Hermann Urban Art

"Hibiscus Garden I" is an abstract expressionist painting by Romina Milano where a dance of black gestures unfolds across colorful brushstrokes infused with raw emotion. Romina Mil...

Gracie Mansion, c. 1944, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 25 x 30 inches, presented in a newer frame Isabella Markell was a painter, etcher, and sculptor, who is best known for ...

Seoul, Korea, 1954 - 56, watercolor on paper, signed lower right 21 x 28 inches (sight), Midtown Galleries label with artist’s name and title verso, likely exhibited at Kingman’s solo exhibition, Midtown Galleries, 1956, literature: Gruskin, Alan D., Saroyan, William (introduction), The Watercolors of Dong Kingman and How The Artist Works, The Studio Publications, Inc. in association with Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York and London (1958), p. 54 (illustrated) (“In Seoul on April 27th and 28th Kingman did some mountain sketching [see reproduction, on page 54, of handsome Kingman painting, “Seoul,” owned by Robert Clary...

"London," an original oil on canvas by Denis Paul Noyer, is a piece for the true collector. Noyer's capture of the architectural details of the surrounding buildings projects from th...

My Only Working Tool, 1949, oil on panel, signed and dated lower right, 16 x 12 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, exhibited at the Art News Second Annual National Amateur Competition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, December, 1950 (see The Best Amateurs, Art News, volume 49, issue 8, December 6 to 20, 1950, p. 65 – 66), presented in a period frame Fausto Sansone...

This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Farm in Winter), 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 26 x 30 inches, presented in an original frame Julius Delbos...

Early 1960s work on paper of a group of trees at Buckfast Abbey in Devon, England, by Alban Atkins. Signed bottom left, titled and dated to the reverse. There is also a collection or accession number to the backboard. Atkins has captured the sculptural nature of the tree trunks as they have grown in the landscape giving the work a feeling of living, writhing things as well as an abstract feel in the composition. Atkins was one of the group of important artists chosen and commissioned by Sir Kenneth Clark...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse), c. 1930s, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, signed lower right; presented in a newer silver painted frame About the Painting Writing about an exhibition of Charles W. Adams’ work at the Eighth Street Art Gallery in the mid-1930s, Emily Grenauer observed in The World-Telegram that the artist’s paintings were “distinguished for their solid form, well organized design and sumptuous color” and the art critic for The Herald Tribune found Adam’s work “a strong, formal realization of his subject . . . he paints with vital emphasis on structure and composition.” Although we do not know which works these critics referenced, it is likely they were writing about paintings like Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse). With its carefully designed reality, strong angles, solid forms, and well-disciplined puffs of smoke in the background, Adams presents a highly structured version of the Greenwich Village landmark, the Jefferson Market Library, which was a courthouse at the time Adams completed this work. The Jefferson Market Library was a prized subject for downtown painters, including the Ashcan School painter, John Sloan, the modernist, Stuart Davis, and the precisionist, Francis Criss...

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...

Peck Slip, 1950, oil on cardboard, 15 x 20 inches, exhibition label verso reads: “Oil on cardboard, 20 x 15, 1950 / Title: Peck Slip / Price: $100 / Artist and Owner: Fiske Boyd / 30...

French late 20th Century gouache on card of a colourful garden courtyard by Claude Gemy. The painting is signed bottom right and is annotated to the bottom edge. Provenance: Acquire...

This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s. Blue Lake, c. 1940s, oil on masonite, signed lower right, 20 x 36 inches, label and inscriptio...