Skip to main content

American Modern Art

to
595
1,622
1,294
910
639
542
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
1
11
4,297
702
16
66
174
653
486
417
405
366
276
140
119,957
64,393
56,726
28,809
14,507
9,621
6,738
6,137
4,208
3,171
2,557
2,372
2,125
582
2,445
2,175
240
2,278
1,094
831
647
626
500
415
336
301
226
222
211
205
193
188
183
159
155
146
138
1,862
1,425
1,017
639
599
288
218
101
95
86
1,427
547
4,581
347
Style: American Modern
AC DC BACK IN BLACK 30x50 Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print
AC DC BACK IN BLACK 30x50 Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print

AC DC BACK IN BLACK 30x50 Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print

By Destro

Located in Los Angeles, CA

A contemporary photograph of an AC/DC - Back In Black cassette tape. This is s the first release in the much anticipated series "The Music" by pop Artists Destro "They encapsulate an...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary American Modern Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

A Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Manhattan Scene, New York City by Francis Chapin
A Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Manhattan Scene, New York City by Francis Chapin

A Dynamic Mid-Century Modern Manhattan Scene, New York City by Francis Chapin

By Francis Chapin

Located in Chicago, IL

A Large, Dynamic 1950s Mid-Century Modern Watercolor of Lower Manhattan, New York City by Noted Chicago Artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). The image is watercolor, pastel and c...

Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper, Charcoal, Pastel

"Portrait of Dr. Monroe Mufson"
"Portrait of Dr. Monroe Mufson"

"Portrait of Dr. Monroe Mufson"

By Joseph Biel

Located in Southampton, NY

Unsigned ; attributed to Joseph Biel Good friend of Dr. Mufson View is from New York University School of Medicine. Overall size with original frame 25.5 x 21 in.

Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Oil, Board

A Vintage 1950s Pastel & Charcoal Drawing of a Hockey Game by Francis Chapin
A Vintage 1950s Pastel & Charcoal Drawing of a Hockey Game by Francis Chapin

A Vintage 1950s Pastel & Charcoal Drawing of a Hockey Game by Francis Chapin

By Francis Chapin

Located in Chicago, IL

Perfect for any hockey enthusiast! A dynamic 1950s pastel and charcoal on paper drawing of a hockey game by artist Francis Chapin. Artwork size: 9 x 12 inches; Matted size: 14 x 18 inches. Estate stamped on reverse. Provenance: Estate of the Artist. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of the city’s most popular and celebrated painters in his day. Born at the dawn of the 20th Century in Bristolville, Ohio, Chapin graduated from Washington and Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong study trip to Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists have in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the Art Institute, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (now called Oxbow) between 1934 – 1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright...

Category

1950s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Charcoal, Pastel

Apple
Apple

Apple

By Robert Kulicke

Located in North Clarendon, VT

Apple, watercolor on paper by Robert Kulicke. 4.875" x 4.875" sight, 13.125" x 13.125" framed, signed center bottom. A fantastic example of Kulicke's trademark ability to capture the...

Category

1990s American Modern Art

Materials

Watercolor

Interior with Cabbage

Interior with Cabbage

By Marina Stern

Located in Los Angeles, CA

This work is part of our exhibition Marina Stern Luminary, the artist's first retrospective since 2007. Previously exhibited: 1) An Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Marina Stern, Forum Gallery, New York, NY, February 13 to March 6, 1982, no. 2 (label verso) (see Marina Stern, New York Times, February 19, 1982 “one turns . . . to a couple of indoor paintings, such as Interior with Cabbage, in which Miss Stern skillfully plays off a 'real' purple cabbage on a white tablecloth with a black and white drawing of one pinned up on a canvas stretcher . . . .”); 2) Marina Stern American Precisionist Painter, Santa Fe East Galleries, Santa Fe, NM, November 2 to 20, 1984, and 3) Perception and the Cultural Environment – The Paintings of Marina...

Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Alexander Calder Circus Reproduction Lithograph After a Drawing
Alexander Calder Circus Reproduction Lithograph After a Drawing

Alexander Calder Circus Reproduction Lithograph After a Drawing

By (after) Alexander Calder

Located in Surfside, FL

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...

Category

1930s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

Downtown New York

Downtown New York

Located in Los Angeles, CA

Downtown New York, c. 1930s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 10 x 12 inches; label verso reads: "Harry Dix / Title Downtown New York / Medium Oil" Harry Dix was a 20th-century p...

Category

1930s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Blue Stripes and Citrus Dreams
Blue Stripes and Citrus Dreams

Blue Stripes and Citrus Dreams

Located in Zofingen, AG

Oil pastel still life of wine and coffee on striped outdoor table Oil pastel drawing on paper One of a kind artwork Size: 50 × 70 × 0,1 cm It is original hand drawing on 250 gsm acid-free paper The artwork is titled and signed on the front and also comes with a certificate of authenticity. Artworks are shipped rolled in a secure tube. This is a safe and reliable packaging method that ensures your artwork arrives in perfect condition while keeping shipping costs affordable. Bring the warmth of the French Riviera into your space with this vibrant oil pastel still life inspired by Mediterranean summer living. This artwork captures a joyful outdoor table scene featuring coffee, wine, lemons, and palm leaves arranged across bold blue and white stripes. Created in the expressive style reminiscent of Raoul Dufy, this pastel drawing celebrates color, movement, and relaxed coastal elegance. A close-up perspective from above shows hands holding glasses of red and white wine alongside heart-shaped plates filled with fresh orange slices and a dark green olive oil bottle...

Category

2010s American Modern Art

Materials

Paper, Oil Pastel

Etching and aquatint of Wall Street, New York, 1920s
Etching and aquatint of Wall Street, New York, 1920s

Etching and aquatint of Wall Street, New York, 1920s

By Max Pollak

Located in Colfax, CA

Etching and aquatint of Wall Street, New York circa 1928 by Max Pollak. Painter and printmaker Max Pollak, (1886-1970), was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia and was raised in Vienna, A...

Category

1920s American Modern Art

Materials

Etching, Aquatint

40x60 AC DC BACK IN BLACK Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print
40x60 AC DC BACK IN BLACK Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print

40x60 AC DC BACK IN BLACK Photography Photograph Cassette Tape Unsigned Print

By Destro

Located in Los Angeles, CA

A contemporary photograph of an AC/DC - Back In Black cassette tape. "They encapsulate an era instantly transporting the viewer to another time." - Destro Printed on Archival Paper...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary American Modern Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

“1960’s Style”
“1960’s Style”

“1960’s Style”

By Kenneth Paul Block

Located in Southampton, NY

Here for your consideration is an original mixed media fashion illustration by the world renowned fashion artist, Kenneth Paul Block. Signed with initials bottom right. Presently unf...

Category

1960s American Modern Art

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

Fried Eggs as Flower
Fried Eggs as Flower

Fried Eggs as Flower

Located in Zofingen, AG

Fried Eggs Flower Art - Acrylic Painting on Blue Background with Striped Vase - Whimsical Minimalist Wall Art Acrylic Painting on canvas One of a kind artwork Size: 50 × 60 × 0,5 cm...

Category

2010s American Modern Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

High Line Yellow Flowers
High Line Yellow Flowers

High Line Yellow Flowers

By Susan Cohen

Located in Fairfield, CT

About the artist: Susan Cohen’s paintings are exhibited with New York City galleries: George Billis, Garvey Simon, First Street,The Painting Center; and the Cynthia Winings Gallery...

Category

2010s American Modern Art

Materials

Egg Tempera

Original Hell's Angels '69 vintage motorcycle movie poster  half-sheet
Original Hell's Angels '69 vintage motorcycle movie poster  half-sheet

Original Hell's Angels '69 vintage motorcycle movie poster half-sheet

Located in Spokane, WA

Original Hell's Angels '69 vintage half-sheet movie poster. Original horizontal half sheet movie poster from 1969: Hell's Angeles '69. The film stars the original Oakland Hell's Angeles with Tom Stern, Jeremy Slate, Conny Van Dyke; Steve Sandor, Sonny Barger, Terry the Tramp. Am American International Release original. 'For a wild, wicked weekend and the deadliest gamble ever dared!. The left-hand side features the famous landmark hotel signs from Flamingo Sahara, Caesars Palace...

Category

1960s American Modern Art

Materials

Offset

Harry Shokler, Island Harbor
Harry Shokler, Island Harbor

Harry Shokler, Island Harbor

By Harry Shokler

Located in New York, NY

Harry Shokler used serigraphy to great advantage in this landscape. It's colorful and detailed. It is signed in the image at the lower left. When printmakers began making serigraphs...

Category

1940s American Modern Art

Materials

Screen

Wild Flowers Vibrant Colorful Modernist Oil Painting
Wild Flowers Vibrant Colorful Modernist Oil Painting

Wild Flowers Vibrant Colorful Modernist Oil Painting

By John Wenger

Located in Surfside, FL

John Wenger (1887-1976) celebrated easel painter and stage set designer whose career included 25 solo shows in the USA, Canada, and Europe. He created set designs for such plays as ...

Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Oil

'Counterpoint' — Mid-Century Modernist Abstraction
'Counterpoint' — Mid-Century Modernist Abstraction

'Counterpoint' — Mid-Century Modernist Abstraction

By Edward August Landon

Located in Myrtle Beach, SC

Edward Landon, 'Counterpoint', color serigraph, 1942, edition 25, Ryan 45. Signed, titled, and annotated 'Edition 25' in pencil. A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream, wove paper; the full sheet with margins (7/8 to 2 1/2 inches). A 1 1/2 inch crease across the top left sheet corner, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 13 9/16 x 14 5/16 inches (344 x 364 mm); sheet size 14 15/16 x 17 inches (379 x 432 mm). Literature: – 'A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking', David Acton, New York, London, 1990. – 'American Screenprints', Reba and Dave Williams, New York, 1987. – 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', Stephen Coppel, The British Museum, 2008. Impressions of this work are held in the following museum collections: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum. ABOUT THE ARTIST Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Edward Landon dropped out of high school to study art at the Hartford Art School. In 1930 and 1931 he was a student of Jean Charlot at the Art Students League in New York, after which he traveled to Mexico to study privately for a year with Carlos Merida. In 1933 he settled near Springfield, Massachusetts, painted murals in the local trade school, and exhibited with the Springfield Art League. His painting 'Memorial Day' won first prize at the fifteenth annual exhibition of the League at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. Landon became an active member of the Artists Union of Western Massachusetts, serving as president from 1934-1938. Landon acquired Anthony Velonis’s instructional pamphlet on the technique of serigraphy in the late 1930s. With colleagues Phillip Hicken, Donald Reichert, and Pauline Stiriss, he began experimenting with screen printing techniques. The artists' groundbreaking work in screen printing as a fine art medium was the subject of the group’s landmark exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts in 1940. Landon became one of the founding members of the National Serigraph Society and served as editor of its publication, 'Serigraph Quarterly,' in the late 1940s and as its president in 1952 and 1953. The Norlyst Gallery in Manhattan held a one-person show of his prints in 1945. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1950, Landon traveled to Norway, where he researched the history of local artistic traditions and produced the book 'Scandinavian Design: Picture and Rune Stones...

Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Screen

Cortland Street
Cortland Street

Cortland Street

Located in Middletown, NY

Etching with drypoint on antique handmade laid Japon paper, 12 7/8 x 7 1/2 (327 x 191 mm); sheet 15 5/16 x 10 7/16 (389 x 265 mm), full margins. Signed in pencil in the lower margin....

Category

Early 20th Century American Modern Art

Materials

Drypoint, Etching

La Casa Vivienda Color Lithograph, American Modern, Signed, 1991
La Casa Vivienda Color Lithograph, American Modern, Signed, 1991

La Casa Vivienda Color Lithograph, American Modern, Signed, 1991

By Emilio Sanchez

Located in New York, NY

“LA CASA VIVENDA” Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) created this color lithograph entitled “La Casa Vivenda” circa 1991. Image size 18.38 x 25 inches and the paper size 21.75 x 29.38 inches. Printed in an edition of 100 this impression is inscribed “70/100” - the 70th impression of 100. This impression is pencil signed in the lower right and inscribed in the lower left. “Best known for his architectural paintings and lithographs, Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999) explored the effects of light and shadow to emphasize the abstract geometry of his subjects. His artwork encompasses his Cuban heritage...

Category

1990s American Modern Art

Materials

Lithograph

'Fashion Able II', Parsons School of Design, Haute Couture, Costume
'Fashion Able II', Parsons School of Design, Haute Couture, Costume

'Fashion Able II', Parsons School of Design, Haute Couture, Costume

By Isaac Mizrahi

Located in Santa Cruz, CA

Signed verso lower left, 'Isaac Mizrahi'. A fashion designer and creator of costume, Isaac Mizrahi attended the Parsons School of Design before becoming immersed in haute couture in...

Category

1990s American Modern Art

Materials

Oil Pastel, Acrylic, Synthetic Paper, Graphite

North on West Street (West Side Highway NYC Cityscape)
North on West Street (West Side Highway NYC Cityscape)

North on West Street (West Side Highway NYC Cityscape)

By De Hirsch Margules

Located in Wilton Manors, FL

De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965). North on West Street , 1939. Watercolor on Arches wove paper. Signed and dated in pencil by artist lower margin. Sheet measures 15 x 22 inches. Framed measurement: 27 x 34 inched. Incredibly vibrant and saturated color with no fading or toning of sheet. Provenance: Babcock Galleries, NYC De Hirsh Margules (1899–1965) was a Romanian-American "abstract realist" painter who crossed paths with many major American artistic and intellectual figures of the first half of the 20th century. Elaine de Kooning said that he was "[w]idely recognized as one of the most gifted and erudite watercolorists in the country". The New York Times critic Howard Devree stated in 1938 that "Margules uses color in a breath-taking manner. A keen observer, he eliminates scrupulously without distortion of his material." Devree later called Margules "one of our most daring experimentalists in the medium" Margules was also a well-known participant in the bohemian culture of New York City's Greenwich Village, where he was widely known as the "Baron" of Greenwich Village.[1] The New York Times described him as "one of Greenwich Village's best-known personalities" and "one of the best known and most buoyant characters about Greenwich Village. Early Life De Hirsh Margules was born in 1899 in the Romanian city of Iași (also known as Iasse, Jassy, or Jasse). When Margules was 10 weeks old, his family immigrated to New York City. Both of his parents were active in the Yiddish theater, His father was Yekutiel "Edward" Margules, a "renowned Jewish actor-impresario and founder of the Yiddish stage." Margules' mother, Rosa, thirty-nine years younger than his father, was an actress in the Yiddish theater and later in vaudeville. Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family[11] and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules, somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad Tondelayo (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo. Annette herself faced stereotyping as an exotic flower: writing about her publicist Charles Bouchert stated that "Romania produces a stormy, temperamental type of woman---a type admirably fitted to portray emotion." His brother Samuel became a noted magician who appeared under the name "Rami-Sami." Samuel later became a lawyer, representing magician Horace Goldin, among others. A family portrait including a young De Hirsh, a portrait of Rosa and Annette together, and individual photos of Rosa and Edward can be found on the Museum of the City of New York website. At around age 9 or 10, Margules took art classes with the Boys Club on East Tenth Street, and his first taste of exhibition was at a student art show presented by the club. By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamakers. As a young teenager, Margules was already displaying a characteristic kindness and loyalty. Upon hearing that two friends (one of them was author Alexander King), were in trouble for breaking a school microscope, the nearly broke Margules gave them five dollars to repair the microscope . Margules had to approach a wealthy man that Margules had once saved on the subway from a heart attack. Margules didn't reveal the source of the five dollars to King until twenty-five years later. In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington. Thereafter he pursued a two-year course of studies in architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design, while working as a clerk during the day at Stern's Department Store. He was encouraged in these artistic pursuits by his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein (who later went by the name of Benjamin Benno). Artistic career In 1922, Margules began work as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York .Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?" This led to study with Lechay and a flurry of painting. Margules' first show was in 1922 at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery. Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe. Jane Heap, left, with Mina Loy and Ezra Pound During the 1920s, Margules traveled outside of the country a number of times. In 1922, with the intent of reaching Bali, he took a job as a "'wiper on a tramp steamer where [he] played nursemaid to the engine." He reached Rotterdam before he turned back. He would return to Rotterdam shortly thereafter. In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water." He studied at the Louvre and traveled to paint landscapes in provincial France and North Africa. Margules also joined the "Noctambulist" movement and experimented with painting and showing his artwork in low light.Jonathan Cott wrote that: the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark. In fact, the first exhibition of these paintings, which could be seen only in a darkened room, took place in [ Walter Lowenfels'] Paris apartment. Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow." It was also in Paris that Margules initially conceived his idea of "Time Painting", where a painting is divided into sectors, each representing a different time of day, with color choices meant to evoke that time of day. In Paris, his social circle included Lowenfels, photographer Berenice Abbott, publisher Jane Heap, composer George Anthiel, sculptor Thelma Wood, painter André Favory, writer Norman Douglas, writer and editor George Davis, composer and writer Max Ewing, and writer Michael Fraenkel. Upon his return to New York in 1929, Margules attended an exhibition of John Marin's paintings. While at the exhibition, he "launched into an eloquent explanation of Marin to two nearby women", and was overheard by an impressed Alfred Stieglitz. The famous photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler. Stieglitz thereafter became a friend and mentor to Margules, becoming for him "what Socrates was to his friends." Alfred Stieglitz Stieglitz introduced Margules to John Marin, who quickly became the most important painterly influence upon Margules. Elaine de Kooning later noted that Margules was "indebted to Marin and through Marin to Cézanne for his initial conceptual approach - for his constructions of scenes with no negative elements, for skies that loom with the impact of mountains." Margules himself said that Marin was his "father and ... academy." The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing." Stieglitz also introduced Margules to many other artistic and intellectual figures in New York. With the encouragement of Alfred Stieglitz, Margules in 1936 opened a two-room gallery at 43 West 8th Street called "Another Place." Over the following two years there were fourteen solo exhibitions by Margules and others, and the gallery was well-respected by the press. It was in this gallery that the painter James Lechay, Myron's brother, exhibited his first painting. In 1936, Margules first saw recognition by major art museums when both the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston purchased his works. In 1942, Margules gave up working as a police reporter, and apparently dedicated himself thereafter solely to an artistic vocation. "The Baron of Greenwich Village"[edit] Margules made his mark not only as an artist, but also as an outsized personality known throughout Greenwich Village and beyond. To local residents, Margules was known as the "Baron", after Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a prominent German Jewish philanthropist. Margules was easily recognizable by the beret he routinely wore over his long hair. Writer Charles Norman said that he "dressed with a flair for sloppiness." He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body. Margules' letters show him interacting with art world figures such as Sacha Kolin, John Marin and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as with prominent figures outside the art world such as polymath Buckminster Fuller and writer Henry Miller. Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty. In 1929, he exhibited an example of this loyalty and fellow-feeling when he appeared in court to fight what the wrongful commitment of his friend, writer and sculptor Alfred Dreyfuss, who appeared to have been a victim of an illicit attempt to block an inheritance. The Greenwich Village chronicler Charles Norman described the bone-crushing hugs that Margules would routinely bestow on his friends and acquaintances, and speaks of the "persuasive theatricality" that Margules seemed to have inherited from his actor parents. Norman also wrote about Margules' routine acts of kindness, taking in homeless artists, constantly feeding his friends and providing the salvatory loan where needed. Norman also notes that Margules was blessed with a loud and good voice, and was apt to sing an operatic air without provocation. The writer and television personality Alexander King said I think the outstanding characteristics of my friend's personality are affirmation, emphasis, and overemphasis. He chooses to express himself predominantly in superlatives and the gestures which accompany his utterances are sometimes dangerous to life and limb. Of the bystanders, I mean. King also spoke with affectionate amusement about Margules' pride in his cooking, speaking of how "if he should ever invite you to dinner, he may serve you a hamburger with onions, in his kitchen-living room, with such an air of gastronomic protocol, such mysterious hints and ogliing innuendoes, as if César Ritz and Brillat-Savarin had sneaked out, only a moment before, with his secret recipe in their pockets." Margules was such a memorable New York personality that comic book writer Alvin Schwartz imagined him at the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria in a risible yet poignant debate with Clark Kent about whether Superman had the ability to stop Hitler. Margules' entrenchment in the Greenwich Village milieu can be seen in a photograph from Fred McDarrah's "Beat Generation Album" of a January 13, 1961 writers' and poets' meeting to discuss "The Funeral of the Beat Generation", in Robert Cordier [fr]'s railroad flat at 85 Christopher Street. Among the people in the same photograph are Shel Silverstein...

Category

1930s American Modern Art

Materials

Watercolor, Rag Paper

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.