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Robert A. Birmelin
The Tower

About the Item

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Robert Birmelin became a professor of fine arts at Queens College in New York, and is known for paintings that magnify through texture the realism of nature. He earned his BA in 1956 and his MFA in 1960 from Yale School of Art and Architecture and also studied at Cooper Union and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 1960, he earned a Fulbright Scholarship, which took him to the Slade School of Art in London. His work has been acquired by 40 public collections including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art and Washington’s Hirshorn Museum. Among the various art magazines and journals where articles on Mr. Birmelin’s work have appeared are Art In America, American Artists, and Art Forum. Additionally, he has received numerous grants and awards from such organizations as The American Academy in Rome, The National Endowment for the Arts, The American Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, Mr. Birmelin found his principal inspiration in the streets of New York where he was fascinated by the energy and diversity of city life. His large paintings evoke movement, using focus and depth manipulations to suggest a close spatial and psychological relationship between the viewer and the world Birmelin has depicted. Hands often play an important role in these works, as exemplified by “The Twenty Dollars Bill.” From 1993 to 2000, he became absorbed by memory, its unreliability and contradictions. These paintings are of states of mind, structured as a series of “reversible compositions,” which initially present a credible depiction of a place, and then after a moment, reveal insoluble contradictions created by contrasting opposing images of equal visual weight. A new series of images of the life of the urban crowd was begun in 2001 and continues to the present. Many of these paintings have a sweeping sense of the choreography of masses of people in motion and reflect the tensions of contemporary urban reality. Selected Grants and Scholarships 1960-61 U.S. Government Grant (Fulbright) for study in the United Kingdom 1961-64 The American Academy in Rome 1955 National Institute of Arts and Letters 1973 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 1976, 1982, 1990 National Endowment for the Arts 2005 The Joan Mitchell Foundation 1980, 1988, 1998, 2006 The New Jersey State Council on the Arts Selected Public Collections Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Hirschorn Museum, Washington, DC Hood Art Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Library of Congress, Washington, DC The Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY The Museum of the City of New York The Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagoaka, Japan The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY National Academy of Design, New York, NY New York Historical Society, New York, NY New York Public Library, New York, NY San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
  • Creator:
    Robert A. Birmelin (1933-2003, American)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 16.5 in (41.91 cm)Width: 13.38 in (33.99 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38210570232

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Apeles Fenosa Spanish Sculptor Mourlot Lithograph Abstract Expressionist Figures
By Apelles Fenosa
Located in Surfside, FL
This is from a hand signed, limited edition (edition of 125) folio or full page lithographs some having a poem verso. The individual sheets are not signed or numbered. This listing is just for the one sheet, not for the cover sheet or the signed sheet. This was printed at Mourlot in Paris, France, on velin D'Arches paper. Apel les Fenosa i Florensa (1899 - 1989) lived in Spain. Apelles Fenosa is known for Expressionist Sculpture. Artist's alternative names: Apel·les Fenosa, Apelles Fenosa Spanish Sculptor Fenosa was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1899 and as a young man worked in the studio of sculptor Enrique Casanovas where he came into contact with the ideas and adherents of the Modernist Movement and its influence in Barcelona, Paris and other European cities. In 1917 he founded together with Joan Rebull, Josep Granyer and Josep Viladomat the group The Evolutionists. He arrived in Paris in 1921. There he quickly gravitated into the Parisian avant garde artist community and became friends with Pablo Picasso, who became an early patron of his work, buying a significant number of his sculptures, and with the sculptor Max Jacob. By 1924 Fenosa was exhibiting in Paris and in his native city of Barcelona. Max Jacob wrote the preface to the catalogs of Fenosa's first Paris exhibition, and his show at the Zborowski gallery in 1928. In 1931 Fenosa was in Catalonia when the Second Spanish Republic was declared. There he remained in order to work with the anarchist movement and participate in the Republican ranks during the Spanish Civil War. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1936 and with the coming to power of the Franco Fascist regime left Spain once again to settle in Paris. In 1942, he met the painter and poet, Paul Eluard, who became a close friend. In 1944, the Comite de Liberation du Limousin (Organization for the Liberation of the Limousin) commissions a sculpture to commemorate the Nazi killings of Oradour-sur-Glane. He creates the "Monument aux Martyrs d'Oradour-sur-Glane" (Monument to the Martyrs of Oradour) presently in Limoges. From 1946 Fenosa exhibited individually or collectively in Paris, London, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Prague, New York, Tokyo, Rabat, Osaka, Casablanca, Carrara. His personal exhibition catalogs are prefaced by the most famous writers and poets of his time, including Paul Eluard, Jean Cocteau, Jules Supervielle, Josep Carner, Alexandre Cirici-Pellicer, Francis Ponge, Pablo Neruda, Michel Cournot, Roger Caillois, Salvador Espriu. He was part of a generation of Spanish and Catalan artists that included Jose Amat Pages, Ramon Pichot, Alfredo Opisso Cardona, Ramon Aguilar More, Juan Cardona Llados, Josep Miquel Serrano, Ignacio Zuloaga Y Zabaleta, Andre Beaudin, Francisco Domingo Y Segura, Jose Armet Y Portanel, Jose Ventosa Domenech, Antonio Vila Arrufat, Montserrat Gudiol Corominas, Juan Abello Prat, Francesc Artigau. In 1981, the UNESCO commissions a bronze sculpture given every year to the laureate of the Unesco Prize for Peace Education. Fenosa creates L'Olivier, the "Olive Tree", symbol of peace and attribute of the poet. In 1982, he receives the Gold Medal of the Government of Catalonia, in 1983 the Legion d'Honneur ( French Legion of Honour) and in 1987 the Gold Medal of Barcelona. He is commissioned to make a bronze sculpture award for the Joan Crexells Narrative Prize, the premier Catalan language literary prize awarded by the Ateneo Barcelonés to the best narrative work in Catalan published during the previous year. Selected Solo Exhibitions 2021 Apel·Les Fenosa ,Galeria Marc Domenech ,Barcelona, Spain Selected Group Exhibitions 2022 Figurative Expressionism ,Galeria Marc Domenech ,Barcelona, Spain (with Josep Guinovart and Jean Dubuffet) 2021 The point of sculpture ,Fundació Joan Miro ,Barcelona, Spain 2019 Picasso and the Exodus. A history of Spanish art in resistance, Les Abattoirs ,Toulouse, France (with Oscar Dominguez, Antoni Clavé, Josep Renau...
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1970s Expressionist Figurative Prints

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Located in Surfside, FL
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1970s Expressionist Figurative Prints

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