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American Modern Art

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Style: American Modern
Period: 1940s
Inevitable Day – Birth of the Atom oil and tempera painting by Julio De Diego
Located in Hudson, NY
Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Bibliography Art in America, April 1951, p.78 About this artists: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Masonite, Oil, Tempera

1945 Pastel Drawing Girl with Flower American Modernist
Located in Surfside, FL
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Frank Kleinholz was a painter based in New York City whose work spanned several art movements including Expressionism and Social Realism. His early works ...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Oil Pastel

Original "We the Peoples of the United Nations" 1945 vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original United Nations 1945 vintage poster. We the Peoples of the United Nations" The opening phrase "We the peoples of the United Nations.", echoing the preamble of the United States Constitution...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Original "Point Bleu Radio" vintage poster, faithful reflection of the world
Located in Spokane, WA
Original lithograph: POINT BLEU RADIO. Artist: Pierre. Baudouin (1921 - 1971). Size is 31" x 47". Archival linen backed and ready to frame. Cleaned and restored rare original French antique...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Six O'Clock
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Original "The Beaches and Alaska" 1948 Holiday newsstand vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Holiday Magazine "The Beaches and Alaska" Newsstand Vintage Poster Features:- - This is an original 1948 Holiday poster created for the magazine The Beaches and Alaska edition. - The image features a billowing beach umbrella, a couple running with their air mattress into the ocean, beach ball blankets, music, and more. - The poster is in excellent condition, archivally linen-backed and ready to frame. - This would make a great addition to any collection or as a gift for someone who loves the beach. Description:- This is a beautiful and rare original 1948 Holiday poster created for the magazine's The Beaches and Alaska edition. The image features a billowing beach umbrella, a couple running with their air mattress into the ocean, beach ball blankets, music, and more. The poster is in excellent condition, archivally linen-backed and ready to frame. This would make a great addition to any collection or as a gift for someone who loves the beach. Holiday was a US travel magazine from 1928 - 1977, first published by the AAA (American Automobile Association) until the mid 40's when it was sold to Curtis Publishing Company who ran the magazine until 1977, when it was sold to Travel Magazine who merged it with their publication to form Travel Holiday. A fun beach scene poster...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

1940s Oil Painting Portrait of Two Figures, American Modernist Figurative
Located in Denver, CO
Oil on canvas signed by artist Angelo Di Benedetto (1913-1992) featuring two young figures reading a book together while sitting from 1947. Painted in shades of green, orange, red, gray, and green. Image measures 28 x 38 inches, framed dimensions are 33 ¾ x 39 ¾ inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born New Jersey 1913 Died Central City, CO 1992 The son of Italian immigrants from the Salerno province in southern Italy, as a teenager Di Benedetto worked to study at the Cooper Union Art School in New York City (1930-34) from which he graduated with a certificate in freehand drawing. He won a scholarship to the Boston Museum Art School where he studied for three years, beginning in 1934. In 1937, he entered his first juried exhibition at the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, winning first prize and first honorable mention. In December 1938, the Royal Netherlands Steamship Line sent him on a two-month ethnological study trip to Haiti, his first exposure to a different environment outside the United States. In 1940, his Haitian paintings were exhibited at the Montross Gallery in New York – his first solo show. Before World War II, Di Benedetto traveled extensively around the United States doing regional paintings. During the war in 1941, Di Benedetto volunteered for a secret mission based in Eritrea, Africa before the Allied invasion. Following Africa, he served as an orientation officer and aerial photographic officer in the District of Columbia. In 1945 he was assigned to a mapping unit at Buckley Airfield in Denver where he served until his discharge in 1946. Like many other servicemen stationed at the time in Colorado, Di Benedetto chose to remain in Colorado, impressed by the state’s physical grandeur and healthful climate. He settled in the old mining town of Central City in 1947. In 1949 Di Benedetto and his wife, ceramist Lee Porzio, opened the Benpro Art School in his studio where he conducted summer art classes. In 1950, Di Benedetto teamed up with Frank Vavra...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Trout Fishing on the Gunnison (Colorado)
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Trout Fishing on the Gunnison (Colorado) Lithograph, 1941 Signed and dated '42 in pencil lower right Annotated lower left: "40 Prints-The Gunnison River, Colorado-For Anne & Jack" Ed...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Portrait of Artist's Wife with Fruit, 1945 American Modern Oil Painting
By Hayes Lyon
Located in Denver, CO
Untitled (Portrait of Bessy Lyon, Artist Wife) is an oil on canvas painting by Hayes Lyon (1901-1987) from 1945. Presented in a wood frame, outer dimensions measure 35 ¼ x 29 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 30 x 24 inches. About the Artist: A native of Athol, Kansas, Lyon is primarily associated with Colorado. After several summer vacations at the Boulder Chautauqua and at Manitou near Colorado Springs, his family relocated in 1920 to Boulder where his father had a lumber business. Nine years later they settled in Denver where his father owned the Acme Lumber Company. To comply with his desire for his son’s financial self-reliance, Lyon graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1931 with a B.A. degree in economics. But shortly thereafter he returned to his first love – art – that ultimately became his career. His interest in the arts was nurtured by his mother, herself a talented amateur artist, and by two of his aunts who served as role models. Beginning in 1932, he pursued a five-year course of study at the Chappell School of Art in Denver which by then had become part of the University of Denver. During his time at the school he studied with John E. Thompson and Santa Fe artist, Józef Bakoś. He also met two other Santa Fe-based artists, Willard Nash and B.J.O. Nordfeldt, when they exhibited at Chappell House, then the home of the Denver Art Museum. Lyon likewise attended the Cooke-Daniels Lecture Series there on the arts in the 1930s. Following graduation with a B.F.A. degree from the University of Denver in 1937, he studied privately for about a year with Andrew Dasburg in Taos, New Mexico, that redirected his attention to the rugged Rocky Mountain landscape, which he saw with directness and painted with an economy of means. His canvas, Winter Vista, done following his study with Dasburg, received the Edward J. Yetter Memorial Prize at the 45th Annual Exhibition of the Denver Art Museum in 1939. The painting was reproduced in the September 1939 issue of the Magazine of Art (Washington, DC). That same year his painting, Mount Evans, was included as one of Colorado’s entries in the American Art Today Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The money he received from the Yetter Prize financed his trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara in 1939 to see firsthand the frescoes of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera and the easel paintings of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their work was admired by many Americans who participated in the WPA-era mural projects in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s. The economic fallout from the Great Depression affecting many American artists at the time likewise resulted in Lyon’s participation in the Colorado Art Project, part of the WPA’s national program. Under its auspices he produced three murals in 1940 about the pioneer era of Fort Lupton, Colorado, which were installed in the auditorium of the local high school. Covering 367 square feet of wall space, one of the murals – Behold the West (the largest one) – incorporates the old fort for which the town is named. Before Lyon painted the murals, the students at Fort Lupton High School researched the history of their community and contributed to their cost, facilitating the murals’ allocation to their school under the Colorado Art Project. In the early 1940s Lyon shifted his focus to two new subjects – bathers, and canyons with conifers – reflecting his ongoing search for personal artistic growth. However, his reliance on structure to create form in his paintings and works on paper alienated some of his longtime followers. Nonetheless, his painting Conifers and Canyons won recognition at the 47th Annual Exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. The watercolor version of the piece was among three hundred works in that medium selected by John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Eliot O’Hara from a national competition held by the Section of Fine Arts (Federal Works Agency) and shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 1941. Later that year Lyon spent time in California where he saw Orozco’s Prometheus, influencing him to increase his range of originality and expression. In 1942 Lyon enlisted in the U.S. Army, spending almost three years in the Mediterranean Theater – Africa and Italy – preparing camouflage operations and scale models of proposed landing sites. He used his free time in Italy to expand his artistic vocabulary by seeing cultural masterpieces in Rome, Florence, Siena and Milan, and through his extensive contact with Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica art movement, and Gino Severini, a leading member of the Futurist movement. Because of Lyon’s low army rank and pay, de Chirico did a small watercolor for him signing it, "For Mr. Lyon; G de Chirico, 1944." Lyon often visited de Chirico and his wife, Isa, at their apartment near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Following his Army discharge in 1945 fellow Kansas native, Ward Lockwood, invited him to join the Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught painting from 1946 to 1951. During this period some of Lyon’s work employed the palette of the School of Paris which he had seen while stationed in Europe, while other paintings had a certain flatness found in some of Lockwood’s work from the 1930s. From 1951 to 1953 he was affiliated with the Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin as an illustrator and editor of the employee magazine. In 1953, following time spent in Mexico, he returned to Denver, working as an illustrator at Lowry Air Force Base until retirement in 1961. During that time he did little of his own art because he also was designing and building a home in Arvada, Colorado, and re-establishing himself in the Denver art community after a decade-long absence. His painting, Autumn Aspens (1953-present location unknown) illustrates his experimentation with abstraction. In the early 1960s he began painting from memory that continued until the steadily degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s disease took their toll a decade later. He depicted scenes from his wartime European sojourn and from his early adulthood. The latter include Souvenir of Boulder (1962), a nostalgic return to his boyhood home in Boulder; and Holly Mayer and Friends, a painting of Glenn Miller and his musicians, inspired by Lyon’s first encounter with jazz in Boulder in the 1920s. His lifelong passion for vintage cars and automobile racing...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Original "Our America, #2 Producing Motion Pictures" vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original: Our America Motion Pictures # 2. Printed: 1943 by the Coca-Cola Company. Archival linen backed. Excellent condition. Lithograph. Linen bac...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

'Self-Portrait with Black Hat' — 1940s American Impressionism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Robert Philipp, 'Self-Portrait with Black Hat', ink and color pastel, c. 1945. Signed in ink, lower right. A fine, spontaneous drawing, on heavy, buff wove paper; the artist's tack holes in the top and bottom left sheet corners, minor rippling in the bottom sheet edge; otherwise in good condition. Image size 16 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches; sheet size 19 1/4 x 12 3/4 inches. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Provenance: Art Students League, from the artist’s personal portfolio. ABOUT THE ARTIST Robert Philipp (1895–1981) was a celebrated American Post-Impressionist painter known for his nudes, still lifes, and portraits. Noted art critic Henry McBride named Philipp one of America's top six painters of his generation. Philipp was an instructor of painting at the Art Students League, New York, for 33 years. Philipp was Secretary of the National Academy of Design, a National Academician, and a Benjamin Franklin Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts in London. His composition and painting style has been compared to the art of Edgar Degas and Pierre Auguste Renoir. In 1940, Philipp was invited to Los Angeles by Hollywood producer Louis B. Mayer to paint portraits of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie stars. The same year, Walter Wanger, producer of ‘The Long Voyage Home’, directed by John Ford and based on plays by Eugene O'Neill, contracted with Reeves Lewenthal, head of the Associated American Artists gallery in Manhattan, to bring nine well-known artists to the set and paint scenes from the movie and portraits of the actors in character. The artists included Robert Philipp, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Ernest Fiene, George Schreiber, Luis...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Pastel, Ink

Rabbit Hunters
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Rabbit Hunters, egg tempera on Masonite, 12 x 9 inches, 1947, signed and dated lower left, signed, titled and dated verso “Rabbit Hunters Egg Tempera Roger Medearis 1947,” exhibited ...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Tempera, Board

'The Lamentation' — Mid-century Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
'The Lamentation', lithograph, 1941, edition 35, Fine and Looney 198. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Ed 35' in pencil. Initialed in the stone, lower ri...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Original "RADIO L. M. T. La Meilleure Tonalite" vintage French radio poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original poster: Radio L.M.T. "La Meilleure Tonalite". Elle l'aime tant. French antique vintage poster for the L. M. T. Radio. The radio wit...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Original "Our America, #4, the Future for Electrical Power" vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Coca-Cola: Our America Electricity #4, original vintage poster, archival linen backed, mint condition, horizontal, ready to frame. Light, Power...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Bathers
Located in West Hollywood, CA
We are proud to present outstanding original oil on canvas by American artist William Gropper (1897-1977.) William Gropper was an artist and illustrator, known for his exceptional a...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

'Havoc in Heaven' — Mid-Century Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Benton Spruance, 'Havoc in Heaven', lithograph, 1948, edition 30-35, Fine and Looney 270. Signed, titled, and numbered 'Ed 35' in pencil. Initialed in the stone, lower right. Printed...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Spring , Modernist Native American Ceremonial Scene and Cultural Commentary
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Spring" is a 25 x 30 inches, oil on canvas painting by American modernist and surrealist, female artist Peter Miller. The work is signed and titled on verso, and painted in a vibran...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Original "You Help Build The B-29 (bomber)" vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original. You Help Build the B-29 vintage poster. Linen-backed World War II poster. Restored original fold marks. This original vintage US Army Offi...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, Monroe Wheeler, and George Platt Lynes on a Beach
Located in London, GB
Silver gelatin print, with numeric notation and stamp of collection of Jon Anderson (verso), 12cm x 18cm (41cm x 44cm framed). Jon Anderson was Paul Cadmus' partner of 35 years. The picture depicts the artists Paul Cadmus and George Tooker, the photographer, George Platt Lynes, and publisher, Monroe Wheeler. The painter Paul Cadmus (1904 - 1999) and married artists Jared (1902 - 1989) and Margaret French (1906 - 1998) comprise the photographic collaborative known by their acronym, PaJaMa. Beginning in 1937, and over the course of nearly two decades, the trio collectively staged photographs set against the backdrops of Fire Island, Provincetown, and Nantucket, among other locations. Their psychologically and sexually charged images often served as studies for the artists' subsequent paintings and works on paper. The statuesque quality of the figures and the stillness of each scenario are key characteristics of PaJaMa’s photographs...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Salutations, Architectural Abstract Scene, Cultural and Spiritual Commentary
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Salutations" is a 12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas painting by American modernist and surrealist, female artist Peter Miller. The work is painted in a vibrant color palette. The painti...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Original "Save Your Cans, Help pass the Ammunition" vintage military poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original. "Save Your Cans, Help pass the Ammunition" vintage poster. Prepare your tin cans for war. Linen-backed; very good condition, ready to frame. Produced for the Salvage Division War PRODUCTION Board. Text continues: 1. Remove tops and bottoms, 2. take off paper labels, 3. wash thoroughly, 4. flatten firmly. War Production Board seal in the bottom left corner. Artist: McClelland Barclay, USNR. During World War II, the U.S. Government aggressively asked Americans to contribute to the war effort through recycling measures such as saving cans. A woman's arm holding a tomato can appears on the bottom right side of the poster. The can image is repeated and runs into the vintage poster image...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Original 1941 "World Premier" US 1-sheet vintage movie poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original "World Premiere." Vintage movie poster. Linen-backed and in good condition for a poster created during World War 2. NSS: 41/347. Certificate of Authenticity. This is an original, theater-used US 1-sheet to the comedy starring John Barrymore...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Vintage "Cycles Alphonse Thomann", 50th Anniversary bicycle poster 1949 lithog
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Cycles Alphonse Thomann” 50th Anniversary vintage poster. Printed in 1949. Artist: Pier Gobbe. Printer: Imp. Lafayette, Paris, France. Archival linen backed and ready to frame. The color palate of this vintage poster is mainly light blue and orange. The paper is unbleached natural cotton paper with a tan tone. You can feel the speed of this bicycle as it is racing downhill. A set of wings in the center tire allows it to fly along the road. Perfect for any bicycle poster...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Arising
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Arising Mezzotint, 1942 Signed in pencil lower right (see photo) Publisher : Issued by the Miniature Print Collectors Society. Edition: 200 Condition: Mint Archival framing with Museum Glass Image/Plate size: 2 3/8 x 2 7/8 inches Sheet size: 3 3/4 x 4 5/8 inches Archival Framed: 17 1/4 x 15 1/4 inches Mastro-Valerio was educated at the Salvador Rosa Institute in Naples, Italy (1906-1912), and came to the U.S. in 1913. He settled in Chicago, and after a brief period as a commerical artist, established a portrait studio near the Loop. Among his patrons were the industrialists Harvey S...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Mezzotint

Commencement
Located in New Orleans, LA
Caroline Durieux's image captures a lone figure in her garden in this southern plantation in Louisiana. "Plantation Garden" is a lithograph created by Durieux in 1946 in an edition of 20. It is signed in pencil. Durieux shared her feeling about this piece with these reflections. “The spectrum analysis of satire runs from the red of invective at one end to the violet of the most delicate irony at the other.” David Worcester 16, "The Art of Satire". The feeling expressed in Plantation Garden is that of a dirge with ironic overtones; it is sad, nostalgic yet satirical. The bent figure of the old lady, the ancient trees, the static moss, all seem to belong to the past; even the lady is old. For contrast, a ray of late afternoon sun lights up the only young note in the picture: perennials in the foreground. When “we are satirical and we are friendly at the same time, the consciousness of the friendship gives a regretful and tender touch to the satire, and the sting of the satire makes the friendship a trifle humble and sad.” George Santayna 255, "The Sense of Beauty". This concept of satire mixed with friendship comes closer to humor because there is less censure involved. In "Plantation Garden", the satire is tempered by a feeling of empathy. Caroline Durieux (American, 1896 – 1989) Printmaker, painter, satirist, innovator, social activist, Caroline Durieux was born in New Orleans and was already making sketches by the age of four. Her formal art training was at Newcomb College (1912-1917) and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1918-1920). Carl Zigrosser of the Philadelphia Museum of Art encouraged Durieux to try lithography. While living in Mexico, she learned lithography from Emilio Amero...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Basketball Player
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Basketball Player Gouache on card stock, c. 1940 Signed by the artist in ink lower center A study for the fresco mural in the Social Security Buildin...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Gouache

Original "Stop Loose Talk to Strangers. Enemy Ears are Alert" vintage poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original, Stop, Loose Talk to Strangers. ‘Enemy ears are alert’ vintage poster. Excellent condition, linen-backed WWII vintage war poster: STOP LOOSE TALK TO STRANGERS ENEMY EAR...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Freedom From Want - The Four Freedoms
Located in New York, NY
NORMAN ROCKWELL (1894-1978) - The Freedom from want - [from the series THE FOUR FREEDOMS.] 1943. 40x28 1/4inches, 101 1/2x71 3/4 cm. World War II poster U.S. Government Printing Office...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper

Original "Maurice Chevalier, Alhambra Theatre" vintage poster medium size
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Alhambra Theatre Maurice Chevalier vintage lithographic poster. Artist: Charles Kiffer (1902 - 1992). Size: 19.25" x 27.25". Archival linen-backed antique vintage poster; ready to frame. An original lithograph was done for the inauguration of the new Alhambra Theater, featuring Maurice Chevalier. Over the years; Kiffer designed 13 for Chavalier from 1927 - 1963. (Kiffer also designed for Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, and many other performers.) Today this version with the text of the Alhambra Theatre Maurice Chevalier is a rare poster. Mid-century-modern. The Alhambra was a music hall located at 50, rue de Malte in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. It opened on August 11, 1866. This image with the familiar tilted hat is a recognized image associated with several different poster designs created for the actor Maurice Chevalier. In addition to the images created for the French cabaret; a similar image is also associated with the liquor poster...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Original "Radio Point Bleu Musical!" vintage French poster, linen backed
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Radio Point Bleu Musical!” vintage French antique poster. Archivail linen backed in very fine condition, ready to frame. Signed J.L.B. in the plate at upper right. No specific year is indicated on the poster. Point Bleu / Radio Musical! Paris: Bedos & Cie. Lithograph poster for the French radio manufacturer, showing a woman’s face in silhouette with a treble clef over her ear; red and blue lettering against a bright yellow background. Printer: Paris: Bedos & Cie. The poster does not have a date, but most of the Point Bleu radio posters...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Original Armagnac Ryst vintage French liquor poster, linen backed lithograph
Located in Spokane, WA
Original Armagnac Ryst - de Haut Parage vintage poster. This great lithographic image features a lion holding both a shield which is a lion on a shield and a sparkling glass of Armagnac. Original old French vintage...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

High Rolls, New Mexico, 1940s Southwestern Landscape, Desert Church with Trees
By Andreas Storrs Andersen
Located in Denver, CO
"High Rolls, New Mexico", is a oil on canvas by Andreas Storrs Andersen (1908-1974) of a wooden church along a dirt road in the mountains with clouds in the background. Painted in a ...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

Still Life with Apples and Skull, Figurative Oil Painting by Ohio Artist
Located in Beachwood, OH
Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Still Life with Apples, 1940 Oil on canvas Signed and dated upper right 18 x 24 inches Clarence Holbrook Carter achieved a level of national artistic success that was nearly unprecedented among Cleveland School artists of his day, with representation by major New York dealers...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

Hospitalities Long Past, 1940s Oil Painting of Store Front
Located in Beachwood, OH
Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Hospitalities Long Past, 1941 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 37 x 27 inches "Looking into store front windows has always i...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

Original 'Map of the United States as Californians See It' vintage map poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original vintage poster: "Map of the United States as Californians See It". 1947, artist: Oren Arnold. Size: 16.5" x 20.5", R. H. MOEBUS COMPANY This poster is not linen-backed. This poster is in very good fine condition, ready to frame. A humorous satirical pictorial map from 1947 with the golden sun on the upper left, gives a detailed depiction of California, its relative size to the rest of the United States, showing Florida as "Death Valley", the rest of the United States as "Unexplored" 'Unimportant anyway, not in California". The image has your Mexican singer; bikini-clad bathers and others set in the image. Shows rivers, lakes, harbors, landmarks, parks, recreational activities, and local people. This map shows Los Angeles’ city...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Original "Back Them Up!" vintage British WWII poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original WWII poster: A British "Commando" raid on a German-held port in Norway. Back Them Up! Linen backed and ready to frame. Printed in England...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Golden Cycle Mill, Colorado, 1940s WPA Mining Watercolor Landscape, Black White
Located in Denver, CO
Original 1940s watercolor on paper painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell portraying a semi abstracted view of Golden Cycle Mill in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Painted in shades of black and gray. Presented in a custom black frame, outer dimensions measure 18 x 19 ½ x 1 ⅜ inches. Image sight size is 8 ⅛ x 9 ⅝ inches. Golden Cycle Mining and Reduction Company was a mining company in Colorado City (now Old Colorado City) in El Paso County, Colorado. Piece is clean and in excellent condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the artist: Artist and teacher, Charles (“Charlie”) Bunnell worked in a variety of styles throughout his career because as an artist he believed, “I’ve got to paint a thousand different ways. I don’t paint any one way.” At different times he did representational landscapes while concurrently involved with semi- or completely abstract imagery. He was one of a relatively small number of artists in Colorado successfully incorporating into their work the new trends emanating from New York and Europe after World War II. During his lifetime he generally did not attract a great deal of critical attention from museums, critics and academia. However, he personally experienced a highpoint in his career when Katherine Kuh, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, personally chose one of his paintings – Why? - for its large exhibition of several hundred examples of abstract and surrealist art held in 1947-48, subsequently including it among the fifty pieces selected for a traveling show to ten other American museums. An only child, Bunnell developed his love of art at a young age through frequent drawing and political cartooning. In high school he was interested in baseball and golf and also was the tennis champion for Westport High School in Kansas City. Following graduation, his father moved the family to Denver, Colorado, in 1916 for a better-paying bookkeeping job, before relocating the following year to Colorado Springs to work for local businessman, Edmond C. van Diest, President of the Western Public Service Company and the Colorado Concrete Company. Bunnell would spend almost all of his adult life in Colorado Springs. In 1918 he enlisted in the United States Army, serving in the 62nd Infantry Regiment through the end of World War I. Returning home with a 10% disability, he joined the Zebulon Pike Post No. 1 of the Disabled American Veterans Association and in 1921 used the benefits from his disability to attend a class in commercial art design conducted under a government program in Colorado Springs. The following year he transferred to the Broadmoor Art Academy (founded in 1919) where he studied with William Potter and in 1923 with Birger Sandzén. Sandzén’s influence is reflected in Bunnell’s untitled Colorado landscape (1925) with a bright blue-rose palette. For several years thereafter Bunnell worked independently until returning to the Broadmoor Art Academy to study in 1927-28 with Ernest Lawson, who previously taught at the Kansas City Art Institute where Bunnell himself later taught in the summers of 1929-1930 and in 1940-41. Lawson, a landscapist and colorist, was known for his early twentieth-century connection with “The Eight” in New York, a group of forward-looking painters including Robert Henri and John Sloan whose subject matter combined a modernist style with urban-based realism. Bunnell, who won first-place awards in Lawson’s landscapes classes at the Academy, was promoted to his assistant instructor for the figure classes in the 1928-29 winter term. Lawson, who painted in what New York critic James Huneker termed a “crushed jewel” technique, enjoyed additional recognition as a member of the Committee on Foreign Exhibits that helped organize the landmark New York Armory Exhibition in 1913 in which Lawson showed and which introduced European avant-garde art to the American public. As noted in his 1964 interview for the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC, Bunnell learned the most about his teacher’s use of color by talking with him about it over Scotch as his assistant instructor. “Believe me,” Bunnell later said, “[Ernie] knew color, one of the few Americans that did.” His association with Lawson resulted in local scenes of Pikes Peak, Eleven Mile Canyon, the Gold Cycle Mine near Colorado City and other similar sites, employing built up pigments that allowed the surfaces of his canvases to shimmer with color and light. (Eleven Mile Canyon was shown in the annual juried show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1928, an early recognition of his talent outside of Colorado.) At the same time, he animated his scenes of Colorado Springs locales by defining the image shapes with color and line as demonstrated in Contrasts (1929). Included in the Midwestern Artists’ Exhibition in Kansas City in 1929, it earned him the gold medal of the Kansas City Art Institute, auguring his career as a professional artist. In the 1930s Bunnell used the oil, watercolor and lithography media to create a mini-genre of Colorado’s old mining towns and mills, subject matter spurned by many local artists at the time in favor of grand mountain scenery. In contrast to his earlier images, these newer ones – both daytime and nocturnal -- such as Blue Bird Mine essentially are form studies. The conical, square and rectangular shapes of the buildings and other structures are placed in the stark, undulating terrain of the mountains and valleys devoid of any vegetation or human presence. In the mid-1930s he also used the same approach in his monochromatic lithographs titled Evolution, Late Evening, K.C. (Kansas City) and The Mill, continuing it into the next decade with his oil painting, Pikes Peak (1942). During the early 1930s he studied for a time with Boardman Robinson, director of the Broadmoor Art Academy and its successor institution, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1930 to 1947. In 1934 Robinson gave him the mural commission under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) for West Junior High School in Colorado Springs, his first involvement in one of several New Deal art...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Victor, Colorado, 1940s Modernist Mountain Landscape with Town, Mining Town
By Martyl Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf
Located in Denver, CO
'Victor, Colorado', 1942 oil painting on masonite by Martyl Suzanne Schweig (1918-2013). This classic Colorado landscape was painted overlooking a ghost town with the Rocky Mountains visible across the background, completed in rich tones of green, gold, and brown. This painting was completed on a trip with fellow artist, Adolph Dehn...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Original "American Labor ... Producing for Attack" vintage 1943 poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original AMERICAN LABOR - PRODUCING FOR ATTACK vintage 1943 poster. Size: 19.5" x 22.25. Professional archival linen backed; ready to frame. War Production Board, Washington D.C. Original. Lithograph. printed by the US Government...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Original Buick Care Keeps Buicks Best vintage automotive poster
Located in Spokane, WA
Original “Buick Care Keeps Buicks Best” 1940s vintage automobile poster. Conservation linen backed in excellent condition, ready to frame...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Winter Fun — Mid-century Modernism, Central Park, New York City
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
Louis Lozowick, 'Winter Fun', lithograph, 1940, edition 20, 250 (1941). Flint 188. Signed in pencil, with the artist’s monogram in the stone, lower left. A...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Ed Sketching at Red Rocks, Vintage 1940s Original Mountain Landscape, Colorado
Located in Denver, CO
Original vintage 1940s Modernist Landscape painting of Red Rocks Park, Colorado by Vance Kirkland (1904-1981). Titled, "Ed (Hicks) Sketching at Red Rocks". This regionalist mountain landscape painting is set near Red Rocks Park, Morrison, Colorado (just west of Denver). The figure in the painting is of Kirkland's friend, Ed Hicks. Watercolor on paper, signed and dated, January 1943, lower left and titled verso by the artist. Painted in colors of red, brown, blue, and green. Presented in a custom gold leaf frame, outer dimensions measure 34 ¾ x 42 ⅞ x 1 ¼ inches. Painting as shown within the mat and frame measures 21 x 29 inches. Provenance: Private Collection, Denver, Colorado About the Artist: Variously referred to as the “Father of Modern Colorado Painting,” “Dean of Colorado Artists” and “Colorado’s pre-eminent artist,” Kirkland was an inventive, visionary painter who spent fifty-two years of his fifty-four year career in Denver. Of the approximately 1,200 paintings he created, about 550 from the first half of his career (1927-1953) are water-based media: acquarelle, gouache, casein and egg tempera, with a few oils. In the latter half of his career (1953-1981) he used oil and his unique oil and water mixture. He also produced five hundred drawings and some ten prints, mostly lithographs on stone, while also engaged in teaching full-time for most of the period. To show people “something they have never seen before and new ways to look at things,” he felt he needed to preserve his artistic freedom. Consequently, he chose to spend his entire professional career in Denver far removed from the established American art centers in the East and Midwest. “By minding my own business and working on my own,” he said, “I think it was possible to develop in this part of the country… I’ve developed my kind of work [and] I think my paintings are stronger for having worked that way.” The geographical isolation resulting from his choice to stay in Colorado did not impede his creativity, as it did other artists, but in fact contributed to his unique vision. The son of a dentist, who was disappointed with his [son’s] choice of art as a career, Kirkland flunked freshman watercolor class in 1924 at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) for putting colors into his landscapes that did not exist in nature and for competing colors. Not dissuaded, he won first prize for his watercolors in his junior and senior years. [While in Cleveland,] he studied with three influential teachers. Henry Keller, included in the prestigious New York Armory Show in 1913, introduced him to designed realism which he later used in his Colorado landscapes in the 1930s and 1940s. His other teachers were Bill Eastman, who studied with Hans Hofmann and appreciated all the new movements in modern art, and Frank Wilcox, a fine watercolorist. While a student at the Cleveland School of Art, Kirkland concurrently took liberal arts courses at Western Reserve and the Cleveland School of Education and taught two freshman courses in watercolor and design, receiving his diploma in painting from the school in 1927 by doing four years of work in three. The following year he received a Bachelor of Education in Art degree from the same institution. In 1929 he assumed the position of founding director of the University of Denver’s School of Art, originally known as the Chappell School of Art. He resigned three years later when the university reneged on its agreement to grant its art courses full recognition toward a Bachelor of Arts degree. His students prevailed on him to continue teaching, resulting in the Kirkland School of Art which he opened in 1932 at 1311 Pearl Street in Denver. The building, where he painted until his death in 1981, formerly was the studio of British-born artist, Henry Read, designer of the City of Denver Seal and one of the original thirteen charter members of the Artists’ Club of Denver, forerunner of the Denver Art Museum. The Kirkland School of Art prospered for the next fourteen years with its courses accredited by the University of Colorado Extension Center in Denver. The teaching income from his art school and his painting commissions helped him survive the Great Depression. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts commissioned from him two post office murals, Cattle Roundup (1938, Eureka, Kansas), and Land Rush (1940, Sayre, Oklahoma). He also did murals for several Denver clients: the Gerald Hughes mansion (1936, later demolished), Arthur Johnson home (1936-37, Seven Drinks of Man), Albany Hotel (1937, later demolished), Neustetter’s Department Store (1937, “History of Costume,” three of five saved in 1987 before the building interior was demolished in advance of its condo conversion), and the Denver Country Club (1945, partially destroyed and later painted over). In 1953 the Ford Times, published by the Ford Motor Company, commissioned Kirkland along with fellow Denver artists, William Sanderson and Richard Sorby, to paint six watercolors each for the publication. Their work appeared in articles [about] Colorado entitled, “Take to the High Road” (of the Colorado Rockies) by Alicita and Warren Hamilton. Kirkland sketched the mountain passes and high roads in the area of Mount Evans, Independence Pass near Aspen, and Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. In 1946 Kirkland closed his art school when the University of Denver rehired him as director of its School of Art and chairman of the Division of Arts and Humanities. In 1957...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Watercolor

Original 'Ghost of Zorro' vintage 1949 movie poster US 1-sheet
Located in Spokane, WA
Original ‘Ghost of Zorro’ vintage movie poster. 1949. Museum archival mounted on acid-free archival linen. Original fold marks touched up but could use more touch-up on the fol...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Adobe Church, New Mexico, 1940s Modernist Southwestern Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Vintage 1930s - 1940s oil painting of an adobe church in New Mexico with a brilliant blue sky and clouds (likely Rancho de Taos), circa 1940. Painted by Denver modernist, Paul K...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Windmill on the Plains, 1940s Watercolor and Ink Mixed Media Modernist Painting
Located in Denver, CO
'Windmill on the Plains' is watercolor and ink on paper painting by Jenne Magafan. Depicting a large windmill on a 1940s Colorado farm scene with sheds and a fencing in the backgroun...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

1940s American Modernist Abstracted Industrial Watercolor Ink Charcoal Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Charles Bunnell original vintage 1941 signed painting from the artist's Black and Blue Series, Abstract Structure style. Watercolor, Ink and Charcoal on paper in colors of black, wh...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Charcoal, Ink, Watercolor

WPA 1940s Framed Figurative Village Landscape with Figures Houses Mountains
Located in Denver, CO
Depression era watercolor painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968) titled "The Way War First Comes" from 1940 of an outdoor village scene. Presented in a custom black frame wi...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Charles Locke, McCosh Walk, Princeton University
Located in New York, NY
This lithograph is signed in pencil under the image at the lower right. Just above that, in the image, are the artist's initials and the date, 1942. This well-known walkway on the P...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

American WPA Jewish New York Modernist Madonna Mother and Child painting
Located in Norwich, GB
A magnificent oil on canvas by Russian American WPA artist Nahum Tschacbasov (1899-1984), dating from 1943. Depicting a Maternity scene - or possibly a m...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

'Equus Uirumpu' — Mid-century Modernism
Located in Myrtle Beach, SC
James Houston McConnell, 'Equus Uirumpu' (The Man's Horse), color serigraph, c. 1945, edition not stated but small. Signed and titled in pencil. Initialed in the image, lower right. ...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Screen

Storm Over Victor (Colorado Mountain Town), 1940s WPA Era Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Denver, CO
Oil on board painting by George Vander Sluis (1915-1984) titled Storm Over Victor (Colorado Mountain Town) from 1946. WPA Era Mountain Landscape wi...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Board, Oil

“Americana”
By Ralph Fabri
Located in Southampton, NY
Here for your consideration is a wonderful original etching on archival paper by the well known American artist, Ralph Fabri. Strong impression; signed in pencil by the artist lower right margin. Titled and dated bottom left of the sheet “1947-Americana”. Condition of the etching is excellent. Top corner of sheet and bottom right corner of sheet have tiny creases. Not visible, under the mat. Sheet size is 12 by 15 inches. Image size is 8 by 9.75 inches. Matted but not framed. Provenance: A Long Island, New York collector. Painter and printmaker, commercial artist, writer, and teacher, Ralph Fabri was born Fabri Reszo in Hungary in 1894. He was educated in Budapest, first studying architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1912 to 1914. He then enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1918 with a Professor's Diploma (M.A.) "for teaching drawing, painting and geometry – including descriptive and projective geometry – in schools of higher education." Fabri arrived in New York City in 1921 and soon adopted the anglicized version of his name, Ralph Fabri. He began doing commercial design work and during the academic year of 1923/24 was enrolled as an evening student at the National Academy of Design. After becoming an American citizen in 1927, he traveled extensively in Europe. Upon returning to New York that same year, Fabri decided his financial situation was stable enough to allow him to focus his attention on fine art. During the Great Depression, Fabri's already inadequate portrait commissions and art sales further declined and he returned to commercial work. He established a workshop known as the Ralph Fabri Studios, that designed theatrical and movie sets, window displays, and retail interiors. But Fabri found the workshop dirty and distasteful, and eventually was able to concentrate on advertising work which could be done from home. The largest clients for his pen and ink drawings were The Stamp and Album Co. of America, Inc. (for which he designed covers for stamp albums and produced illustrations for envelopes housing sets of stamps sold to collectors), Geographica Map Co., and Joseph H. Cohen & Sons (for whom he designed and illustrated mail order catalogs). Another source of income during this period was the design and construction of an addition to "Iroki," Theodore Dreiser...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Etching

Park Scene (Chelsea, Manhattan)
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Park Scene (Chelsea, Manhattan) Oil on artist's board, c. 1947-49 Signed lower right (see photo) Provenance: Estate of the artist Dehn Heirs Condition: Good, needs a light cleaning Original wormy chestnut frame Painting size: 9 1/4 x 12 inches Frame size: 14 1/4 x 17 inches One of the earliest know Virginia Dehn paintings after her marriage to Adolf in 1947. The lived in Chelsea at 433 West 21st St. Inscription by artist verso: Virginia Dehn 443 W. 21 St. New York City V.70 Virginia Dehn From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Virginia Dehn Virginia Dehn in her studio in Santa Fe Virginia Dehn (née Engleman) (October 26, 1922 – July 28, 2005) was an American painter and printmaker. Her work was known for its interpretation of natural themes in almost abstract forms. She exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the U.S. Her paintings are included in many public collections. Life Dehn was born in Nevada, Missouri on October 26, 1922.] Raised in Hamden, Connecticut, she studied at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri before moving to New York City. She met the artist Adolf Dehn while working at the Art Students League. They married in November 1947. The two artists worked side by side for many years, part of a group of artists who influenced the history of 20th century American art. Their Chelsea brownstone was a place where artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered. Early career Virginia Dehn studied art at Stephens College in Missouri before continuing her art education at the Traphagen School of Design, and, later, the Art Students League, both located in New York City. In the mid-1940s while working at the Associated American Artists gallery, she met lithographer and watercolorist Adolf Dehn. Adolf was older than Virginia, and he already enjoyed a successful career as an artist. The two were married in 1947 in a private ceremony at Virginia's parents house in Wallingford, Connecticut. Virginia and Adolf Dehn The Dehns lived in a Chelsea brownstone on West 21st Street where they worked side by side. They often hosted gatherings of other influential artists and intellectuals of the 20th century. Among their closest friends were sculptor Federico Castellón and his wife Hilda; writer Sidney Alexander and his wife Frances; artists Sally and Milton Avery; Ferol and Bill Smith, also an artist; and Lily and Georges Schreiber, an artist and writer. Bob Steed and his wife Gittel, an anthropologist, were also good friends of the Dehns. According to friend Gretchen Marple Pracht, "Virginia was a glamorous and sophisticated hostess who welcomed visitors to their home and always invited a diverse crowd of guests..." Despite their active social life, the two were disciplined artists, working at their easels nearly daily and taking Saturdays to visit galleries and view new work. The Dehns made annual trips to France to work on lithographs at the Atelier Desjobert in Paris. Virginia used a bamboo pen to draw directly on the stone for her lithographs, which often depicted trees or still lifes. The Dehns' other travels included visits to Key West, Colorado, Mexico, and countries such as Greece, Haiti, Afghanistan, and India. Dehn's style of art differend greatly from that of her husband, though the two sometimes exhibited together. A friend of the couple remarked, "Adolf paints landscapes; Virginia paints inscapes." Virginia Dehn generally painted an interior vision based on her feelings for a subject, rather than a literal rendition of it.] Many of her paintings consist of several layers, with earlier layers showing through. She found inspiration in the Abstract Expressionism movement that dominated the New York and Paris art scenes in the 1950s. Some of her favorite artists included Adolf Gottileb, Rothko, William Baziotes, Pomodoro, and Antonio Tapies. Dehn most often worked with bold, vibrant colors in large formats. Her subjects were not literal, but intuitive. She learned new techniques of lithography from her husband Adolf, and did her own prints. Texture was very important to her in her work. Her art was influenced by a variety of sources. In the late 1960s she came across a book that included photographs of organic patterns of life as revealed under a microscope. These images inspired her to change the direction of some of her paintings. Other influences on Dehn's art came from ancient and traditional arts of various cultures throughout the world, including Persian miniatures, illuminated manuscripts, Dutch still life painting, Asian art, ancient Egyptian artifacts...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

Edward Sacks, Seated Figure
Located in New York, NY
Little is known about the artist, Edward (Ed) Sacks, although this print may have been made at the Art Students League in NYC. it is a cross between, as the title suggests, a Seated ...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Pittsburgh Alleyway
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Pittsburgh Alleyway, c. 1946, oil on gouache on paper on “prestwood” (Masonite), 9 x 12 inches, signed lower middle, Bohrod’s original label verso from his gallery at 4811 Tonyawatha...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Mixed Media

"Mexican Mountains, " Hendrik Glintenkamp, Modernist Landscape
Located in New York, NY
Hendrik (Henry) J Glintenkamp (1887 - 1946) Mexican Mountains, 1940 Oil on canvas 32 x 26 inches Signed lower left; signed and dated on the reverse T...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Memphis Belle original vintage movie poster - French lithograph
Located in Spokane, WA
Original La Memphis Belle; original vintage lithograph movie poster, French version; size 23" x 31", 1949; archival linen backed and ready to frame. Fi...
Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

American Modern art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic American Modern art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, orange, purple, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Slim Aarons, Destro, Howard Schatz, and John Taylor Arms. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Oil Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large American Modern art, so small editions measuring 0.25 inches across are also available.

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