David Hammons Paintings

Acrylic on masonite. This is a pivotal work in deep and radiant cobalt blue from 1950. It dipicts calligraphic and hieroglyph structures over a grid and pyramidal base by the first generation abstract expressionist. Provenance: Skinner: November 13, 1992 [Lot 00219}, The entry in the Skinner catalog indicates that the painting came directly from the artist to the family of the consignor to Skinner. Kaminsky Auctions. There is an unbroken paper trail that traces the ownership of the painting from the current owner, through two auction houses to the artist. Perfect unbroken provenance. Pousette-Dart was among the most inventive of the Abstract Expressionist generation, His uncanny talent was to expand the nature of abstraction and still make each mark each element very much his own; a reflection of what he called   "the concealed power of the spirit," he said, “not of the brute physical form."   His was not aiming for a singular, realized aesthetic formula but to expand the possibilities of painting; the transcendental in painting. Typical of such invention and exploration is this  painting  Untitled 1950 when the artist was only 34 years old and represented by one of the champions of the new American painting, Betty Parsons.  
A banner year for Pousette-Dart, the Museum of Modern Art acquired their first painting by the Minnesota born artist.  He worked on easel size works such as this painting an oil on masonite. At the same time Pousette-Dart was also working on larger scale works such as Path of the Hero, running over ten feet in length now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Both contain fields of color articulated by a highly sophisticated white hieroglyphic vocabulary. Rather than demonstrate an expressionist sensibility, Pousette-Dart harnesses his more cerebral ideas transforming thick areas of paint into a more refined composition of geometric forms akin to the pattern and forms of say a stained glass window. In a way he is looking back at Fugue, 1940 a black and white composition which makes use of a similar format of painting albeit smaller. Color and form are minimal, but what Pousette-Dart has maximized is the rhythmic and syncopated character of painting casting his ideas into purely symbolic terms that one might link to the pictograms of Adolph Gottlieb. Nonetheless, nature is always at the core of Pousette-Dart’s thinking and dreaming. Here he has transformed the local Ramapo Mountains—where he will eventually move with his family to live and work— into a complex series of articulated fragments linked by style, scale and color.  The painting’s imagery built on two large triangles and reduced to just two colors, cobalt blue and white all outlined in black.  Pousette-Dart symbols stacked in horizontal and vertical rows:  blue is ground, white is language, symbolic of light, consciousness and awareness . The painting maintains a mystical character images compounded that formulate a secret code and linked to the series of white paintings Pousette-Dart authored in the first half of the 1950s. Get up close to the picture and you discover images within images a kind of picture puzzle...

Sylvia Rutkoff (1919-2011) Sr5-1 c.1960s “Crossed Arms” Acrylic on Masonite 36x42 period frame Unsigned Collection acquired from family estate

Katherine Westphal's oil on board painting titled 'Abstract Landscape' embodies the stylistic qualities of abstract painting. Using a diverse color palette of orange, red, yellow, bl...

This is an abstract acrylic painting on masonite board evoking a night time seascape or ocean landscape. Predominant colors are blues and purples. Signed "Jomac" lower right, also s...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on board. Signed and dated lower right and verso, titled verso. 36.25 x 48 in. 40.5 x 52.25 in. (framed) Framed in contemporary silver, tiered floater frame. Dennis Eugene Norman Burton was a Canadian modernist who was born in Lethbridge, Ontario. He attended the Ontario College of Art from 1952 to 1956, and worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a graphic designer until 1960. Inspired by a 1955 exhibition of the “Painters Eleven” at Toronto’s Hart House, as well as American Abstract Expressionist artists such as Robert Motherwell, Jack Tworkov, and Willem de Kooning, Burton shifted his focus toward abstraction in the mid-1950s. Burton showed with the famed Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the youngest members on the gallery’s roster. A talented musician, he also played saxophone in the Artist’s Jazz Band in Toronto - a pioneering Canadian free-jazz group...

Translated title: "Skull". Acrylic on masonite. It features a wooden frame, which is painted and decorated with gold leaves.

This 40" x 40" oil on masonite panel by artist Marc Barker was painted in charcoal and sepia tones, and was created in an 'old world' grisaille style. "This monochromatic abstract harkens back to my collegiate studies, and as a graduate student teaching zoology with the hours spent staring into a microscope mystified by the primordial world just out of site, a bacterial/protozoan cloud chamber...

Translated title: "Now I see you" Acrylic on masonite.

Suzanne Bloomfield’s 1969 painting, After the Storm, is a striking blend of oil and encaustic that immerses viewers in a world of renewal and transformation. Deep reds, earthy brown...

"7 Koi" is a complex work of koi fish swimming underwater filled with light and brilliant color painted in a lush and fluid style bordering on abstraction. Fish are in shades of ...

Translated title: "Now I see you". Acrylic on masonite.

Acrylic paint on masonite. The frame was painted by the artist.