Dora Maar Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Sandy Litchfield found peace and inspiration in regular solitary walks through nature throughout the pandemic. Her most recent body of work diaristically documents her constitutional...

Shizico spent three days painting this plein air in her sunlit garden. She applied 550 Ture Gold paint and Van Gogh Yellow creating a stunning backdrop which served as the canvas for...

Charmion von Wiegand Intersecting Magic Square, ca. 1963 Gouache on paperboard Signed and titled on the back of the artwork. The signature shown on the frame back is a photo of the actual signature on the artwork itself. Frame Included: elegantly floated and framed in hand made white wood museum frame with UV plexiglass This work is signed and titled on the back of the artwork itself. The signature shown on the back of the frame is a photo of the actual signature, since the actual pencil signature and title is on the artwork itself, which can't be seen within the frame Measurements: Frame: 21 x 17 x 1.5 inches Artwork: 18 x 14.25 inches The Estate of the celebrated artist Charmion Von Wiegand has been represented exclusively by Michael Rosenfeld...

"Abstract Cityscape" NYC Early 20th Century American Scene Social Realism Ashcan Abraham Walkowitz (American, 1878-1965) Abstract Cityscape Sight: 6 1/4' x 8 1/2 inches Mixed media...

Terrell James Field Study #749, 2020 Oil on vellum 20 x 16 in (50.8 x 40.6 cm)

Mixed media on paper, framed 10 x 15 cm - 18 x 24 cm with white mat passe-partout Unique copy Signed on the front

Abstract cityscape watercolor with loosely defined landscape elements and geometric shapes by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 19...

Abstract watercolor fragment of a sunset over a field by Irene Pattinson (American, 20th Century). Tag on verso reads "Miller Fine Art / The Estate of Irene Pattinson". Unsigned. Acq...

Simon Samsonian (1912 - 2003) Colorful Geometric Abstraction, 1981 Oil on paper 16 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Estate of the artist This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told. Art historians are finally beginning to realize that the power of abstraction in its early years was a zeitgeist not limited to the major European centers of the avant-garde — Paris, Munich, and Moscow — but one that quickly rippled to major cities throughout the world. Within a few decades that original shock of a new vision had inspired thousands of artists from different cultures — particularly those the Middle East — whose translations were not slavish imitations of works by seminal figures like Picasso, Braque, Malevich, and Kandinsky but creative variants colored by their respective cultures. This essay focuses on an extraordinary Armenian artist, his harrowing survival of the genocide, his rise to fame in Cairo, and his creation of a unique style of abstraction. Art historians have typically formed a chorus that teaches the history of abstraction like this: Just before and during the World War I era, several avant-garde artists emerged to create shockingly different new forms by which artists could express themselves. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke out with cubism, quickly followed by Mondrian. In Moscow, Malevich created Suprematism, the ultimate hard-edge geometric abstraction. And in Munich, Kandinsky emerged as the father of Abstract Expressionism. Within these few short years a zeitgeist was sensed throughout the art world. American pioneers, too — particularly Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell — felt this explosive freedom of expression. When Europe was recovering after World War I it became clear that Paris would retain its title as capitol of the art world, lasting through the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depression. But the end of World War II changed everything. A parallel war had been won by a group of irascible young Abstract Expressionists in New York — led by Pollock, Rothko, DeKooning, and Kline. No sooner had Paris been liberated from the Germans than Picasso, Matisse, Breton, and Duchamp surrendered to the Americans. From that point on New York would be the epicenter of the art world. But a lens that focuses myopically on the war between the avant-garde of Paris and New York misses the wider narrative of multiple aesthetic modernities that developed in the several decades following World War I. For Armenian artists the matter is even more complex owing to the genocide of 1915 where more than 1.5 million people — seventy-five percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — were massacred. Those not shot on the spot were sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped and forced to walk naked under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. As a child Samsonian witnessed the murder of his parents and most of the members of his family. Soon thereafter, his older sister, Anahid, quickly shepherded him into a line of children being rescued by Greek nuns. But they became separated and he lost her, too. He was sent to a Greek orphanage in Smyrna (now Izmir), on Turkey’s west coast. Because he only knew his first name, the orphanage gave him a last name based on the place where they found him — Samsun — a major port on Turkey’s north coast on the Black Sea. His birth date was unknown, too. According to Samsonian’s vague recollections he assumed he was about three or four years old at the onset of the genocide, which would place his birth year in 1911 or 1912. In 1922, when Samsonian was about 10, the Turks ended their war with the Greeks by putting Smyrna to the torch in what has been called the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” Once again, the child was on the run, escaping the fire and slaughter. He found temporary refuge in Constantinople, but within a year that major port would fall to the Turks, too, and become renamed as Istanbul. This time, Samsonian was whisked away to an orphanage in Greece founded by the American charity, Near East Relief — which is credited with saving so many Armenian orphans that the American historian Howard M. Sachar said it “quite literally kept an entire nation alive. Any understanding of Samsonian’s approach to modernism requires careful consideration of the impact of his early years because his art is inseparable from the anguish he experienced. In 1927, when he was a teenager, he was transferred to Cairo, Egypt, then a cosmopolitan city hosting a sizable portion of the Armenian diaspora. There he lived with thirty-two other children on the top floor of the Kalousdian Armenian School. Upon graduating in 1932 he won a scholarship to attend the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute — an Italian art school in Cairo — where he won first prize in final examinations among one hundred students. He found work with an Armenian lithographic printer and he returned to the Kalousdian Armenian School to teach drawing. In 1939 he married one of his students, Lucy Guendimian. The Cairo in which Samsonian matured as an artist was home to many prominent art collectors after World War I. In this receptive environment Samsonian exhibited widely and won many awards. Beginning in 1937 and for the next thirty years he exhibited annually at the prestigious Le Salon du Caire hosted by the Société les Amis de l’Art (founded in 1921). After World War II he hit his stride as a modernist in Cairo, counting among his peers other artists of the Armenian diaspora such as Onnig Avedissian, Achod Zorian, Gregoire Meguerdichian, Hagop Hagopian...

"Crescent Rose" Mixed Media Handmade Paper Watercolor Abstract by Bruce Weinberg Soft lavenders, magentas and gray tones highlighted with purple thread and sheets of gold leaf mingle to create a soft and lovely abstract on handmade paper by California artist Bruce Weinberg (American, 1942-1994). Image is floated on a silk background. Pencil signed and dated "Bruce Weinberg 1980" lower right. Pencil signed title "Crescent Rose" lower left. Displayed in a giltwood frame with spacer. Image size: 24"H x 35"L. Framed size: 31"H x 43"W x 2"D. Bruce Weinberg was a long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied Interior Design at the Philadelphia College of Art and Architectural Space Planning at Temple University. During the 1970s he studied printmaking and drawing at San Francisco's Fort Mason...

Surrealist proto-Afropunk drawing by African-American artist, Roland Ayers (1932-2014). Amsterdam, 1967. Ink on paper, 9.5 × 12.5 inches; 16 × 19 inches framed. Signed and dated,...

Abstract Landscape Mid 20th Century Work on Paper Hamptons, NY Drawing Pastel. Signed and dated '62 lower right. 9 x 12 inches (sight) and 15. 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches framed. BIO Robert Dash is known for his Hamptons paintings...