Robert A. Birmelin

The Burning Tower

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 natu...

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 natu...

Karl Eugene Fortess (1907-1993) Original color lithographs on BFK Rives paper, 1966, Hand signed and numbered 29/36 in pencil, Sheet size 20.5 x 15 inches. Karl E. Fortess (1907-1993) was a painter, printmaker and teacher, of Boston, Massachusetts and Woodstock, N.Y. Fortess was born in Antwerp, Belgium on October 13, 1907, and became an American citizen in 1923. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League in New York, and the Woodstock School of Painting with Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration sent him and several other artists to Alaska to document the towns, villages, and remote wilderness landscapes (Pemberton, “Alaska art museum collects WPA’s Depression works from the territory,” Columbia Daily Tribune, November 9, 2003). Trains, trucks, and industrial buildings were what Karl Fortess envisioned when the Public Works of Art Project suggested that he depict “the American Scene.” His work bears the influence of Surrealism, Russsian Constructivist art and Cubism. He was part of a circle of left leaning artists loosley involved with the WPA which included Sol Wilson, Isaac Soyer, Louis Lozowick, Abraham Harriton, Ben Shahn, William Gropper, Nahum Tschacbasov, Morris Shulman, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Louis Slobodkin, Adolf Dehn, Le Corbusier and Louis Schanker. Karl Fortress taught at the Art Students League, Brooklyn Museum Art School, Louisiana State University, Fort Wright College, and Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts. He was a member of the Artists Equity Association, Society of American Graphic Artists, American Association of University Professors, and the British Film Institute. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946, was named an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1960 and elected to full Academician in 1971. Fortess taught at many different schools, including Boston University School of Fine Art, where he also created an archive of interviews with more than two hundred and fifty contemporary American painters, sculptors, and graphic artists including many with with artists associated with the Woodstock, N.Y. art community. Among the interviewees are Kenneth Armitage, Will Barnet, Romare Bearden, George Biddle, James Brooks, Adolph Dehn, Jane Freilicher, Julian Levi, Alice Neel, Larry Rivers, Moses Soyer, Dorothy Varian...

Abel Pann (1883–1963) was a European Jewish painter who settled in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem in the early twentieth century and taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art under...

Otto Kuhler, 'The Furnace', drypoint, edition 26, 1924, Kennedy 5. Signed and annotated 'Drypoint. Ltd Ed. Del. et imp.' in pencil. Titled in pencil, in the bottom center sheet edge....

Ivan Theimer, Czech (1944 - ) - Le Leze II, Year: 1982, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 200, Size: 21 x 30 in. (53.34 x 76.2 cm)

Tower of Babel is an original digital print on cardboard realized by Chinese artist Zhuang Zexi. Hand-signed on the rear. Good conditions. The artwo...

Shift Change Mike Goscinsky, American (1933–2021) Woodblock on thin wove paper, signed, titled and numbered in pencil Edition of 15/75 Image Size: 14 x 19 inches Size: 22 x 26.5 in. ...