Francine Ledieu

An original mixed media drawing by American artist A.J. Fries.

"The Weaver" Series inviting viewers into a world where memory and present interweaving in a mesmerizing display of visual creativity. - An Artist Proof's of only Three is offered as...

Judith Brenner Sophie Dancing 1 Original Figurative Drawing Acrylic Paint, Pan Pastel, Ink and Watercolour Pencil on Paper Sheet Size: 84.1cm x W 59.4cm x D 0.1cm Sold Unframed Please note that in situ images are purely an indication of how a piece may look. Sophie Dancing 1 is an original nude drawing by Judith Brenner.The figure is continuously moving and the final work is a composition made in an attempt to capture the rhythm of the dance. This abstract-impressionistic work is evocative of Francis Bacon’s style...

Judith Brenner Solfrid Dancing 2 Original Figurative Drawing Acrylic Paint, Pan Pastel, Ink and Watercolour Pencil on Paper Sheet Size: 84.1cm x W 59.4cm x D 0.1cm Sold Unframed Plea...

mixed media on paper image size: 7.25 x 13.25 inches Neoromantic painter Hiro Yokose fuses multiple layers of wax and oil paint to create mysterious, veiled landscapes illuminated...

mixed media on paper; unframed signed lower right Neoromantic painter Hiro Yokose fuses multiple layers of wax and oil paint to create mysterious, veiled landscapes illuminated wi...

mixed media on paper; unframed signed lower right Neoromantic painter Hiro Yokose fuses multiple layers of wax and oil paint to create mysterious, veiled landscapes illuminated wi...

Interior design paintings. The diptych were done with oil, gold leaf pen 18 kt in green and gold color on watercolor paper 300g. The works are 11 by 14 inches in size, framed (gold o...

eautiful, rare painting by a prominent artist of Russian origin who was active in Italy during the first half of the 20th century Michel Carà Ovcinnicoff It depicts, with rare inten...

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...

This contemporary abstract impressionist painting with touches of expressionism, "The French Coast" is a delicate and emotive creation by French artist Natalya Mougenot. Part of a su...

Woman on a Patio Pastel on paper, c. 1915 Unsigned Provenance: Gift of the artist to his wife, Mary Hess Buehr By decent to the artist's niece, daughter of Will Hess David Saltzman Robert Henry Adams Fine Art Thomas French Fine Art Ronald C. Sloter, Columbus, Ohio Columbus College of Art and Design (de-accessed) Exhibited at Robert Henry Adams Fine Art, 1994, the first exhibition at the North Franklin Street Gallery. One of the early Chicago artists to adopt Impressionism, Karl Buehr became a figure and landscape painter. As a figure painter, his specialty became "gorgeously colored images of young women on porches overlooking brilliant summertime gardens." (Kennedy 98) His later work often showed a female figure with serious expression engaging the viewer with a direct stare. In his landscapes, he was noted for his strong coloration. In a December 1896 student exhibition at the Art Institute, a reviewer for the "Chicago Times Herald" described Buehr's landscapes as "blithe and joyous" with "country roads brilliant in sunlight . . . fields rich in summer verdure, under soft skies painted in a high, musical key." (Gerdts 68) Buehr was born as one of seven sons to a prosperous German family who immigrated to America and settled in Chicago in 1869. He was first exposed to his signature style of Impressionism in 1888 when he enrolled in night classes at the Art Institute while working in the shipping department of a lithographic firm near the Institute. He remained a student there until 1897 and was recognized in a "Chicago Times Herald" editorial of June 13, 1897 as one of the Institute's most outstanding pupils. The next year, his art career was temporarily put on hold when he briefly enlisted with the U.S. Army in the Spanish American War. In 1899, he resumed his art studies, this time with Frank Duveneck. He exhibited a painting at the Paris Salon of 1900. In 1905, thanks to a wealthy Chicago patron, Buehr and his family moved to France. They spent the following year in Taormina, Sicily, and spent time in Venice as well. In Paris, Buehr studied at the Academy Julian with Raphael Collin for two years. Then he went to England, enrolling in the London Art School but had returned to Paris by 1908. During this time, he began painting at Giverny, the home of Impressionist leader Claude Monet (1840-1926, and by 1912, Buehr was listing that village as his home address. One of his good friends and associates at Giverny was Frederick Frieseke. One of Buehr's paintings from that time, "News from Home", was exhibited in 1913 at the French Salon in Paris and at the annual exhibit of the Chicago Art Institute. It shows a woman in floral dress sitting on a porch with a background with potted flowers and lush greenery background. Of his painting done at Giverny, Buehr wrote in 1912 to William Macbeth of Macbeth Galleries in New York: "My figures painted in and around Giverny are costumed and in appropriate out door settings." (Gerdts 68) In 1914, he returned to the United States and took a teaching position in Chicago at the Art Institute, which he held for the remainder of his life. He was married to Mary Hess, a painter of miniatures and decorative works. In 1928-29, he was a guest artist at Stanford University. Courtesy, AskArt “Karl Albert Buehr (1866–1952) was a painter born in Germany. Buehr was born in Feuerbach - near Stuttgart. He was the son of Frederick Buehr and Henrietta Doh (Dohna?). He moved to Chicago with his parents and siblings in the 1880s. In Chicago, young Karl worked at various jobs until he was employed by a lithograph company near the Art Institute of Chicago. Introduced to art at work, Karl paid regular visits to the Art Institute, where he found part-time employment, enabling him to enroll in night classes. Later, working at the Institute as a night watchman, he had a unique opportunity to study the masters and actually posted sketchings that blended in favorably with student's work. Having studied under John H. Vanderpoel, Buehr graduated with honors, while his work aroused such admiration that he was offered a teaching post there, which he maintained for many years thereafter. He graduated from the Art Inst. of Chicago and served in the IL Cav in the Spanish–American War. Mary Hess became Karl's wife—she was a student of his and an accomplished artist in her own right. In 1922, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member. Art Studies in Europe In 1904, Buehr received a bronze medal at the St. Louis Universal Exposition, then, in 1905, Buehr and his family moved to France, thanks to a wealthy Chicago patron, and they spent the following year in Taormina, Sicily, where the artist painted local subjects, executing both genre subjects and landscapes as well as time in Venice. Buehr spent at least some time in Paris, where he worked with Raphaël Collin at the Académie Julian. Giverny and American Impressionism Prior to this time, Buehr had developed a quasi-impressionistic style, but after 1909, when he began spending summers near Monet in Giverny, his work became decidedly characteristic of that plein-air style but he began focusing on female subjects posed out-of-doors. He remained for some time in Giverny, and here he became well-acquainted with other well known expatriate America impressionists such as Richard Miller, Theodore Earl Butler, Frederick Frieseke, and Lawton Parker. It seems likely that Buehr met Monet, since his own daughter Kathleen and Monet’s granddaughter, Lili Butler, were playmates, according to George Buehr, the painter’s son. His other daughter Lydia died before adulthood due to diabetes. He returned to Chicago at the onset of World War I and taught at The Art Inst for many years. One of his noted pupils at the Art Institute was Archibald Motley...