Skip to main content

Emil James Bisttram Art

American, 1895-1976
Emil Bisttram was born in Hungary in 1895 and emigrated with his parents when he was eleven to America. Bisttram choose a more economically promising career in commercial art design due to his economic conditions and opened his own art agency at the young age of twenty. During this time, he took classes with Leon Kroll at the Art Student League and with Jay Hambidge, an advocate of Dynamic Symmetry, at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (renamed the Parsons School of Design). Dynamic Symmetry is a system of spatial balances and had a lifelong impact on Bisttram. Bisttram taught at Parsons from 1920 to 1925 and at the New York Master Institute of United Arts at the Roerich Museum from 1925-1930. The Institute was a spiritual inspiration to Bisttram because it advocated linking the fine arts together. However, his style of painting was more influenced by Kandinsky and he began to experiment in non-objective art. Bisttram received many awards including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1931 to study mural painting. However, he decided to go to Mexico study with the great Mexican Muralist Diego Rivera. After returning from Mexico, Bisttram participated in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum for Guggenheim fellows in 1933 and received a commission to create a mural for the Taos, New Mexico courthouse. The Taos School of Art (renamed Bisttram School of Fine Art) which explored spiritualism and meditation was opened by Bisttram in 1932 where he taught some famous painters, including Florence Miller Pierce. Together with Raymond Jonson and Lauren Harris, the Transcendental Painting Group was formed in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1938-1942. This group was considered very radical for the time and the community reacted with much disdain. Nevertheless, Bisttram continued to teach and paint, and it is thought that Bisttram’s art truly represents transcendental ideas. Exhibited: Philadelphia Watercolor Club, 1926 (prize), 1931 (medal); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1926-28, 1933, 1941, 1954; American Watercolor Society, 1927 (prize), 1930 (prize), 1931 (prize); Art Institute of Chicago; Corcoran Gallery, 1932, 1935; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1951; Martin Diamond Fine Art, 1984. Works Held: Roerich Museum, New York; Albright Art Gallery; Taos County Courthouse; Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. (mural); United States Post Office, Ranger, Texas (mural). ©David Cook Galleries, LLC
(Biography provided by David Cook Galleries)
to
1
2
2
1
1
1
2
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
1
2
1
2
6,898
3,229
2,514
1,217
2
2
1
1
Artist: Emil James Bisttram
Original, Signed, 1959, Abstract Oil Painting
By Emil James Bisttram
Located in Newport Beach, CA
Striking, black, white, red and blue, oil-on-panel painting by listed American artist, Emil Bisttram (1895-1976) whose work is held in many important museums. This period image has b...
Category

Mid-20th Century Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Panel

Precipitation, 1960s Abstract Oil Painting of Floating Shapes, Purple White Gray
By Emil James Bisttram
Located in Denver, CO
Original 1961 mid-century modern abstract painting by New Mexico Transcendentalist, Emil Bisttram (1895-1976). Abstract floating shapes painted in shades of purple, blue, gray, white and black. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 33 x 37 x 1 ¾ inches. Image size is 32 ½ x 36 ¼ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a complete condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Emil Bisttram grew up in the tenements of New York City after his family emigrated from Hungary when he was a young boy. Bisttram studied at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. During his training, Emil studied under Ivan Olinsky, Leon Kroll, Howard Giles, and Jay Hambidge. Bisttram later taught at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, Parson's School of Design, and at the Master Institute of the Roerich Museum in New York. Bisttram opened the nation's first freelance advertising art agency by the age of twenty-one. However, he soon abandoned the business in pursuit of a career in Fine Art. In 1930, the artist made his first visit to Taos, New Mexico, where he reportedly found himself "blocked" by the open spaces, intense light, and color that define the region. In 1931, he traveled to Mexico where he studied mural painting with Diego Rivera on a Guggenheim Fellowship. While Emil was in Mexico, his wife lived in Taos where the couple established permanent residence upon his return. In Taos, Bisttram opened the area's first commercial art gallery, the Heptagon Gallery. He also founded the avante-garde Taos School of Art, later known as the Bisttram School of Fine Art. In 1934, Bisttram was among artists selected to paint murals for the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.). While commissioned by the W.P.A., Bisttram worked on murals in the County Courthouse in Taos and he completed a mural in the Justice Department Building in Washington, D.C. Although he continued with representational painting, much of Bisttram's work in the late 1930's became increasingly abstract. Along with Raymond Jonson and seven other artists, Bisttram founded the Transcendental Painting Group...
Category

1960s Abstract Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Related Items
Landscape - XXI century, Contemporary Oil & Acrylic Painting, Abstraction
By Monika Rossa
Located in Warsaw, PL
MONIKA ROSSA studied painting at the University of Arizona, in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and at the Escuela de Diseno in Barcelona. She practices drawing and easel painting....
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Acrylic, Board

Vintage Mid-Century Oil Painting, Abstract - Autumn Rhapsody, Hans Osswald
Located in Bristol, GB
AUTUMN RHAPSODY Oil on board Size: 32 x 58.5 cm (including frame) A rich and captivating mid-century abstract painting, executed in oil onto canvas by Swedish painter Hans Osswald (...
Category

1950s Abstract Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Pastoral Country Landscape Travelers on a Forest Road 19th century Oil Painting
Located in Stockholm, SE
Brass plate leads to Russian artist Pavel Pavlovich Dzhogin (1834 - 1885). This 19th century oil painting beautifully captures a serene rural scene with travelers on a cart traveling...
Category

Late 19th Century Realist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Wood, Oil, Wood Panel

Allegory of Fortune
Located in New York, NY
Provenance: S. Spinelli Collection, Florence; their sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, July 11-14, 1928, lot 112 (unsold); reoffered Galleria Luigi Bellini, Florence, April 23-26, 1934, lot 132, as manner of Baldassare Peruzzi Dr. Giacomo Ancona, Florence, 1930s, and after 1939, San Francisco; thence by descent to his son: Mario Ancona, San Francisco; thence by descent to his children: Mario Ancona III and Victoria Ancona, San Francisco, until 1995; thence to: Phyllis Ancona Green, widow of Mario Ancona, Los Angeles (1995-2012) Literature: Donato Sanminiatelli, Domenico Beccafumi. Milan 1967, p. 170 (under paintings attributed to Beccafumi) Among the precious survivors of Renaissance secular paintings for domestic interiors are several unusual and particularly attractive panels painted in Siena at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. These paintings depict exemplary figures from antiquity—heroes or heroines, as well as allegorical, literary, and mythological figures. For the most part, these panels have survived in groups of three, although it is possible that some of these works were painted either as part of larger series or as individual projects. One such trio by Beccafumi consists of two paintings now at the National Gallery, London (Marcia and Tanaquil) and a third in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome (Cornelia). These were commissioned around 1517–1519 for the bedroom of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci in Siena and were most likely placed together as elements in the wall decoration (spalliere) or installed above the back of a bench or cassapanca. Another, earlier (ca. 1495–1500), set of three—Guidoccio Cozzarelli’s Hippo, Camilla, and Lucretia (Private Collection, Siena) survives with its original wooden framework—a kind of secular triptych. Judith, Sophonisba, and Cleopatra in the collection of the Monte dei Paschi, Siena, are by an anonymous artist close to Beccafumi called the “Master of the Chigi-Saracini Heroines.” Girolamo di Benvenuto’s Cleopatra, Tuccia, and Portia are dispersed (homeless, Prague, Chambery), and Brescianino’s Faith, Hope, and Charity are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. The present painting first appeared in the Spinelli sale in Florence in 1934, at which time it was sold with two panels of identical size and format. Each was catalogued as being by the “manner of Baldassare Peruzzi” and of unidentified subject. Of these, the painting depicting a male figure turned to the right has recently reappeared in a private Italian collection, while the location of the third work, portraying a cloaked figure turned three-quarters left, remains unknown. Our panel depicts the allegorical figure of Fortune. Here she is represented in typical fashion as a nude female figure balanced on a wheel (sometimes called the Rota Fortunae), her billowing drapery indicating that she is as changeable as the wind. The appearance of the Virgin and Child in the cloud at the upper right is an unusual addition to the iconography. The subjects of the two pendant male...
Category

16th Century Old Masters Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Panel

Corner of AS, Original Oil Painting, Landscape
By Raphaël Renaud
Located in AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FR
Work : Original Oil Painting, Handmade Artwork, Unique Work. Ready to Hang. Medium : Oil on coated wood. Artist : Raphaël Renaud Subject : Coin de AS (Title), (EN : Corner of AS). T...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

The Veronica of the Virgin (Verónica de la Virgen)
Located in New York, NY
The panel has been attributed both to Joan de Joanes and his son Vicente Macip Comes (Valencia, ca. 1555 – 1623). Provenance: Private Collection, England, by 1886 (according to stencils on the reverse) Private Collection, New Jersey, until 2010 The Veil of Veronica, often called the Sudarium, is one of the most important and well-known relics of Christ. According to legend, Veronica offered Christ her veil as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. He wiped his face with the veil, which left the cloth miraculously imprinted with his image. Depictions of Christ’s face on a veil, or simply images that focused in on Christ’s face, were treasured objects of religious devotion. The popularity of this format also inspired similar images of the face of the Virgin. The iconographic type of the present painting is known as the Veronica of the Virgin, which was especially favored in late medieval and early Renaissance Spain. Distinct from the images of the suffering Christ, the Veronica of the Virgin is based on the legend that Saint Luke painted a portrait of Mary from life. Although scholars have sometimes mistaken them for portraits of Queen Isabella I of Castile (known as Isabel la Católica) or as a depiction of Saint Maria Toribia (known as María de la Cabeza, or, Mary of the Head), paintings like this one were clearly intended as images of the Virgin in the style of Saint Luke’s lost portrait. The Veronica of the Virgin was especially popular in Valencia, and depictions of this subject produced there all stem back to one visual prototype: a Byzantine image in the city’s cathedral (Fig. 1). This early treatment of the Veronica was given to the cathedral in 1437 by Martin the Humane, King of Aragon and Valencia, who promoted religious veneration of the Veronica of the Virgin as part of the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This devotion spread throughout Martin’s kingdom and particularly took hold in Valencia, where the Byzantine image resided. The image, which is displayed in a gold reliquary...
Category

16th Century Old Masters Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Les Brindilles ( Twigs )
Located in Cotignac, FR
Mid-Century oil on board by 20th century artist Ahlan Achoy, signed bottom left. Ahlan Achoy was known for his figurative art and portraiture often in the cubist style. This colourf...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Expressionist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Les Brindilles ( Twigs )
Les Brindilles ( Twigs )
H 24.41 in W 29.53 in D 0.99 in
Portrait of a Man
Located in New York, NY
Provenance: with Leo Blumenreich and Julius Böhler, Munich, 1924 Dr. Frederic Goldstein Oppenheimer (1881-1963), San Antonio, Texas; by whom given to: Abraham M. Adler, New York, un...
Category

16th Century Old Masters Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Panel

Portrait of a Man
Portrait of a Man
H 11 in W 9 in
Untitled
By Eugene Pizzuto
Located in London, GB
Beautiful oil painting on board, attributed to Eugene Pizzuto (1925 - 2004). Framed size: 32 x 44 cm Framing: Hand-stained and waxed oak tray frame. Signature: Unsigned. * About t...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Expressionist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Untitled
Untitled
H 12.6 in W 17.33 in
La Seine en amont de Rouen
Located in LE HAVRE, FR
Albert MALET (1905-1986) La Seine en amont de Rouen Oil on panel (isorel) Size: 38 x 46 cm Signed lower left In very good state of conservation. Recently cleaned and varnished. Be...
Category

1960s Post-Impressionist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Oil, Panel

Italian Grotto in Ruins Street Scene with Resting Family 18 Century Oil Painting
Located in Stockholm, SE
Very well executed mid-18th century artwork, rather oil study, depicts resting family sheltering from the scorching midday sun in grotto shape arch in ruined part of town. Mother fee...
Category

Mid-18th Century Realist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Wood, Oil, Wood Panel

Portrait Sleeping Girl by Danish German Genre Painting Master 19th century
Located in Stockholm, SE
Johann August Frederik Carl‏ Lorange (1833 - 1875) was highly skilled Danish artist of German roots. Not much known on his biography, unfortunately, but most of his works were produc...
Category

19th Century Realist Emil James Bisttram Art

Materials

Canvas, Wood, Oil, Wood Panel

Emil James Bisttram art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Emil James Bisttram art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Emil James Bisttram in oil paint, paint, board and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the abstract style. Not every interior allows for large Emil James Bisttram art, so small editions measuring 31 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Amaranth Ehrenhalt, Melville Price, and Edmund Quincy. Emil James Bisttram art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $15,450 and tops out at $27,750, while the average work can sell for $21,600.

Artists Similar to Emil James Bisttram

Recently Viewed

View All