William Gropper

Yiddish Jewish Tailor Shtetl Americana Judaica Lithograph WPA Social Realist Art

Hand signed in pencil and numbered from the limited original edition. Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) 1920-2013 Bursa, Ottoman Turkish Empire Hovhannes "Jean" Semerdjian (Armenian: Հովհաննես "Ժանսեմ" Միրիջանի Սեմերջյան, 9 March 1920 – 27 August 2013), also known as Jean Jansem, was a French-Armenian painter. Jansem's artworks are internationally known, and are part of museum collections throughout France, Japan and the United States. A Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2002). He was awarded by the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1953 and by the Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 2003. The President of Armenia awarded Jansem a Medal of Honor for his “reinforcement of Armenian-French cultural ties.” Hovhannes Semerdjian was born in 1920 in Bursa, then in the Ottoman Empire. In 1922, his family fled to Greece. He spent his childhood in Thessaloniki. They arrived to Issy-les-Moulineaux suburb of Paris, France in 1931 when he was 11 and that is when he begin to paint. The first professional schools for Jansem became the academies of Montparnasse (1934–1936). He studied in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. His teachers were Maurice Brianchon, Raymond Legueult and Roland Oudot. Jansem also studied at the Sabatie studio for a year. Early paintings by Jansem were mainly on national issues. Known for his washy representational paintings of figure, landscape, marine and genre scenes of European subjects: fishermen and children of Greece, bullfighting in Spain, Italian landscapes and markets, scenes of Venice and French France village marketplaces and landscapes, nude women, still lifes, and figures, Jansem painted with a variety of media that included gouache, watercolor, ink, and oil painting in a stylized and textural aesthetic. had individual exhibitions in Paris, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Rome, Brussels, Lausanne, Beirut etc. His work was shown by the prominent Wally Findlay Galleries in New York, Paris, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills (they show many important artists including Gaston Sebire, Henri Maik, Gen Paul, Jean Pierre Cassigneul, Jean Dufy, Gustavo Novoa, Nicola Simbari, Dietz Edzard, Suzanne Eisendieck, Constantin Kluge, Louis Valtat, Michael Vollbracht...

Francois Gilot, (1921-) studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and then, encouraged by her father, studied international law, though she secretly also took art lessons a...

Rare Original limited edition lithograph, printed by Mourlot in Paris, France on vélin du Marais watermarked paper. this is not signed as issued. This is from a signed and numbered ...

Abstract Composition, 1959 Silkscreen Lithograph "Phoenix". This was from a portfolio which included works by Yosl Bergner, Menashe Kadishman, Yosef Zaritsky, Aharon Kahana, Jacob Wexler, Moshe Tamir and Michael Gross. Bergner, Yosl (Vladimir Jossif) (b Vienna, 13 Oct 1920). surrealist, surrealism. belongs to the generation of people uprooted from childhood landscapes and forced by circumstance to build a life elsewhere. Uniquely, he became an Israeli without shedding his Jewish cosmopolitan-refugee identity, an identity he zealously guarded in the melting pot of Israel of the "fifties" and "sixties". In the years that have passed since he acquired his art education at the Melbourne National Gallery Art School in Australia, concepts in the art world have changed many times over. from the Jewish paintings and the depictions of Australian Aborigines through the children of safed, the wall paintings, the masks, the angels and kings, the still lifes, the "Surrealistic" paintings, the toys and flowers, the paintings inspired by the Bird-head Haggada, the Kafka paintings, the Pioneers, the Kimberley fantasy (about his father's excursion in 1933 to northern Australia, in search of a "territory for the Jews"), Brighton Beach and the seascapes inspired by Eugene Boudin, through the chairs in the "Kings of Nissim Aloni" episode to the "Zionists" and the recent "Tahies". "During the six years that Bergner has lived in Israel," wrote Eugene KoIb, Direct. or of the Tel Aviv Museum, in the catalog of the Bergner exhibit in 1957, "he has established himself among Israeli artists." Bergner was indeed one of the artists who represented Israel in the Venice Biennial (1956; 1958) and in the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1957; this, in spite of the fact that Yosl Bergner did not harness his art to serve the Zionist ethos, that being, at the time, the order of the day (his paintings were in fact rejected at first as being those of a "Diaspora Jew"); he didn't "naturalize" himself by alliance to the country's landscape or its special light, nor did he turn to abstract painting. Painter of "the Jewish condition". the painter involved in Nissim Aloni's theater and the popular illustrator of poetry books and literary texts, he stuck to the narrative which drew its images from his childhood world, from Yiddish and from the Jewish culture of Poland in whose bosom he grew, with its literature, theater and fantasy. From this point of view his position as an "outsider", first in Australia and later in Israel, like that of the European Jew on the periphery of the dominant culture, afforded him a special dialectic vantage point from which to view his human and cultural surroundings. He was and remains a figurative painter even when he verges on the abstract. Israeli painter of Austrian birth, active in Australia. He grew up in Warsaw. His father, the pseudonymous Jewish writer Melech Ravitch, owned books on German Expressionism, which were an early influence. Conscious of rising anti-Semitism in Poland, Ravitch visited Australia in 1934 and later arranged for his family to settle there. Bergner arrived in Melbourne in 1937. Poor, and with little English, his struggle to paint went hand-in-hand with a struggle to survive. In 1939 he attended the National Gallery of Victoria’s art school and came into contact with a group of young artists including Victor O’Connor (b 1918) and Noel Counihan...

Rare vintage limited edition Stone Lithograph printed at Mourlot in Paris. this is from a signed and numbered portfolio but the individual sheets are not hand signed and numbered. Francois Gilot, (1921-) studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and then, encouraged by her father, studied international law, though she secretly also took art lessons at the same time. In 1943, during her first exhibition in Paris, Gilot (then 21) met Pablo Picasso (who was 61) for the first time. In 1946, Gilot started a 10-year relationship with the notorious womanizer and had two of his children,Claude and Paloma. As a result of her relationship with Picasso, Gilot "became both a witness and a participant in one of the last great periods of the modern art movement in Europe. Their circle included poets, philosophers, writers, and many of the legends of the art world, such as Braque, Chagall, Cocteau and Matisse. In 1953, Gilot left Picasso and the home they shared in Vallauris and moved back to Paris. "Lithographs are printed from stones and each stone is an echo of my artistic voice," said Gilot. "Many artists use their art as a personal catharsis. I have never done that. I am more intellectual. Each artistic process -- oils, lithographs, monotypes -- allows me a different freedom and suits a different mood." While Gilot did her first lithograph in 1950 at the Mourlot Atelier, the same studio used by Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Jean Miro and Jean Dubuffet, it was in the 1970s that she really began to experiment with the process. "In the beginning I turned to lithography because I wanted to show off my technical skills. Now I am more interested in color," said Gilot. "I also thought that lithographs would make my works more accessible to young collectors." While her oils are priced up to $100,000, her lithographs begin at $2,000 and her monotypes range from $1,000 to $2,500. HONORS Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, Presidence de la Republique, France Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, Ministere de la Culture, France SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris Musee Picasso, Antibes, France National Acadamy of Design, New York Musee de Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel Museum of Modern Art, New York Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (complete collection of original prints) SELECTED IMPORTANT EXHIBITION CATALOGUES 2012 Françoise Gilot, Paris - Vallauris, 1943 - 1953, The Gagosian Gallery, New York Essays: John Richardson, Françoise Gilot, Charles Stuckey and Michael Cory 2011 Françoise Gilot, at 90, Drawings 1941 - 2010, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany Essays: Françoise Gilot and Louise Tolliver Deutschman (exhibition curator) 2006 Françoise Gilot, Portraits From a Life, The Elkon Gallery Inc., New York 2003 Françoise Gilot Painting...

Hand signed in pencil and numbered. A very small edition. Old Lower East Side of New York or East European Shtetl. Jewish Shtetl Hasidic Klezmer Musicians. humorous Yiddish Chassidic art. The New-York born artist William Gropper was a painter and cartoonist who, with caricature style, focused on social concerns, and was actively engaged in support of the organized labor movement throughout his career. This original color lithograph print is done in the iconic style of the artist's oeuvre. Born to Harry and Jenny Gropper in 1897, William was raised in New York City's Lower East Side. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Romania and Ukraine, and young William grew up in relative poverty, watching his family struggle to achieve that sought-after American dream. His father, a bright and college-educated man, was unable to find employment that worthy of his intellect. His mother, meanwhile, worked as a seamstress from home. Coupled with the devastating loss of an aunt to the infamous Triangle Factory fire of 1911, significant childhood factors created the foundation that led to Gropper’s exploration of the American experience. Early on, Gropper displayed an extraordinary, natural skill for art. By 1912, he was already studying under the instruction of George Bellows and Robert Henri at the Ferrer School in Greenwich Village. During his time at school, Gropper was also awarded a prestigious scholarship to study at the National Academy of Design. However, he refused to fit into convention and was swiftly expelled from the Academy. After his expulsion, Gropper returned home to help financially by assisting his mother and taking a shop position. However, he didn't abandon art academia and soon presented a portfolio to the New York School of Fine Art which earned him a scholarship for study. Gropper obtained his first significant job as a cartoonist for the New York Tribune in 1917. While working as a staff cartoonist for the Tribune, he also contributed drawings to publications like Vanity Fair, New Masses, The Nation, and Freiheit. His interest in the welfare of the American worker, class inequality, and social injustice was central in his work. After publishing the graphic novel Alley Oop in 1930, Gropper's illustration career extended well into the decade. However, he was never exempt from controversy, and his 1935 Vanity Fair cartoon; prompted anger from the Japanese government. As an involved labor organizer and Social Realist activist, Gropper continued to bring attention to his radical reputation with visits to the Soviet Union and Poland. However, his concern with European politics and U.S. social causes didn't slow down his artistic career, and by the late 1930s, he had produced significant murals for American cities like Washington D.C. His 1938 mural Construction of a Dam was commissioned for the Department of the Interior and represents the Social-Realism style that depicts experiences of the worker and everyday societal life. Measuring at a staggering 27ft by 87ft, the piece portrays muscular, robust American laborers scaling rocky hillsides, building infrastructure, and operating heavy machinery. The mural feels undeniably American with golden scenery, denim blues, and steely gray colors. Gropper fits perfectly into Social-Realism because the style exhibits an illustrative flair with strong lines and simple, bold hues. The inspiration for Construction of a Dam sprang from his 1937 travels to the poverty-stricken Dust Bowl area. The trip was sponsored by a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and his drawings of the Grand Coulee and Boulder Dams...

Printed in 1975, this poster features the encounter between an alluring woman dressed in red, and a man with his back to the viewer. The light of a streetlamp is beautifully imitated...

Lucille Fink creates slightly bizarre, densely drawn spaces. Signed, titled, and numbered '19,' in pencil. Annotated on the reverse, "June, 1932, week of 6-10-32, last wk of school."...

Work by Alicia Wiencek (Mrs. Edward Fiene) is generally extremely scarce. This print comes up from time to time and was made an actual edition (of 8) at a time when many artists didn...

Lucille Fink creates densely drawn compositions, often a little off-beat. Signed and titled. Dated on the reverse.

The full title really should be ...And So I Give Your The Next President of the United States. The scene is the Republican Convention, in Philadelphia, in 1948. There are so many fas...

Joseph Hirsch had such empathy for his subjects! But he was also an amazingly skilled lithographer who could get extremely delicate details out of the stone. Signed and numbered in p...