Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Lucano, a small town in the southern Apennines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals.
Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp.
Stella was 19 when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133).
(Biography provided by Hirschl & Adler)
Portrait of Grace
By Joseph Stella
Located in Bryn Mawr, PA
Portrait of Grace, 1944 Oil on canvas, 23 x 20 inches (58.4 x 50.8 cm) Framed dimensions 31 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches Signed and dated lower left: Joseph Stella / 1944 Signed on verso: Jos...
Canvas, Oil
$1,200
H 18.5 in W 14.5 in D 2 in
A Striking Modern Studio Portrait of a Seated African American Male Nude Model
By Walter Burt Adams
Located in Chicago, IL
A Striking, Colorful Post- War Modern Studio Portrait of a Seated African American Male Model by Notable Chicago Modern Artist, Walter Burt Adams (Am. 1903-1990). The painting a is ...
Canvas, Oil
Portrait of J. L. David (Portrait)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Portrait of J. L. David (Portrait), c. 1930, oil on canvas adhered to board, apparently unsigned, 26 x 20 inches, exhibited: 1) Fourth Annual State-Wide Exhibition, Santa Cruz Art Le...
Canvas, Oil, Board
$1,400
H 33.5 in W 26.5 in D 1.25 in
A Large, Striking 1940s Modern Portrait of a Seated Young Woman in Green Blouse
By Walter Burt Adams
Located in Chicago, IL
A Striking 1940s Modern Portrait of a Young Woman by Notable Chicago Artist, Walter Burt Adams (Am. 1903-1990). A large, well executed, figurative work by the artist, depicting a young woman fashionably dressed in a green blouse anddpatterned scarf seated in profile in a muted studio interior. Titled "Portrait of Ms. Anderson, Student at Northwestern U." the painting exemplifies the artist's adept and practiced skill at portraiture, and was completed at the painting class of the artist's friend and instructor, Arnold Turtle, in Evanston, Illinois Artwork size: 30 x 23 inches, oil on canvas, accompanied with the original Modernist frame (Framed size: 33 1/2 x 26 1/2 inches). Signed "Walter Burt Adams" and dated "46" lower right. Provenance: Estate of the artist. Walter Burt Adams was a dedicated painter of the American Scene and a singular personality among his peers in the Chicago Modern Art community. His no-nonsense manner, devotion to his craft and sardonic sense of humor characterize a man whose paintings capture life in and around Chicago between the early 1920s and the late 1970s. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin just after the turn of the last century, Walter Burt Adams spent his childhood in Fargo, North Dakota and began his artistic education there through a correspondence cartooning class as a boy. After finishing high school in Fargo, Adams moved to Chicago in 1922 in order to enroll at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Adams’ instruction at the school with artists such as George Oberteuffer, Frederick V. Poole, Charles Wilimovsky...
Canvas, Oil
$9,500
H 20 in W 24 in D 2 in
Landscape with Artist. Mid-Century Chicago Modernist Oil Painting.
By William Schwartz
Located in Marco Island, FL
Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz, painted this dynamic landscape of an artist painting en plein air. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly after emigrating to the Un...
Canvas, Oil, Board
$6,500
H 32 in W 32 in D 2.75 in
"The Champ, 1942" Joe Louis "Brown Bomber" Boxer Portrait Ex-Museum Oil Signed
Located in Yardley, PA
“The Champ, 1942” by Theodore Fried (1902-1980) This important portrait by Hungarian-American artist Theodore Fried depicts the legendary boxer Joe Louis aka “The Brown Bomber” and ...
Canvas, Oil, Board
$3,600
H 43.5 in W 35.5 in D 1 in
A Large, Captivating 1930s Modern Portrait of a Jamaican Man in a Linen Suit
By Francis Chapin
Located in Chicago, IL
A Large, Captivating 1930s Modern Portrait of a Jamaican Man in a Linen Suit by famed Chicago artist, Francis Chapin (Am. 1899-1965). A skilled and colorful portrait of a black man seated in a white linen suit, most likely completed during Chapin's trip to Kingston, Jamaica in the 1930s. Chapin exhibited examples of his Jamaican paintings...
Oil, Canvas
$1,600
H 18.5 in W 14.5 in D 2 in
A Striking, Post-War Modern Studio Portrait of a Seated Young Male Model
By Walter Burt Adams
Located in Chicago, IL
A Striking, Colorful Post-War Studio Portrait of a Seated Young Male Model by Notable Chicago Modern Artist, Walter Burt Adams (Am. 1903-1990). The painting a is well executed, inti...
Canvas, Oil
$6,500
H 21.88 in W 17.38 in D 2 in
On the Beach. Woman Reading. Mid-Century Chicago Modernist Oil Painting.
By William Schwartz
Located in Marco Island, FL
Chicago Modernist, William Schwartz, painted this intimate painting of a woman reading titled On the Beach. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly after emigrating to th...
Canvas, Oil, Board
$55,000
H 67 in W 46 in
"Portrait of Kathleen Curry, the Artist's Wife" John Steuart Curry
By John Steuart Curry
Located in New York, NY
John Steuart Curry Portrait of Kathleen Curry, the Artist's Wife, 1938 Signed and titled "Kathleen" lower left Oil on canvas 55 x 34 inches Provenance The artist Kathleen Curry, the...
Canvas, Oil
$2,850
H 36 in W 32 in D 1 in
Modernist Portrait of St. Francis, Original Oil on Canvas, Signed Tarmo Pasto
By Tarmo Pasto
Located in Soquel, CA
Modernist Portrait of St. Francis, Oil on Canvas, Signed Compelling modernist oil on canvas portrait of St. Francis by Dr. Tarmo Pasto (American, 1906-1986). Presented in a taupe pa...
Canvas, Oil
$5,000
H 30 in W 22 in
SALVADOR DE REGIL 1954 Portrait of Marian Virginia Schuster - Surrealist Artist
By Salvador De Regil
Located in Rancho Santa Fe, CA
Marian Schuster was 19 years old in 1954 and attended City College San Francisco where she studied Art. In the old school, Victorian, San Francisco, moneyed household that she was r...
Canvas, Oil
$950
H 27.75 in W 23.75 in D 1.5 in
A Striking Mid-Century Modern Studio Portrait of a Seated Young Woman
By Walter Burt Adams
Located in Chicago, IL
A Striking Mid-Century Modern Portrait of a Young Woman by Notable Chicago Artist, Walter Burt Adams (Am. 1903-1990). A well executed figurative work by the artist, depicting a young woman stylishly dressed in a black sleeveless top seated in a muted studio interior. The painting exemplifies the artist's adept and practiced skill at portraiture, and was likely completed at the artist's studio in Evanston, Illinois. Artwork size: 24 x 20 inches, oil on canvas, accompanied with the original painted Mid-Century frame (framed size: 27 3/4 x 23 3/4 inches). Provenance: Estate of the artist. Walter Burt Adams was a dedicated painter of the American Scene and a singular personality among his peers in the Chicago Modern Art community. His no-nonsense manner, devotion to his craft and sardonic sense of humor characterize a man whose paintings capture life in and around Chicago between the early 1920s and the late 1970s. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin just after the turn of the last century, Walter Burt Adams spent his childhood in Fargo, North Dakota and began his artistic education there through a correspondence cartooning class as a boy. After finishing high school in Fargo, Adams moved to Chicago in 1922 in order to enroll at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Adams’ instruction at the school with artists such as George Oberteuffer, Frederick V. Poole, Charles Wilimovsky...
Canvas, Oil