Gastone Breddo Paintings

Shortly before Walt Esslinger died a few years ago, we talked in his small yellow painted studio in Bakersfield. Sixteen years my senior, he’d been my close friend, mentor and running mate since 1960. “You still writing?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, taking in the space’s renovations he’d recently sub-contracted. Ninety one years old, and he was thinking ahead. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Write the Andy Warhol story.” Walt was a Central Valley guy, an L.A. guy, a Las Vegas guy. A man who knew his way around. “I want you to put on record what happened back then when I bought the soup can painting.” Back then was the fall of 1962. The two of us had been exhibiting our paintings in the L.A. Art Institute’s gallery for locals only. Walt had given legendary Ad Rhinehardt a story about how he and I had been working in both Edward Kienholz’s and John Altoon’s studios (false—we’d only been visiting). One morning, the Institute’s Director, who hadn’t suspected us to be charlatans yet, introduced us to a reed thin, tow headed young man leaning against the main gallery’s wall. “Meet Andy Warhola,” he said. “Andy is from New York.” “Warhol,” the boy/man said. “Painter?” Walt asked him. “Shoe Illustrator.” The director made a snorting noise I took to mean that Warhola or Warhol’s modesty was posed. He mentioned something about Andy having a show on the La Cienega strip of galleries. We exchanged mumbles about how the art world was in flux, nothing more than that, and Walt and I moved on. If this strange cat had anything to look at, we’d see it. It was a Monday, and La Cienega’s twenty some galleries would be opening new shows and serving champagne that evening. North La Cienega Avenue, laid over a network of oil veins decades before, had become the street for the Cool School, a group of artists and gallery people trying to bring Los Angeles’s art scene to life. The galleries were small but proud. Sure, Jazz was born on the Delta and raised in New Orleans, St, Luis and Chicago, but L.A. had fifty-three jazz joints according to Chet Baker, who’d blown with the best. Why then should the West Coast be lagging behind New York in the other truly American expression, abstract art? At the Ferus Gallery that night we found Warhol’s exhibit. “Shit,” I said. Walt grinned. “You no like?” “Not exactly my can of soup,” I said, peeking into the small space, loaded now wall to wall with paintings of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Walt stepped into the space. “How about the idea of it?” I made my way through spectators looking at once to be confused, amused, enthused and abused. When I came back to Walt he was still smiling. “Why didn’t he silk screen ‘em?” I asked. “That’s probably his next move,” Walt said. “You wanna stay?” Walt’s keen eyes cased the joint. “I see Irving Bloom over there,” he said. “Believe I’ll stick around and talk with him.” Bloom had been operating this popular gallery for some time now. “One hundred a month,” he’d told me. “It’s not like I’m getting rich.” I stood around for a bit, heard a fellow abstract expressionist I’d met tell a young lady who looked to be lost, “Okay that’s the soup. Come with me, baby, and I’ll show you the juice.” Two doors down I stopped at the Primus-Stuart Gallery. A group of people had gathered around a display of soup cans, stacked grocer’s pyramid style in the window. All Campbell’s. All Tomato. A sign leaning against the grouping stated: “Get the real thing. Thirty cents each.” That’s the way it was. Twenty-four galleries forming a gauntlet between La Cienega’s 300 block, all the way up to Barney’s Beanery at the corner of Santa Monica. Hollywood types dressed to the nines, Beats dressed for the times just gone. Champagne popping...

'Mushroom Rock' by Dennis Blagg. 2020. Oil on Canvas. 20 x 16." 3,600. Contemporary American landscape oil painting of the 'Mushroom Rock,' geological formation in Ellsworth County ...

A very good large 20th century Abstract Expressionist oil circa 1975. Stanley Smith (b. 1923) British. oil on board 61cmx 122cm. Gallery frame 65cmx 126c...

Strange Tracey are proud to be the exclusive agent for Fran Mora in the United Kingdom. Born in Huelva in the south of Spain in 1979, Mora studied at the School of Fine Arts in Sev...

Strange Tracey are proud to be the exclusive agent for Fran Mora in the United Kingdom. Born in Huelva in the south of Spain in 1979, Mora studied at the School of Fine Arts in Sev...

Rachel Bess Rotting Apple, Supine, 2015 oil on panel 6" x 8" unframed 9.25" x 11.25" framed Rachel Bess is known for her precise and theatrical oil paintings...

Women in Abstract Expressionism: Colorful Sunset Inspired Artwork by Texas artist Winter Rusiloski. Details: Winter Rusiloski Cathedral, 2016 Oil on canvas 48 x 45" View works. Wind...

"Historic Woodlawn Cemetery (early spring)" is a rare, plein air oil painting by award-winning contemporary American artist, Kira Mountjoy-Pepka. This piece features a marble structu...

A contemporary still life, oil on linen painting, framed by a famous Odes artist, Sergei Belik. It was exhibited at Alla Rogers gallery in Washington, DC in 2005 and at the Ukrainian...

"Look What I Can Do" by Emily Fox King, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches (Framed size ~ 38 x 38 inches). $3,900 "Eckhart Tolle explains that the reason we...

In "Outpost", Jacobsen’s new body of work records scenes from a year when societal boundaries where crossed and personal dreams set into motion. The paintings in this exhibition continue and expand on the ideas of Jacobsen’s 2014 exhibition, “Lean-to,” which featured artworks that invited viewers to contemplate still-life images of interiors from the artist’s domestic spaces and black and white arrangements from the artist’s workspace. While seemingly traditional still lives, the works served as the artist’s subtle critique of industrialized society. The content and technique speak to Jacobsen’s attempt to insulate himself from this very type of industrial environment and modernist influences. Jacobsen purchased a miner’s cabin in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado just prior to the legalization of marijuana, and the paintings in Outpost serve as documents of his experiments in growing this newly legal plant. In these still lifes, the marijuana plant is the central focus against a dark background, along with wild mushrooms collected on long hikes and crystals gifted from friends. These paintings hearken back to traditional Dutch paintings of tulips, itself a coveted plant in its day. Deploying the technique of lens flare, Jacobsen highlights the importance of the camera, while also referencing the religious, spiritual, and cultist motif of light symbolizing the divine. The usage of this “heavenly” light on these cannabis plants...

"The End is Near" by Emily Fox King, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches (Framed size 50 x 62 inches) "Eckhart Tolle explains that the reason we have a human...