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Ben Norris Paintings

American, 1910-2006

Robert Benjamin Norris was born in 1910, in southern California, where he completed his undergraduate education, executed his first professional paintings and first exhibited to critical acclaim. Although he continued to paint for 20 years after retiring to New York City and Philadelphia, he may be best known in Hawaii, where he spent the highly prolific middle part of his professional career. Norris studied at Pomona College, Harvard and the Sorbonne, but supplemented his schooling by working directly with Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Jean Charlot, Josef Albers and Max Ernst.

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Artist: Ben Norris
Landscape Variations No. 2 - Sardonic Interlude
By Ben Norris
Located in Boston, MA
Signed and dated lower left: "Ben Norris / 29 - XII - 50". With label verso: "Landscape Variations II - Sardonic Interlude / by Ben Norris". From the Estate of the Artist. Exhibite...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Ben Norris Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Manoa Rainforest XXXII: Hala and Wave 2
By Ben Norris
Located in Boston, MA
Ben Norris’ vibrant landscapes teem with creeping vines, tropical flowers, and encroaching vegetation. His watercolors and paintings of tranquil gardens and lush rainforests transpor...
Category

Early 2000s Realist Ben Norris Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

Coronation
By Ben Norris
Located in Boston, MA
Signed and dated top right: “Norris (c) 1982”. With label verso: “Ben Norris, 1982 / Coronation / watercolor, 52 x 31 1/4 inches”. As a teacher, academic, and artist, Ben Norris had...
Category

20th Century American Modern Ben Norris Paintings

Materials

Watercolor

Space Series No. 13: Space Cluster
By Ben Norris
Located in Boston, MA
Norris, as a teacher, academic, and artist had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and continued to stretch his stylistic methods throughout his career. While known for his bold wat...
Category

1970s Abstract Geometric Ben Norris Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

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"Winter" American Modernism WPA Regionalism Landscape Mid-Century Magic Realism
By Dale Nichols
Located in New York, NY
"Winter" American Modernism WPA Regionalism Landscape Mid-Century Magic Realism. 30 x 40 inches. Oil on canvas, c. 1960s, Signed lower right. As we list the painting now, the work is currently being cleaned, restored and a hand carved frame is being built. Additional photos will be uploaded as soon as possible. Our gallery, Helicline Fine Art, just launched our new digital exhibition: American Art: The WPA and Beyond. Three dozen paintings, works on paper and sculptures which are available here on 1stDibs. In person viewings can be arranged by appointment at our midtown Manhattan gallery. Provenance: "Winter" was originally purchased by Stanley Byer. Mr. Byer owned homes in Key West, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He purchased the painting from Dunning Auction in 1984 in Elgin, Illinois. Mr. Byer was related to Abraham Weiss from Florida. Saul Babbin, now deceased was a cousin of Mr. Weiss. I purchased the painting from Joy Babbin, Mr. Babbin's wife, now living in from New Mexico. Dale Nichols (1905 – 1995) Artist, printmaker, illustrator, watercolorist, designer, writer and lecturer, Nichols did paintings that reflected his rural background of Nebraska where he was born in David City, a small town. Although he did much sketching outdoors, most of his paintings were completed in his studio and often included "numerology, magic squares...
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A peaceful forest with sunlight filtering through tall trees onto mossy ground
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A peaceful forest with sunlight filtering through tall trees onto mossy ground. A signed unique original by 20th Century British/Australian Artist, Vernon Keeble (1951-2018) Art mea...
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San Francisco Cable Car WPA Artist Adolf Dehn Modernist Art Gouache Oil Painting
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ADOLF ARTHUR DEHN (American, 1895-1969) San Francisco Bay Area street scene, with Trolley, Streetcar, Cable Car with bay and Alcatraz Island in background. Hand signed LRC. Sight 19" x 15", overall 23" x 19". Adolf Dehn (November 22, 1895 – May 19, 1968) was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles. Adolph Dehn was born in 1895 in Waterville, Minnesota. He began creating artwork at the age of six, and by the time of his death had created nearly 650 images. Dehn went to the Minneapolis School of Art (known today as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), where he met and became a close friend of Wanda Gag. In 1917 he and Gág were two of only a dozen students in the country to earn a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. He was drafted to serve in World War I in 1918, but declared himself a conscientious objector and spent four months in a guardhouse detention camp in Spartanburg, SC and then worked for eight months as a painting teacher at an arm rehabilitation hospital in Asheville, NC. Later, Dehn returned to the Art Students League for another year of study and created his first lithograph, The Harvest. In 1921 Dehn's lithographs were featured in his first exhibition at Weyhe Gallery in New York City. From 1920 to 1921 in Manhattan, he was connected to New York's politically left-leaning activists. In 1921, he went to Europe. In Paris and Vienna he belonged to a group of expatriate intellectuals and artists, including Andrée Ruellan, Gertrude Stein, and ee cummings...
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Beautiful mid century plein air figural landscape of Laguna Niguel, California by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). The morning sun gli...
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Simka Simkhovitch WPA Artist Oil Painting Gouache American Modernist Powerline
By Simka Simkhovitch
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Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) This came with a small grouping from the artist's family, some were hand signed some were not. These were studies for larger paintings. Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. Simka painted what he thought was typical of Jackson. His impression of pre-civil rights Mississippi was evidently Greek Revival column houses, weeping willow trees, working class families, and the oppression of African Americans. He painted African American men picking cotton, while a white man took account of the harvest and a white judge advised a white family, calling it Pursuits of Life in Mississippi. Though clearly endorsed by the government and initially generally well-received, the mural soon raised concerns with locals as the climate toward racial segregation began to change. The main concern was whether depictions that show African Americans in subjugated societal roles should be featured in a courtroom. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...
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1930s American Modern Ben Norris Paintings

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Mid Century Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco Landscape
Located in Soquel, CA
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco by Garrett Price (American, 1896-1979). Signed "Garrett" lower right. Unframed. Image size, 11.75"H x 15.25"W. G...
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1950s American Modern Ben Norris Paintings

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1980s Autumn Harvest, Original Semi-Abstract Landscape Oil Painting with Figures
By Edward Marecak
Located in Denver, CO
This original oil painting, titled Autumn Harvest by Edward Marecak (1919-1993), was created in 1987. It features a stunning autumnal landscape, with seven women actively engaged in ...
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1980s American Modern Ben Norris Paintings

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Ben Norris paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Ben Norris paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ben Norris in paint, acrylic paint, canvas and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1970s and is mostly associated with the abstract style. Not every interior allows for large Ben Norris paintings, so small editions measuring 40 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Tayo Heuser, Erle Loran, and Augustine Kofie. Ben Norris paintings prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $6,500 and tops out at $12,000, while the average work can sell for $9,250.

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