Paul Pretzer Paintings

Oil on Canvas, Signed Dated 2013 14 x 18 Inches

People encounter a domestic animal that is commonplace and familiar, but the disproportionate scale creates fascination, fright and this perspective renders the human speechless. Similar to the satirical novel "Gulliver's Travels", people are confronted with an inexplicable encounter and do not know how to react to it. Is the situation perplexing because a dog is huge, just taking a nap and does not notice the people around it, or are humans too tiny and do not recognize their "absurd" existence? keywords; surrealism, animals, cat, oil painting, earth tones, figurative painting, strangeness, contemporary surrealistic, unsettling, contemporary figurative painting, dreams, symbolic composition, cat paw

Absurd scenery in the middle of nowhere: head of a chicken, seemingly alive ... and an elderly man ... do they belong together, are they probably old...

Figurative Magical oil Painting, Figurative Painting 34" x 65" inch by Ion Xiua. Mixed technique. A magical moment, in which we recognize that we are one with the animals. The animal...

Rina Sutzkever Calderon (Russian/Israeli, b. 1945), Fly Away Oil on canvas, signed at lower left, presented in a gilt frame with linen liner. Frame dim...

Joséphine Beaudouin (1909-2005) Poetry of the Bird, surrealist painting, 1948 Oil on canvas Signed "Joséphine Beaudouin" and dated "1948" lower left 13,7 x 10,6 inch Born in Albi in 1909, Josephine Beaudouin (née Cals) showed an early interest in drawing. At the age of twelve, she moved to Paris where her mother, Jeanne Ramel-Cals, ran a literary salon that was frequented by art world figures such as Ambroise Vollard. In 1925, while her first drawings appeared in the magazine Crapouillot, the young artist entered the School of Decorative Arts where she studied fresco painting. She married the architect Eugène Beaudouin in 1928, with whom she traveled throughout Europe. Beaudouin, a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, designed a series of buildings that were precursors of modern architecture in France (Clichy, Maison du Peuple; Antony, Résidence universitaire Jean Zay). Josephine Beaudouin exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon des Tuileries, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. The work of the one that Jean Cocteau described as "bewitching" is full of mystery. Her work bears the stamp of an extraordinary personality. Indeed, Josephine Beaudouin developed a penchant for dreams at a very early age and took refuge in the works illustrated by Gustave Doré. Her technical virtuosity and overflowing imagination were praised by the critics of her time who unanimously greeted her Marmorées (ill.1). Named by René Barotte, these are paintings made on marble slabs from 1955. The artist exploits the infinite resources of the veins of this support which inspires him poetic compositions with unusual subjects. Marked by surrealism, she returns to the fantastic by delivering a prodigious creation of the mind made of dreamed cities and trompe-l'oeil. The 1948 painting that we propose probably represents a red-billed chough. The bird is a recurring theme in the work of Josephine Beaudouin, as in her life. An avid ornithologist, she kept an aviary in her Parisian home where many island birds were kept. She also built up a collection of stuffed birds. Still on this theme, the writer Claude Aveline (1901-1992), author of the poem L'Oiseau-Qui-N'Existe-Pas, invited several visual artists to freely interpret what this bird could be. The first series of works was produced between 1956 and 1963. In 1957, Joséphine Beaudouin delivered a work with a pen of great finesse, now preserved at the Centre Pompidou (ill.2). Several renowned artists also responded to the invitation of the poet such as Jean Cocteau and Ossip Zadkine. The precision of the graphics of our painting testifies to an attentive observation of the anatomy of the birds. The artist paints with great delicacy: the technique is impeccable, the drawing is careful, the material is smooth, the details are represented with great finesse and mastery. Bibliography : Fernand Pouillon...

A magical encounter between man and animal, in this case, a deer, produces energy in the form of a strong light. It is quite puzzling how it comes to this meeting, you can decide for...

We love Rudolf's latest series. The artist says about “Stranger”; "Normally one would hardly take notes of an inconspicuous, black kitten in everyday life...

Absurd scenery in the middle of nowhere: a case for the special forces, inexplicable and uncanny has emerged and must therefore be "arrested"... key...

As in the painting entitled "Arrived", the thematic content revolves around the eternal search of man for the goal, for the light in his life. Often alone on the road, encounters gi...

GREGORY GILLESPIE (1936-2000) Goldie’s Dream, 1999 Oil on panel 20 1/8 x 19 5/8 inches Signed verso: Greg Gillespie Original frame PROVENANCE Forum Gallery, New York, New York (label verso) Nielson Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts (label verso) EXHIBITED Forum Gallery, New York, Gregory Gillespie: New Works, December 2 - 31, 1999 Gregory Gillespie, an artist whose probing, urgent, often bizarre paintings occupied a singular place in the history of late-20th-century representational art committed suicide in 2000 at the age of sixty-four. His art was known for an obsessive attention to realistic detail, but the term realist fit only a narrow swath of his sensibility. He once told an interviewer that he was seeking a reality ''beyond our sense,'' and he pursued it with a variety of artistic styles, techniques and references. He mixed his realism with Expressionist distortion and Surrealistic juxtaposition, just as he supplemented his meticulously applied oil paint with roiling brushwork, photomontage, collage, assemblage, thickly built-up surfaces and, recently, photocopied images. He also found inspiration in several centuries of European painters, including Balthus, Bacon, Beckmann, Bosch, Breugel, Van Eyck, Masaccio and Crivelli. He drew from, and frequently depicted motifs from, Indian sculpture, Tibetan mandalas...

keywords; surrealism, humour, uncanny, animals, rabbit, terra cota, fire red, earth tones, indian red, oil painting, figurative painting, strangeness, con...