Edith Varian Cockcroft Art

"Sock Hop" Mid-Century American Modernism WPA Female Artist 20th Century Realism. 30 x 24 inches. Oil on canvas. Signed on stretcher, c. 1940s. Frame is likely original to the painting. Realist painter-printmaker Kyra Markham...

"Cruise Ship Rolls In" Mid 20th Century American Contemporary Modern Realism This is one sensational painting. And we can even identify the artist, but can't find anything about the...

NYC Subway Mid 20th Century Modern American Scene Social Realism Contemporary David Atkins (1910 – 2012) Subway Train Departure 24 x 30 inches Oil on can...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Summer Resort in Michigan is an exceptional work painted by the Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly ...

Hans Burkhardt The Artist's Wife (1930) Oil on canvas, 20" x 16" 24" x 20 ½" x 1 ½" framed Dated 1930 lower right recto. Annotated "To Elsa HB Louise Burkhardt 1930. HB" verso. ...

WWII Aircraft Factory Workers Industrial 20th Century American Scene WPA Modern Frederick Buchholz (1901-1983) WW2 Aircraft Factory 18 x 24 inches Oil ...

Figurative Cubist Surrealist Abstraction Mid 20th Century American Modern Large O. Louis Guglielmi (1906 - 1956) OBSESSIVE THEME 44 x 33 inches Oil on canvas Signed and dated '48 lo...

"Drama Teacher" 1938 WPA Mid 20th Century American Theatre Surrealism Modernism. 30 x 24 inches. Oil on Canvas. Signed land dated ’38 lower left. The photograph in the listing depicts the artist's friend who taught drama and about whom the painting is based Painter, printmaker and sculptor, Leon Bibel was born in San Francisco in 1913. He trained at the California School of Fine Arts and received a scholarship to study under the German Impressionist Maria Riedelstein. He worked in collaboration with Bernard Zackheim, a student of Diego Rivera, to create frescoes for the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and the University of California Medical School. In 1936 Bibel moved from California to join the Federal Art Project at Harlem Art...

"History of US Postal Service" American Scene Social Realism WPA Modern Chicago Harold Haydon "History of the U.S. Postal Service" 21 x 25 1/2 inches O...

"Concert" Early 20th Century WPA Modernism American City Landscape Scene Ashcan The size of the canvas 28 3/4 x 43 1/4 inches. The painting comes directly from the artist's estate. It is signed lower right as well as signed, titled and dated verso. We have available more than two dozen paintings and works on paper from the 1930s - 80s that come directly from the Loew estate. BIO Michael Loew (1907 – 1985) was the son of a New York City baker. After high school, he was an apprentice to a stained-glass maker, and from 1926-1929, he studied at the Art Students League. In 1929, he traveled to Paris, North Africa, Germany, and Italy with a group of artists. When he returned to New York City in 1931, the Great Depression hit Loew unexpectedly, and for the next two years he paid his apartment rent with his paintings. In 1935, he found work with the WPA where he painted murals and partnered up with longtime friend Willem de Kooning in 1939 on a mural for the Hall of Pharmacy at the New York World’s Fair. Their friendship lasted for the rest of their lives. In the mid-30’s he painted in Mexico and the Yucatán documenting the construction of a U.S. Naval airbase on Tinian Island. It was from this airbase that the Enola...

"Audience" Mid 20th Century American Figurative Theatre Performance Contemporary Leon Bibel (1912 - 1995) "The Audience," 52 ½ x 41 ¼ inches. Oil on canvas, c. 1963. Signed lower right. Framed. BIO Painter, printmaker and sculptor, Leon Bibel was born in San Francisco in 1913. He trained at the California School of Fine Arts and received a scholarship to study under the German Impressionist Maria Riedelstein. He worked in collaboration with Bernard Zackheim, a student of Diego Rivera, to create frescoes for the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and the University of California Medical School. In 1936 Bibel moved from California to join the Federal Art Project at Harlem Art...