Karl Fortress Art

A dynamic landscape featuring a beautiful sunrise reflecting on storm clouds above the quiet shoreline by Santa Cruz artist Don Hannan (American 20th c). An Airplane flies into the s...

Abram Tromka (1895-1964) City at Night, ca. 1940. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches; 20 x 24 inches in antique oak frame. Signed lower right. Frame is of the period, but probably not ...

A serene, 1940s Modern Western landscape painting with horses by famed Chicago artist, Francis Chapin. Accompanied with a handsome walnut brown stained wooden frame. Canvas size: 22 x 28 inches. Framed size: 25 x 31 inches. Estate stamped on reverse. Provenance: Estate of the artist. Francis Chapin, affectionately called the “Dean of Chicago Painters” by his colleagues, was one of the city’s most popular and celebrated painters in his day. Born at the dawn of the 20th Century in Bristolville, Ohio, Chapin graduated from Washington and Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922. He would set down deep roots at the Art Institute of Chicago, exhibiting there over 31 times between 1926 and 1951. In 1927 Chapin won the prestigious Bryan Lathrop Fellowship from the Art Institute – a prize that funded the artist’s yearlong study trip to Europe. Upon his return to the United States, Chapin decided to remain in Chicago, noting the freedom Chicago artists have in developing independently of the pressure to conform to pre-existing molds (as was experienced by artists in New York, for example). Chapin became a popular instructor at the Art Institute, teaching there from 1929 to 1947 and at the Art Institute’s summer art school in Saugatuck, Michigan (now called Oxbow) between 1934 – 1938 (he was the director of the school from 1941-1945). Chapin’s contemporaries among Chicago’s artists included such luminaries as Ivan Le Lorraine Albright...

In late spring, the high desert floor is still covered with grass and flowering yuccas. Against this colorful backdrop, the artist has captured a burst of sunlight breaking through t...

A serene 1940s Vermont Landscape, depicting evergreen trees and a lake by artist Harold Haydon. Image size: 16" x 20". Framed size: 20" x 24". In a rustic brown wood frame. Es...

A beautiful American Impressionist oil seascape of the rugged Big Sur coast, Carmel California by Virginia Shackles (American, 1921-2020). The composition is pleasing with an interes...

Orville Bulman (American, 1904 - 1978 Signed: Bulman (Lower, Left) “ Little Mother ”, 1960 Oil on Canvas 14" x 18" Housed in a 2" Husar Frame with a 3/4" Linen liner and a Gold ...

Wonderful and dynamic western painting of two wild fighting stallions by listed artist Bernard Preston Thomas (American, 1918-1992), dated 1951. Signed and dated lower left corner and on verso. Image size: 28"H x 36"W. Presented in rustic painted frame size: 34"H x 41"W x 3"D. Originally from Sheridan, Wyoming, he loved football and art, giving up the sport to concentrate on a career in art. Thomas graduated from Woodbury College in Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Science degree, earning the Leo Youngsworth Award for outstanding senior art student at Woodbury. He became a camouflage technician at the outbreak of WWII and caught the attention of General Patton...

Woman and Child in the Woods - Midcentury Abstracted Landscape in Oil on Canvas Dramatic abstracted painting of a woman holding a child in the woods by Maley (20th Century). This pi...

Vineyard Estate Winery Landscape with Grape Vines in Oil on Canvas-Wrapped Board Beautiful landscape of a vineyard estate in California wine country with grape vines in the foregrou...

Shaded Path in the California Hills - Oil on Canvas (Laid on Board) Beautiful and colorful California landscape of trees lining a path by Palo Alto and Monterey artist Nancy Faisant...

Snowy Barn #2, 1971, oil on canvas, signed and dated verso, 18 x 23 inches Marina Stern was a multifaceted New York-based artist whose works ranged from Expressionism and Pop Art to the Neo Immaculate paintings and pastels for which she is best known. A native of Venice, Stern and her family fled in 1939 to escape Italy’s repressive racial laws. After living in England for several years, the family arrived in the United States in 1941. A bright and capable student, Stern graduated from New York’s Julia Richman High School at age 15 and soon enrolled in the Pratt Institute to pursue an interdisciplinary education in the arts. Despite majoring in advertising design, Stern favored her fine art courses. She graduated from Pratt in 1946 at age 18 and began working for advertising agencies. After a brief marriage which ended in divorce, Stern married her second husband, who encouraged the artist to study at the Art Students League of New York, under the renowned Japanese American modernist, Yasuo Kuniyoshi. In Fall 1953, Stern gave birth to her first child, Michael, as she continued to study at the Arts Students League. Later in the Spring of 1957, Stern gave birth to her daughter Nina, as she continued to balance motherhood with her fine art practice and commercial art and design work. Stern’s first significant exhibitions were in 1962 at the Waverly Gallery and the Osgood Gallery, both in New York, followed by inclusion of her work in the Bertha Schaefer Traveling Collage Show from 1963 to 1964. Stern made a splash in the avant-garde art world in 1964 when Time magazine reviewed a show at Amel Gallery which featured three of her audio-visual paintings. Time’s critic noted that Stern created the “cleverest noisemakers” in the exhibition. Time dubbed this work “Talkie Pop,” a label which Stern rejected. Following this recognition, Stern was selected for inclusion in The New American Realism at the Worcester Art Museum—a major showcase of leading artists, including Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. After the Worcester exhibition, Stern began to shift away from her “talking” Pop paintings to mysterious, interior scenes with orange, blue or black walls with windows or doors rising above black and white floors, often depopulated, but sometimes with figures. One of these works, Seven Minus Twenty-One Equals Seven, entered the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1966. By 1969, Stern began to incorporate industrial images into these scenes, and in the early 1970s, Stern created her first Neo-Immaculate works of rural, and urban landscapes, which she described as her most satisfying work. Stern often depicted locations that she held close -- New York, New Jersey, Iowa (where her son attended college), Sharon, Connecticut (where her family spent weekends and vacations) and her native Venice, Italy. Stern’s success as a Neo Immaculate painter led to consistent New York gallery representation for over two decades, first with Lee Ault & Co and James Yu Gallery, and then Forum Gallery, where she had six solo shows. In 1971, Stern completed a Neo-Immaculate mural commission for the Port Authority of New York, George Washington Bridge #1 and #2, followed by another commission from the NY Cityarts Public Art Program in 1976 for a mural on Mulberry Street. Stern also enjoyed solo exhibitions in Boston (Eleanor Rigelhaupt Gallery), Connecticut (Silo Gallery, the Hotchkiss School, J. Rosenthal Fine Arts Gallery, Tremaine Gallery, and Staib Gallery), Chicago (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery), and Santa Fe (Santa Fe East Gallery). Her work was included in group shows at over a dozen public institutions, including The National Academy of Design, The Staten Island Museum, Worcester Art Museum, the Oklahoma Art Center, and the Arkansas Art Center. The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art hosted a retrospective of four decades of Stern’s work from January 19 to April 22, 2007, entitled Perception and the Cultural Environment: The Paintings of Marina...