Beck Margit

Margit Beck was born in Tokay, Hungary in 1918, and received her art education at the Institute of Fine Arts, Oradea Mare, Romania. Coming to the United States in the 1930s, she studied at the Art Students League in New York. During the 1940s, Miss Beck's style as a Cubist took form, making use of angular patterns while using the most striking contrasts by applying paint with the palette knife while using brilliant bursts of color amid prisms of light. Her early work utilized highly stylized figures in abstract form. By the mid-1950s, she became a MacDowell Fellow, and the time spent in the mountains of New Hampshire gave her a new perspective. She began to utilize dazzling incandescent colors and applied vibrating movements to ethereal scenes of forests, mountains and the universe. Each painting uses bold conceptions that are adroitly developed through the patterning of light and color into the congruity of design. 

Margit Beck was no stranger to the American art scene. She had 22 solo shows, including Contemporary Arts Gallery (New York City), the Babcock Galleries (New York City) and ACA Galleries (New York City), all of which were met with widespread critical acclaim by newspapers and art publications. Miss Beck's paintings have been shown in nearly every major national as well as international exhibitions. She is represented in major permanent collections throughout the country. Miss Beck has been the recipient of some of the most prestigious awards and honors awarded in the art field including three Childe Hassam Fund Purchase awards (1968, '69, '71).

Miss Beck was a member of numerous art associations, including the National Academy of Design, where she received academician in 1975. In reviewing her work, the Herald Tribune wrote: "Painting becomes a God-like act, as Margit Beck recreates the breadth and wonder of the West's open spaces in imaginative canvases, that combine realist and abstract idioms with stunning effect. Aerial landscapes, mountain fastnesses, lowering storms are done with power, vision and verve that are close to breathtaking. Miss Beck's paintings, watercolors and drawings show a rarity of singular beauty and subtlety. Her imagery is based on complex aerial views of cities, farmlands and mountains, with their built-in geometric configurations and dizzying rush of space. Her work contains the contradictory, ambiguous elements of things seen from a great distance, but she distills from this telescopic approach a brilliant montage of shapes, stunningly distorted by space, yet enveloped by an overall logic, serenity and colorist quietude. It is Miss Beck's gift to make us experience her vertiginous heights without once disturbing the equilibrium required to see her paintings as first-rate works of art." 

By the 1970s, Miss Beck's broad sweep of color indicating fields, hills and valleys were replaced by trees, clusters of farm buildings and the geometric grid of roads, fences and plowed fields, all put down with great attention given to the illusion of deep space. These canvases, huge in size (70" x 80"), give the viewer a sense that the landscape is a patchwork quilt of patterns, with her mountains undulating with the concentric rhythm of their contours, and her villages and farms, sparkling with a radiance of tiny jewels. In 1976 Miss Beck was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. That, along with the death of her husband of 40 years, ultimately devastated the creative spirit that was essential in the creation of her mystical masterpieces. By 1984, it became impossible for her to hold a paintbrush, and ultimately, her body was ravaged by the deteriorating effects of her worsening condition. In 1997 she passed away.

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.

Bring audacious experiments with color and textures to your living room, dining room or home office. Abstract paintings, large or small, will stand out in your space, encouraging conversation and introducing a museum-like atmosphere that’s welcoming and conducive to creating memorable gatherings.

Abstract art has origins in 19th-century Europe, but it came into its own as a significant movement during the 20th century. Early practitioners of abstraction included Wassily Kandinsky, although painters were exploring nonfigurative art prior to the influential Russian artist’s efforts, which were inspired by music and religion. Abstract painters endeavored to create works that didn’t focus on the outside world’s conventional subjects, and even when artists depicted realistic subjects, they worked in an abstract mode to do so.

In 1940s-era New York City, a group of painters working in the abstract mode created radical work that looked to European avant-garde artists as well as to the art of ancient cultures, prioritizing improvisation, immediacy and direct personal expression. While they were never formally affiliated with one another, we know them today as Abstract Expressionists.

The male contingent of the Abstract Expressionists, which includes Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, is frequently cited in discussing leading figures of this internationally influential postwar art movement. However, the women of Abstract Expressionism, such as Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell and others, were equally involved in the art world of the time. Sexism, family obligations and societal pressures contributed to a long history of their being overlooked, but the female Abstract Expressionists experimented vigorously, developed their own style and produced significant bodies of work.

Draw your guests into abstract oil paintings across different eras and countries of origin. On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive range of abstract paintings along with a guide on how to arrange your wonderful new wall art.

If you’re working with a small living space, a colorful, oversize work can create depth in a given room, but there isn’t any need to overwhelm your interior with a sprawling pièce de résistance. Colorful abstractions of any size can pop against a white wall in your living room, but if you’re working with a colored backdrop, you may wish to stick to colors that complement the decor that is already in the space. Alternatively, let your painting make a statement on its own, regardless of its surroundings, or group it, gallery-style, with other works.