Hugo Gellert Art

Tully Filmus (1903 - 1998) was a Russian/American artist who was known for his realist drawings of Jewish life. This pastel drawing on paper is signed low...

Robert Henri Self Portrait / Sketch on verso Estate stamped lower right Ink on paper, graphite on paper 12 1/2 x 8 inches Born Robert Henry Cozad in Cincinnati, Ohio, Robert Henri became one of the leading personalities in American art, known for his teaching skills, ethnic portraits, especially spirited children, and insistence that artists should adhere to social realism and give rein to their own artistic instincts. During his growing up years, he lived between Cincinnati and Cozad, Nebraska, founded by his father John Jackson Cozad, a gambler and real estate promoter. When Robert was about 10 years old, his family moved to Cozad in Dawson County. Tension existed between John Cozad and the established ranchers who resented development, and a rancher attacked Cozad, who in self defense shot the man to death. Fearing for his life, he, his wife and two sons sneaked out of town and re convened in Atlantic City where they disguised their identity by taking other names. The father was later cleared of the charge, but he changed his name to Richard H. Lee, and passed his two sons off as adopted children named Frank Southern and Robert Henri. Robert chose a variation of his middle name to rhyme with "buckeye" to symbolize his Ohio roots. From Atlantic City, as a young man, he attended boarding school in New York City. He, having shown early art talent, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as a student of Thomas Anschutz and Thomas Hovenden...

Eileen Lake Crayon on paper, early1930's Initialed in pencil lower right (see photo) Titled and annotated verso "Eileen Lake, early 1930s girlfriend" Note: Eileen Hall Lake was an American poet and Adolf Dehn's girlfriend in the early 1930s. Provenance: Estate of the artist By descent Adolf Dehn, American Watercolorist and Printmaker, 1895-1968 Adolf Dehn was an artist who achieved extraordinary artistic heights, but in a very particular artistic sphere—not so much in oil painting as in watercolor and lithography. Long recognized as a master by serious print collectors, he is gradually gaining recognition as a notable and influential figure in the overall history of American art. In the 19th century, with the invention of the rotary press, which made possible enormous print runs, and the development of the popular, mass-market magazines, newspaper and magazine illustration developed into an artistic realm of its own, often surprisingly divorced from the world of museums and art exhibitions, and today remains surprisingly overlooked by most art historians. Dehn in many regards was an outgrowth of this world, although in an unusual way, since as a young man he produced most of his illustrative work not for popular magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, but rather for radical journals, such as The Masses or The Liberator, or artistic “little magazines” such as The Dial. This background established the foundation of his outlook, and led later to his unique and distinctive contribution to American graphic art. If there’s a distinctive quality to his work, it was his skill in introducing unusual tonal and textural effects into his work, particularly in printmaking but also in watercolor. Jackson Pollock seems to have been one of many notable artists who were influenced by his techniques. Early Years, 1895-1922 For an artist largely remembered for scenes of Vienna and Paris, Adolf Dehn’s background was a surprising one. Born in Waterville, Minnesota, on November 22, 1895, Dehn was the descendent of farmers who had emigrated from Germany and homesteaded in the region, initially in a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor. Adolf’s father, Arthur Clark Dehn, was a hunter and trapper who took pride that he had no boss but himself, and who had little use for art. Indeed, during Adolf’s boyhood the walls of his bedroom and the space under his bed were filled with the pelts of mink, muskrats and skunks that his father had killed, skinned and stretched on drying boards. It was Adolf’s mother, Emilie Haas Dehn, a faithful member of the German Lutheran Evangelical Church, who encouraged his interest in art, which became apparent early in childhood. Both parents were ardent socialists, and supporters of Eugene Debs. In many ways Dehn’s later artistic achievement was clearly a reaction against the grinding rural poverty of his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1914 at the age of 19—an age not unusual in farming communities at the time, where school attendance was often irregular—Dehn attended the Minneapolis School of Art from 1914 to 1917, whose character followed strongly reflected that of its director, Munich-trained Robert Kohler, an artistic conservative but a social radical. There Dehn joined a group of students who went on to nationally significant careers, including Wanda Gag (later author of best-selling children’s books); John Flanagan (a sculptor notable for his use of direct carving) Harry Gottlieb (a notable social realist and member of the Woodstock Art Colony), Elizabeth Olds (a printmaker and administrator for the WPA), Arnold Blanch (landscape, still-life and figure painter, and member of the Woodstock group), Lucille Lunquist, later Lucille Blanch (also a gifted painter and founder of the Woodstock art colony), and Johan Egilrud (who stayed in Minneapolis and became a journalist and poet). Adolf became particularly close to Wanda Gag (1893-1946), with whom he established an intense but platonic relationship. Two years older than he, Gag was the daughter of a Bohemian artist and decorator, Anton Gag, who had died in 1908. After her husband died, Wanda’s mother, Lizzi Gag, became a helpless invalid, so Wanda was entrusted with the task of raising and financially supporting her six younger siblings. This endowed her with toughness and an independent streak, but nonetheless, when she met Dehn, Wanda was Victorian and conventional in her artistic taste and social values. Dehn was more socially radical, and introduced her to radical ideas about politics and free love, as well as to socialist publications such as The Masses and The Appeal to Reason. Never very interested in oil painting, in Minneapolis Dehn focused on caricature and illustration--often of a humorous or politically radical character. In 1917 both Dehn and Wanda won scholarships to attend the Art Students League, and consequently, in the fall of that year both moved to New York. Dehn’s art education, however, ended in the summer of 1918, shortly after the United States entered World War I, when he was drafted to serve in the U. S. Army. Unwilling to fight, he applied for status as a conscientious objector, but was first imprisoned, then segregated in semi-imprisonment with other Pacifists, until the war ended. The abuse he suffered at this time may well explain his later withdrawal from taking political stands or making art of an overtly political nature. After his release from the army, Dehn returned to New York where he fell under the spell of the radical cartoonist Boardman Robinson and produced his first lithographs. He also finally consummated his sexual relationship with Wanda Gag. The Years in Europe: 1922-1929 In September of 1921, however, he abruptly departed for Europe, arriving in Paris and then moving on to Vienna. There in the winter of 1922 he fell in love with a Russian dancer, Mura Zipperovitch, ending his seven-year relationship with Wanda Gag. He and Mura were married in 1926. It was also in Vienna that he produced his first notable artistic work. Influenced by European artists such as Jules Pascin and Georg Grosz, Dehn began producing drawings of people in cafes, streets, and parks, which while mostly executed in his studio, were based on spontaneous life studies and have an expressive, sometimes almost childishly wandering quality of line. The mixture of sophistication and naiveté in these drawings was new to American audiences, as was the raciness of their subject matter, which often featured pleasure-seekers, prostitutes or scenes of sexual dalliance, presented with a strong element of caricature. Some of these drawings contain an element of social criticism, reminiscent of that found in the work of George Grosz, although Dehn’s work tended to focus on humorous commentary rather than savagely attacking his subjects or making a partisan political statement. Many Americans, including some who had originally been supporters of Dehn such as Boardman Robinson, were shocked by these European drawings, although George Grocz (who became a friend of the artist in this period) admired them, and recognized that Dehn could also bring a new vision to America subject matter. As he told Dehn: “You will do things in America which haven’t been done, which need to be done, which only you can do—as far at least as I know America.” A key factor in Dehn’s artistic evolution at this time was his association with Scofield Thayer...

Illustrated for the 1949 Four Seasons Calendar, published by Brown and Bigelow. A young girl holds a freshly-picked bouquet of flowers as she strolls alongside a boy who carries he...

"Good Health Week" American Scene Modern Social Realism Mid- 20th Century WPA Era Jo Cain (1904 – 2003) Good Health Week – b/w 10 ½ x 15 1/2 inches I...

Pen and black ink on watermarked Ingres laid paper, 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches (234 x 310 mm), signed, dated and titled in brown ink, and initialed and titled in black ink in the lower right corner. Light to moderate age tone and mat tone, and with the signature and notations in brown ink having become quite attenuated, although legible. Presented in a basic black wood frame with a label from the Country Art...

The Skull-and-Crossbones flag flies atop this illustration of a Pirate Ship. Two palm trees flank it, and it floats in a cropped stylized sea. A single hatted figure is seen looking ...

Artist: Raphael Soyer (1899-1987) Title: Two Reclining Nudes Year: Circa 1987 Medium: Watercolor & Pencil Drawing on Archival paper Size: 17 x 14 inches Condition: Excellent Inscript...

Fiat Wedding Cake Car: Irony and Provocation in Marco Silombria's Pop Art. Circa 1970 Artist: Marco Silombria Technique: Mixed media drawing and collage on paper and cardboard Dime...

Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) "Beat the Band" 22 x 26 1/2 inches ink on board published in The New York Times, October 11, 1942 The unframed work comes directly from the Al Hirschfeld F...

"Dragon," by Quang Ho, is a secondary market work with one previous owner. It is signed and dated (1988) on the lower left. The painting comes with it's original frame (measures 50 x...

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," Joni Mitchell said. - - Created in 1969, at the dawn of the American environmental movement, artist Richard Erdoes draws a sequential narrative in the form of a coil. From inception to destruction, it illustrates a list of things that humans are doing to destroy the world we live in. The work was commissioned for school-age humans and executed in a whimsically comic way. Yet the underlying narrative is sophisticated and foreshadows a world that could be on the brink of ecological disaster. Graphically and conceptually, this work exhibits an endless amount of creativity and Erdoes cartoony style is one to fall in love with. Signed lower right. Unframed 12.4 inches Width: 12.85 inches Height is the live area. Board is 16x22 inches. Richard Erdoes (Hungarian Erdős, German Erdös; July 7, 1912 – July 16, 2008) was an American artist, photographer, illustrator and author. Early life Erdoes was born in Frankfurt,to Maria Josefa Schrom on July 7, 1912. His father, Richárd Erdős Sr., was a Jewish Hungarian opera singer who had died a few weeks earlier in Budapest on June 9, 1912.After his birth, his mother lived with her sister, the Viennese actress Leopoldine ("Poldi") Sangora,He described himself as "equal parts Austrian, Hungarian and German, as well as equal parts Catholic, Protestant and Jew..."[4] Career He was a student at the Berlin Academy of Art in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power. He was involved in a small underground paper where he published anti-Hitler political cartoons which attracted the attention of the Nazi regime. He fled Germany with a price on his head. Back in Vienna, he continued his training at the Kunstgewerbeschule, now the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.[5] He also wrote and illustrated children's books and worked as a caricaturist for Tag and Stunde, anti-Nazi newspapers. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 he fled again, first to Paris, where he studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and then London, England before journeying to the United States. He married his first wife, fellow artist Elsie Schulhof (d. xxxx) in London, shortly before their arrival in New York City. In New York City, Erdoes enjoyed a long career as a commercial artist, and was known for his highly detailed, whimsical drawings. He created illustrations for such magazines as Stage, Fortune, Pageant, Gourmet, Harper's Bazaar, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, Time, National Geographic and Life Magazine, where he met his second wife, Jean Sternbergh (d. 1995) who was an art director there. The couple married in 1951 and had three children.[6] Erdoes also illustrated many children's books. An assignment for Life in 1967 took Erdoes to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the first time, and marked the beginning of the work for which he would be best known. Erdoes was fascinated by Native American culture, outraged at the conditions on the reservation and deeply moved by the Civil Rights Movement that was raging at the time. He wrote histories, collections of Native American stories...