Matt Magee Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Simon Samsonian (1912 - 2003) Colorful Geometric Abstraction, 1981 Oil on paper 16 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Estate of the artist This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told. Art historians are finally beginning to realize that the power of abstraction in its early years was a zeitgeist not limited to the major European centers of the avant-garde — Paris, Munich, and Moscow — but one that quickly rippled to major cities throughout the world. Within a few decades that original shock of a new vision had inspired thousands of artists from different cultures — particularly those the Middle East — whose translations were not slavish imitations of works by seminal figures like Picasso, Braque, Malevich, and Kandinsky but creative variants colored by their respective cultures. This essay focuses on an extraordinary Armenian artist, his harrowing survival of the genocide, his rise to fame in Cairo, and his creation of a unique style of abstraction. Art historians have typically formed a chorus that teaches the history of abstraction like this: Just before and during the World War I era, several avant-garde artists emerged to create shockingly different new forms by which artists could express themselves. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke out with cubism, quickly followed by Mondrian. In Moscow, Malevich created Suprematism, the ultimate hard-edge geometric abstraction. And in Munich, Kandinsky emerged as the father of Abstract Expressionism. Within these few short years a zeitgeist was sensed throughout the art world. American pioneers, too — particularly Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell — felt this explosive freedom of expression. When Europe was recovering after World War I it became clear that Paris would retain its title as capitol of the art world, lasting through the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depression. But the end of World War II changed everything. A parallel war had been won by a group of irascible young Abstract Expressionists in New York — led by Pollock, Rothko, DeKooning, and Kline. No sooner had Paris been liberated from the Germans than Picasso, Matisse, Breton, and Duchamp surrendered to the Americans. From that point on New York would be the epicenter of the art world. But a lens that focuses myopically on the war between the avant-garde of Paris and New York misses the wider narrative of multiple aesthetic modernities that developed in the several decades following World War I. For Armenian artists the matter is even more complex owing to the genocide of 1915 where more than 1.5 million people — seventy-five percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — were massacred. Those not shot on the spot were sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped and forced to walk naked under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. As a child Samsonian witnessed the murder of his parents and most of the members of his family. Soon thereafter, his older sister, Anahid, quickly shepherded him into a line of children being rescued by Greek nuns. But they became separated and he lost her, too. He was sent to a Greek orphanage in Smyrna (now Izmir), on Turkey’s west coast. Because he only knew his first name, the orphanage gave him a last name based on the place where they found him — Samsun — a major port on Turkey’s north coast on the Black Sea. His birth date was unknown, too. According to Samsonian’s vague recollections he assumed he was about three or four years old at the onset of the genocide, which would place his birth year in 1911 or 1912. In 1922, when Samsonian was about 10, the Turks ended their war with the Greeks by putting Smyrna to the torch in what has been called the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” Once again, the child was on the run, escaping the fire and slaughter. He found temporary refuge in Constantinople, but within a year that major port would fall to the Turks, too, and become renamed as Istanbul. This time, Samsonian was whisked away to an orphanage in Greece founded by the American charity, Near East Relief — which is credited with saving so many Armenian orphans that the American historian Howard M. Sachar said it “quite literally kept an entire nation alive. Any understanding of Samsonian’s approach to modernism requires careful consideration of the impact of his early years because his art is inseparable from the anguish he experienced. In 1927, when he was a teenager, he was transferred to Cairo, Egypt, then a cosmopolitan city hosting a sizable portion of the Armenian diaspora. There he lived with thirty-two other children on the top floor of the Kalousdian Armenian School. Upon graduating in 1932 he won a scholarship to attend the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute — an Italian art school in Cairo — where he won first prize in final examinations among one hundred students. He found work with an Armenian lithographic printer and he returned to the Kalousdian Armenian School to teach drawing. In 1939 he married one of his students, Lucy Guendimian. The Cairo in which Samsonian matured as an artist was home to many prominent art collectors after World War I. In this receptive environment Samsonian exhibited widely and won many awards. Beginning in 1937 and for the next thirty years he exhibited annually at the prestigious Le Salon du Caire hosted by the Société les Amis de l’Art (founded in 1921). After World War II he hit his stride as a modernist in Cairo, counting among his peers other artists of the Armenian diaspora such as Onnig Avedissian, Achod Zorian, Gregoire Meguerdichian, Hagop Hagopian...

James Balla Untitled gouache painting, 1992 Mixed Media Oil on Linen Signed and dated on the front of the work; the verso of the frame bears the UFO (Albert Merola) gallery label. F...

Bight abstract geometric composition by Alexandra Zinih (20th Century). Signed and dated ("Alexandra Zinih '09") in the upper left corner. Presented in a black frame with a white bac...

Bright, monochromatic abstract in warm, glowing desert tones by Marianne K. Brown (American, 1928-2019), 2000. The free flowing color field background is accented with areas of patterns evoking the Southwest. Signed "Marianne K. Brown" in the lower right and was acquired with a collection of Brown's work. Title "Desert Days" and date 2000 are written on verso. No frame. Marianne K. Brown (American, 1928-2019) has taught watercolor and design for thirty years. Her work has been shown in many art magazines, including Watercolor Magic and The International Artist Magazine, and several books on watercolor painting. She was elected secretary of Orange County Art Association in 1964. Listed in the National Watercolor Society. Author, Watercolor by Design Member, East Bay Watercolor Society 1964 - 3rd Place, non-figurative exhibit of Orange County Art Association 1978 - Honorable Mention, Central California Art...

Jay Rosenblum Polarity #9, 1981 Acrylic on Paper painting 6 × 9 1/2 inches Pencil signed and titled on the front Unique work Unframed ]This gem of a work is an acrylic painting on p...

Richard Garrison collects information from typically overlooked aspects of daily life. Observed data from places like big box stores and parking lots are systematically transformed i...

Abstract Still Life c/1935-1945) Gouache and watercolor on paper 17 3/4" x 24" 21 1/2" x 27 1/2" x 1 1/4" framed Signed "E Cory" lower right.

Cut-Up Paper I.5 (Abstract Painting) Acrylic on paper. Unframed. Pedersen works with acrylic paint. When painting a composition, she tends toward a limited color palette, often re...

acrylic on paper, framed b. 1975, Bellaire, OH Dion Johnson’s paintings combine and explore dynamic opposites: expansiveness and compression, surface and depth, and darkness and l...

A bright neon futuristic geometric landscape, depicting a detailed imaginative deconstructive dome structure in a polychrome world, titled "Domus Series" by Anita Margrill (American,...

Brightly colored composition of blue and red hearts merging together by Dessie Wilcox (American, b. 1948). From her "Heart Wall" series, Wilcox has been creating heart painting to ra...

Joel BASS (1942-2019) Adjusted silhouette n°2, 1975 Mixed media, collage, gouache, adhesive on paper Signed, dated and. titled Work : 17,5 x 28 cm Frame : 3...