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Contemporary Art

CONTEMPORARY STYLE

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Contemporary
Nizza - large format photograph of summer beach observation in South of France
Located in San Francisco, CA
Large scale highly detailed photograph of European summer beach scene captured in coastal Nice, France, along the Mediterranean Côte d’Azur. Nizza (2006) by Frank Schott 44 x 69 in...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment, Giclée, Archival Ink

River - Snowflake Lines Dots Pattern Drawing Blue Pink, 2020
Located in Kent, CT
In carefully drawn dots and lines in soft shades of indigo blue with pink, green, yellow and dark red details, this intricate composition is inspired by patterns in nature. This draw...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Ink, Archival Paper, Color Pencil, Graphite

Original Drawing Abstract landscape by Marilina Marchica Blue Landscape
Located in Agrigento, AG
Blue Landscape Original artwork on Paper 50x70 cm certificate of authenticity by Marilina Marchica,. 2024 This unique abstract painting explores the relationship between humanity a...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Paper, Pigment

MB 085A (Contemporary Life Drawing of Nude Male by Mark Beard)
Located in Hudson, NY
Academic life drawing of male nude with charcoal and graphite by Mark Beard, "MB 085A" graphite, Conte crayon and charcoal on Arches paper 30 x 18.5 inches unframed Signed, lower rig...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Conté, Charcoal, Archival Paper, Graphite

Vulture II - rustic, figurative, animal, bird, cast iron, outdoor sculpture
Located in Bloomfield, ON
Nicholas Crombach has made a bold choice by depicting a vulture in this dramatic contemporary outdoor sculpture. The reputation of these ancient birds of...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Iron

Jean-Michel Folon 'Amnesty International'-Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This original poster by Jean-Michel Folon is part of the Artists for Amnesty series, a collection of art posters created by 15 world-renowned artists to highlight Amnesty Internation...
Category

1970s Contemporary Art

Materials

Offset

While I Wait 1 - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative, Portrait, Women, Love
Located in Ibadan, Oyo
My waiting times, my fraying hours. The mere thought of the future makes me shiver. No longer at ease with these groans and moans, I take a bow out of my fearsome worries. Suddenly, ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Self-Portrait - Contemporary, Polaroid, Color, Portrait
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Self-Portrait - 2020, Part of the series shot during the second UK lockdown. Edition of 10. 20x20cm. Digital C-Print based on a Polaroid. Not mounted. Leanne Surfleet is an analo...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, Archival Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Le Pousseur de Lune by M. de Soos - Contemporary bronze sculpture, human, move
Located in Paris, FR
Le Pousseur de Lune is a bronze sculpture by French contemporary artist Marine de Soos, dimensions are 56.5 × 74 × 14 cm (22.2 × 29.1 × 5.5 in). The sculpture is signed and numbered...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Bronze

After Botero - Bull Bronze Sculpture
Located in Cuauhtemoc, Ciudad de México
¡ Special Pricing ! This AFTER BOTERO sculpture is a very beautiful, faithful reproduction in the style of BOTERO'S work that has sold very well here on 1st Dibs. The edition is 5...
Category

20th Century Contemporary Art

Materials

Marble, Bronze

Animal nitrate - Contemporary, Nude, Women, Polaroid, 21st Century
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Animal nitrate - 2021 20x25cm, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2022-2007. Not mounted. Kirsten Thys van den ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Entrapped 8 by Simcha Even-Chen - Porcelain sculpture, black & white, organic
Located in Paris, FR
Entrapped 8 is a unique paper porcelain sculpture by contemporary artist Simcha Even-Chen, dimensions are 21 × 30 × 27 cm (8.3 × 11.8 × 10.6 in). The sculpture is signed and comes w...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Porcelain

Menton by Constantin 1960 Vintage French TRAVEL POSTER by Terechkovitch
Located in London, GB
Menton by Constantin 1960 vintage French TRAVEL POSTER By Terechkovitch Georges Terechkovitch (1908-1993) was a French artist of Russi...
Category

1960s Contemporary Art

Materials

Linen, Lithograph

"Imagine" Limited Edition Hand Written Lyrics
Located in Laguna Beach, CA
Very rare Limited Edition Serigraph of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for the song "Imagine," first released on the LP of the same name in 1971. The best-selling single of his s...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Other Medium

Female Nude, New York City, Black and White Photograph in Studio, Alabaster Nude
Located in New york, NY
Shot on film a 14" x 11" a black-and-white contemporary gelatin silver print of a female nude with symmetrical proportions that suggest Greek sculptures. A feminine and statuesque su...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Silver Gelatin, Photographic Film, Photographic Paper

The Palm Trees - Vintage Photograph - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
The Palm Trees is a black and white vintage photo, realized in 1970s. Good conditions and aged. It belongs to a historical and nostalgic album including historical moments, places,...
Category

1970s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper

Glass Water Bag Sculpture Trio
Located in East Quogue, NY
Glass water bag sculptures - solid and hollow glass (set of 3) Martinez' hyperreal sculptures are hot sculpted glass which is hand molded entirely by the artist. Each bag is signed ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Glass

Golden Meadow - Large Three-Dimensional Wall Art
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Atticus Adams' organically composed modern metal sculptures embody the transformative power of contemporary art, illustrating the creation of beauty, meaning, and emotional impact fr...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Metal

Bearden- 'Carolina Shout' Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This is a poster titled Carolina Shout by Romare Bearden originally was created in 1967. Carolina Shout captures the vibrant energy and cultural significance of African American lif...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Offset

Blackbird's Egg Blue Pocket Painting 5, original painting, contemporary
Located in Deddington, GB
Additional information: Oil Paint on Canvas 5 H x 15 W x 2 D cm (1.97 x 5.91 x 0.79 in) Sold framed Image size: Height: 5cm (1.97 in) Width: 5cm (1.97 in) Complete size of unfram...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil

Love - Solid Bronze Whale Sculpture - TOGETHER LOVE FAMILY
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Mireia Serra’s "Love" is a contemporary bronze sculpture that exudes charm and warmth with its minimalist yet expressive whale form. The polished golden finish gives this piece a lux...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Metal, Bronze, Iron

The Two Georges 25 x 17 signed limited edition b/w archival pigment print
Located in Norwich, GB
Iconic and rare limited edition print direct from the negative, signed lower right hand margin and stamped with photographers own blind stamp. This is Number 3/25. Paper size 25 x 17...
Category

Late 20th Century Contemporary Art

Materials

Giclée, Archival Pigment

Golden - large format photograph of conceptual iconic object in urban landscape
Located in San Francisco, CA
GOLDEN by Frank Schott from a series of photographic observances - environmental still life capturing found objects in urban cityscapes 40 x 32 inches (102 x 81cm) signed edition ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Giclée, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment, Photographic Paper

Redwoods
Located in Manchester, GB
Jasper Cheng, Redwoods, 2023 Emulsion & Pumice on Canvas 150 x 130 cm (60 x 50 in) Hand-signed by the artist Jasper considers himself more simply as somebody who enjoys being cre...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Emulsion

Bearden-Mecklenburg Morning: Sunrise for China Lamp Serigraph
By (after) Romare Bearden
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This vibrant recreation of Romare Bearden's work, titled Mecklenburg Morning: Sunrise for China Lamp, was published by American Vision Gallery Inc. and reproduced with the consent of...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Screen

''Bowl with Gold'', Contemporary Still Life Painting with Porcelain Bowl
Located in Utrecht, NL
When you look at this painting "Bowl with Gold" by Dutch artist Sasja Wagenaar (1959) from a distance you see a perfectly painted image, but up close a generous paint streak is visib...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Untitled 17, Paranoia series. Male Nude, Limited Edition Color Photograph
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Untitled 17, 2020 by Salvatore Arnone From Paranoia series Digital print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth Image size: 35 in. H x 50 in. W Edition of 3 + 1AP Unframed Paranoi...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital

Apple Red Very Very Pocket Painting
Located in Deddington, GB
Pocket Very Very Red Apple is an original oil painting by Dani Humberstone as part of her Pocket painting series featuring small scale realistic oil paintings, with a nod to baroque ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

George Condo 'Mythological Figures' Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This full-bleed, large-scale poster by George Condo was created for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, showcasing his signature blend of classical portraiture and surreal abstractio...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Offset

Night Windows
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Domestic Vacations: The Dutch proverb "a Jan Steen household" originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous f...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Black Heritage 5 - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative, African, Woman, Hair
Located in Ibadan, Oyo
Black heritage portrays the rich cultural, historical, and social contributions of Black individuals and communities throughout history. It encompasses the traditions, values, and ac...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Charcoal, Mixed Media, Acrylic

Swimming Area, Lakescape, Sunset, color photograph, limited edition landscape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Color fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 8. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limit...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

As Catedrais Beach, Atlantic Ocean, monochrome photograph, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Two male Nudes. Painting.Pastel, carbon pencil, ink on archival paper mounted
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Two Nudes, 2016 by Celso Castro-Daza One of a kind Pastel, carbon pencil, ink on archival paper mounted on board Image size: 40.5 H in. x 55.5 in. W Mounted on acid-free board: 41 H x 56 in. W Drawing on paper is his basic work tool, some are sketches of his surviving works, others are sketches of moments he documents. ____________ Undefined by medium, Celso Castro’s works each carry the presence of the artist’s hand through the transparency of their process. Castro’s oeuvre is strongly divided between his photomontage assemblies and watercolor paintings: the prior is marked by the labor-intensive deconstruction of portrait photographs and the latter, by the seemingly frenzied recreation of a past encounter rendered in the drips and scribbles of paint and ink. Both discriminating in what they reveal of the subject, his photomontage and watercolor portraits exude raw sexuality through the combination of Castro’s mark-making and gaze. Celso Castro’s work is a bare-bulb erotic photo foray into the underbelly of Colombia’s drug world. Castro’s labor-intensive, photo-collage works of drug kingpins, smugglers, hitmen, countrymen, street vendors, soldiers, paramilitaries, kidnappers, and pimps pose showing with pride their erect penises...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Carbon Pencil, Oil Pastel

Midcentury Modern Shapes in Red Coral, Vivid Tones Abstract Triptych on Beige
Located in Barcelona, ES
"Coral Curves II" is a hand-painted acrylic painting on high-quality 300g paper by artist Ryan Rivadeneyra. These painting, influenced by modernist artists of the 50's, 60's, and 70...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil Crayon, Acrylic, Rag Paper

2015 Cindy Sherman "Film Still #96" Vintage
Located in Brooklyn, NY
This original exhibition poster for Cindy Sherman's "Works From the Olbricht Collection" captures a striking image of the artist lying on the floor. Dressed in a short-sleeved brown ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Offset

Red Bunny
Located in Boston, MA
Artist: Slonem, Hunt Title: Red Bunny Date: 2025 Medium: Oil on wood Unframed Dimensions: 10" x 8" Framed Dimensions: 14.5" x 12.5" Signature: Signed by Artist on Verso Editio...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil

Peche - contemporary, landscape, tree, acrylic and resin on panel
Located in Bloomfield, ON
This contemporary mixed-media landscape featuring a peach tree is by Peter Hoffer. In full blossom, the pretty form of a pink peach tree dominates the canvas. The single tree is set...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Epoxy Resin, Acrylic, Panel

Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics - by Cy Twombly - 1984
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled, Sarayevo Winter Olympic Games 1984, is an etching with aquatint and lithograph in colors realized by Cy Twombly on the occasion of the Winter Olympics Games 1984 in Sarajev...
Category

1980s Contemporary Art

Materials

Etching, Aquatint, Lithograph

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number
Located in Santa Fe, NM
Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

Pink Dous
Located in Zofingen, AG
"DOUS" series. Sculptures of this series are created for your interior in different colors. It is always important to combine objects with each other. That is why I created a pair...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Copper

Duchándome en Cuerpo Ajeno May 30th. Watercolor and ink on paper
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Duchándome en cuerpo Ajeno May 30th, by Celso Castro-Daza From the Duchándome Series Watercolor and ink on paper Image size: 19.5 in. H x 13.75 in. W Unframed ____________ Undefined by medium, Celso Castro’s works each carry the presence of the artist’s hand through the transparency of their process. Castro’s oeuvre is strongly divided between his photomontage assemblies and watercolor paintings: the prior is marked by the labor-intensive deconstruction of portrait photographs and the latter, by the seemingly frenzied recreation of a past encounter rendered in the drips and scribbles of paint and ink. Both discriminating in what they reveal of the subject, his photomontage and watercolor portraits exude raw sexuality through the combination of Castro’s mark-making and gaze. Celso Castro’s work is a bare-bulb erotic photo foray into the underbelly of Colombia’s drug world. Castro’s labor-intensive, photo-collage works of drug kingpins, smugglers, hitmen, countrymen, street vendors, soldiers, paramilitaries, kidnappers, and pimps pose showing with pride their erect penises...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Ink, Watercolor, Archival Paper

White Cliffs of Etretat, large scale color photograph, limited edition, landcape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Color fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 8. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Hahnemuehle ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Large Glass Water Bag - Hyperreal glass sculpture
Located in East Quogue, NY
Large Hyperreal water bag glass sculpture - solid and hollow glass by Dylan Martinez. Martinez's hyperreal sculptures are hot sculpted glass hand-molded entirely by the artist. The ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Glass

Gothic Facade, Doges Palace, Venice, monochrome photograph, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and White Fine Art Cityscape Photography. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 7. Signed, titled, dated and numbered by artist. Certificate of authenticity included. Printed ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

L'Astronome - Lithograph - 1900-1944 - Signed
Located in Sint-Truiden, BE
Color lithograph after the watercolor illustrations by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry from his beloved masterpiece "The Little Prince". This lithograph was printed and published in 2009 ...
Category

Early 20th Century Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

Love is in the Air (Toronto)
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Mr. Brainwash Title: Love is in the Air (Toronto) Medium: Screenprint in colors on wove paper Date: 2019 Edition: PP 2/5 (aside from the edition of 50) Sheet Size: 30" x 22 1...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Paper, Screen

Red Jet - iconic vintage private jet plane on desert airport tarmac (48 x 74")
Located in San Francisco, CA
large format photograph of glossy cherry red vintage private airplane on airport runway tarmac Red Jet by Frank Schott 48 x 74 inches (122 x 188cm...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment, Archival Ink, Giclée

Small Mars 1, Tribute to James Turrell by Mathieu Piffeteau - Abstract painting
Located in Paris, FR
Small Mars 1, Tribute to James Turrell is a unique oil and acrylic on canvas painting by contemporary artist Mathieu Piffeteau, dimensions are 120 × 120 cm (47....
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas, Acrylic

Francis Bacon 'Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud' lithograph 1966
Located in Pembroke Pines, FL
Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered. Good condition, with trifold, as issued. Notes: From Derrière le miroir, N° 162. Published by Aimé Maeght, Éditeur, P...
Category

1960s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

David Shrigley - Stink - Ceramic, Limited Edition, Sculpture
Located in London, GB
Ceramic Numbered 42 from the edition of 75 16.5 × 12 × 12 cm released in collaboration with DDT comes with original shipping box from DDT David Shrigley is a British artist celebrat...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Ceramic

M.151201 by Toshio Iezumi - Abstract glass sculpture, 6 ft. 10" high
Located in Paris, FR
M.151201 is a heat reflective glass and half mirror sculpture by contemporary artist Toshio Iezumi, dimensions are 210 × 16 × 16 cm. (82.7 × 6.3 × 6.3 in) The sculpture is signed and...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Glass

Light Through Trees
Located in London, GB
Billy Childish Light through Trees , 2022 Archival print on heavy matt stock 39 x 30.5 cm Edition of 200 signed and numbered by the artist Billy Childish is a prolific British artis...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Hot Tub (50x50cm) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Nude, Women, 21st Century, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Hot Tub' (Heavenly Falls) - 2016 50x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Certificate and signature label, artist inventory number: 19715.08 Not mounted. ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

"Black Hole In A Purple House With Orange Roof" Abstract Acrylic on Canvas
Located in Baltimore, MD
"Black Hole In A Purple House With Orange Roof"" is a framed contemporary acrylic painting on canvas by Aron Hill, depicting abstract shapes in different shades of plum, orange, blac...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Acrylic

Multiverse, Flowers Takashi Murakami Limited Edition Signed Print Colour Flowers
Located in Bristol, GB
Offset print, cold stamp and high gloss varnishing Edition of 300 Diameter: 71 cm (27.9 in) Signed and numbered on front Mint. Minor imperfections may appear due to the production pr...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Paper, Offset

Crocus Purple Pink Pocket Painting, original painting, contemporary
Located in Deddington, GB
Pocket Purple Pink Crocus is an original oil painting by Dani Humberstone as part of her small scale realistic oil paintings, with a nod to baroque still life painting. The paintings...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil

Peony no.4 -analogue black and white floral photography, limited edition 4 of 20
Located in London, GB
'Peony no.4’ photographed in London, United Kingdom 2023. It is a still life black and white film photograph, made with a large format 4x5 Linhof camera. Giclée print on Hahnemühle...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Giclée

Contemporary art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Contemporary 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, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Stefanie Schneider, Tyler Shields, Kirsten Thys van den Audenaerde, and Richard Heeps. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Paper and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Contemporary art, so small editions measuring 0.02 inches across are also available.

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