannes Itten, he continued to study with Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and Georg Muche and initially went to the wall painting workshop. He then traveled extensively through Europe, North America and Asia. After returning to Germany in 1927, he went back to the Bauhaus, this time to his new location in Dessau, where he studied in the classes of László Moholy-Nagy and Wassily Kandinsky. He was one of the first artists to introduce the groundbreaking concepts of the Bauhaus School in the United States through his painting, printmaking, and teaching. Condition: Excellent Missing small voids in the upper margin from removal of the original hinges. Image size: 9 7/8 x 8 3/16 inches Reference: Rose 30 Provenance: From the estate of Drewes's teacher at the Bauhaus. During the pasot WW2 the professor lived in East Germany. WERNER DREWES 1899-1985 Werner Drewes initially studied architecture before enrolling, in 1921-22, at the Bauhaus in Weimar under Klee, Kandinsky, Itten and Feininger. For four years - 1923 to 1927 - he travelled the world with his bride, before completing his Bauhaus training in Dessau in 1929. He immigrated to the United States in 1930, documenting that move to New York through series of woodcuts. In 1936/37 he was an active founder of the American Abstract Artists and participated in the Federal Arts Project in New York before moving on to a teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis. As an artist for over sixty five years, he employed various media from drawing and watercolor, through woodcut and etching, to painting and collage. Translating an early interest in subjective cubistic forms, his work evolved into nonobjective abstraction. He was creative until the day of his death. Courtesy: Toby C. Moss Werner Drewes (1899–1985) was a painter, printmaker, and art teacher. Considered to be one of the founding fathers of American abstraction, he was one of the first artists to introduce concepts of the Bauhaus school within the United States. His mature style encompassed both nonobjective and figurative work and the emotional content of this work was consistently more expressive than formal. Drewes was as highly regarded for his printmaking as for his painting. In his role as teacher as well as artist he was largely responsible for bringing the Bauhaus aesthetic to America. Early life and education Drewes was born in 1899 to Georg Drewes, a Lutheran pastor, and Martha Schaefer Drewes. The family lived in the village of Canig within Lower Lusatia, Germany. From age eight to eighteen he attended the Saldria Gymnasium, a boarding school in Brandenburg an der Havel. There, he showed talent both for painting and woodblock printing. Graduating from Saldria in 1917, he was drafted by the German army and served in France from then until the close of the war. About this period of his life he is reported to have said that the horrors of life at the front were only made tolerable by his sketchbook, a copy of Goethe's Faust and a volume of Nietzsche. For a decade following the close of the war he studied, made paintings and prints, and traveled widely. His friend, Herwarth Walden, helped shape his appreciation for expressionist literature and art. Walden produced the quarterly magazine, Der Sturm and ran a gallery of contemporary art, Galerie Der Sturm, from which, in 1919, Drewes purchased an expressionist painting by William Wauer titled Blutrausch (Bloodlust). In the same year he made the acquaintance of Heinrich Vogeler and participated in Vogeler's socialist utopian artists' commune, Barkenhoff, at Worpswede, Lower Saxony. In 1919 Drewes also enrolled at the Königlich Technischen Hochschule Charlottenburg to study architecture and the following year he studied the same subject at the Technischen Hochschule Stuttgart. Preferring art over architecture, he then enrolled in Stuttgart's school of applied arts (Kunstgewerbeschule) where he studied life drawing and learned to work with colored glass. At this time he joined a group of artists and architects associated with the newly formed Merz Akademie, a college of design, art, and media in Stuttgart. In 1921 his friendship with a French artist, Sébastien Laurent, led him to begin studies in Weimar at Bauhaus, then a new school which taught an integrated approach to the fine and applied arts. His instructors were Johannes Itten and Lyonel Feininger, whose paintings were expressionist and abstract, and Paul Klee, who taught bookbinding, stained glass, and murals. While at Bauhaus Drewes produced a portfolio of ten woodblock prints entitled "Ecce Homo." In 1923 and 1924 he studied art during travels throughout Italy, Spain, the United States, and Central America and in 1926 he traveled to San Francisco, Japan, and Korea, thence taking the Trans-Siberian railway to Manchuria, Moscow, and Warsaw. He later said the El Grecos he saw proved to be most influential in his work. While traveling, he exhibited: (1) etchings in Madrid (1923) and Montevideo (1924), oils and etchings in Buenos Aires and St. Louis (1925), and (3) etchings in San Francisco (1926). He paid his way by the sales these exhibits produced and by taking commissions to paint portraits. While in San Francisco he set up a shop from which he sold prints he had made in Spain and South America. After his return to Germany in 1927 he resumed study at Bauhaus, which had been forced to relocate in Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt. His instructors at that time were László Moholy-Nagy (metal work), Wassily Kandinsky, and (painting), and Lyonel Feininger (prints). At this time he also worked and exhibited in Frankfurt. With the rise of Nazism abstract artists found it increasingly difficult to sell their work and, in 1930, Drewes, finding the political pressure unbearable, emigrated to the United States. There, despite the world economic crisis, Drewes was able to earn a living as a professional artist. Mature style After Drewes moved to New York, Kandinsky, who was both friend and mentor, continued to exert a strong influence over his style. Later in life he said he had a hard time getting away from Kandinsky's influence as he developed his own style. In time he was able to bring a more emotional approach to his work and to base it, more than Kandinsky did, on natural forms. In 1930 Drewes had a solo exhibition at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and a two-person show at the S.P.R. Penthouse Gallery...