Paul Rand Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
American, 1914-1996
Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum; August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American art director and graphic designer. He was best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ABC, and NeXT. He was one of the first American commercial artists to embrace and practice the Swiss Style of graphic design. Rand was a professor emeritus of graphic design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where he taught from 1956 to 1969, and from 1974 to 1985. He was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972.
Though Rand was a recluse in his creative process, doing the vast majority of the design load despite having a large staff at varying points in his career, he was very interested in producing books of theory to illuminate his philosophies. László Moholy-Nagy may have incited Rand's zeal for knowledge when he asked his colleague, at their first meeting, if he read art criticism. Rand said no, prompting Moholy-Nagy to reply "Pity."Steven Heller elaborates on this meeting's impact, noting; "from that moment on, Rand devoured books by the leading philosophers on art, including Roger Fry, Alfred North Whitehead, and John Dewey."These theoreticians would have a lasting impression on Rand's work; in a 1995 interview with Michael Kroeger discussing, among other topics, the importance of Dewey's Art as Experience, Rand elaborates on Dewey's appeal:
[... Art as Experience] deals with everything — there is no subject he does not deal with. That is why it will take you one hundred years to read this book. Even today's philosophers talk about it[.] [E]very time you open this book you find good things. I mean the philosophers say this, not just me. You read this, then when you open this up next year, that you read something new.
Dewey is an important source for Rand's underlying sentiment in graphic design; on page one of Rand's groundbreaking Thoughts on Design, the author begins drawing lines from Dewey's philosophy to the need for "functional-aesthetic perfection" in modern art. Among the ideas Rand pushed in Thoughts on Design was the practice of creating graphic works capable of retaining recognizable quality even after being blurred or mutilated, a test Rand routinely performed on his corporate identities. From: Wikipediato
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Artist: Paul Rand
Untitled Owl in the Grass
By Paul Rand
Located in Miami, FL
Signed and dated to lower right 'Paul Rand 4.6.52.
Paul Rand said. “People who don’t have a sense of humor really have serious problems.”
Besides being a seminal force in modern desi...
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1950s Outsider Art Paul Rand Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
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Asian Calligraphic Shapes Over Biomorphic Forms
By Paul Rand
Located in Miami, FL
Legendary Graphic designer Paul Rand was also a Fine Artist/Painter. In the present work, " Untitled: Asian Calligraphic Shapes Over Biomorphic Forms," Paul explores the relationship...
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1950s Minimalist Paul Rand Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
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Untitled, Wine Bottle and Bird outside of a Bird Cage in Moody Brown
By Paul Rand
Located in Miami, FL
Signed and dated to lower edge 'Paul Rand 11.52'. Collection of the artist - Mounted along upper eduge to matboard, Unframed.
Category
1950s American Modern Paul Rand Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel
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Donise English emphasizes lines, grids, and fields of subtle color to evoke imagined places and invented structures. While precise lines and straight angles are often associated with themes in architecture and urban planning designs, English conveys a geometric motif guided by intuition rather than a ruler. Variations on grids retain flaws and unmistakable traces of the artists’ hand; her style of draftsmanship shies away from intellectualism and instead makes her compositions feel very personal. Each design is intensely intricate, incorporating gouache, acrylic, pen, graphite, ink and colored pencil.
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My work is about the way visual diagrams present information that describes how something is made or the way it is. I am interested in drawing and collaging multiple layers of information that refer abstractly to maps, architectural drawings and blueprints or patterns and structures found in such things as roller coasters, power lines and fences. I use gouache and collaged paper in a series of layers that are a visual and ideological response to the previous layer to define my pictorial space. For each piece I create a set of rules to follow about the use of a limited palette, a grid format, opacity of paper and whether a piece may include curving lines or maintain a rectilinear structure.
Artist CV:
EDUCATION
Master of Fine Arts in Painting
Bard College 1986
Bachelor of Science in Art History
State University College at New Paltz 1977
Additional Study: New York Studio School (Drawing Marathons)
Columbia University, School of Architecture
Women’s Studio Workshop
TEACHING
Professor of Studio Art, Department of Art and Art History, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Coordinator, Interior Design Program, Florence, Italy campus
1992-present
AWARDS
NYFA Fellowship in Painting 2018
Invitational Award for Outstanding Contemporary Talent,
University of Bridgeport, CT 2000
Purchase Prize, “11th National Juried Exhibition”
College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore 1999
First Prize, “Women in the Visual Arts ‘95”
Erector Square Gallery, New Haven, CT 1995
Joseph A. Cain Memorial Purchase Award for Sculpture
Del Mar College, Corpus Christi, TX 1994
Honorable Mention, “National Juried Exhibition”
University of Bridgeport, CT 1993
Individual Artists Fellowship in Sculpture
Dutchess Arts Fund 1992/93
Tallix, Morris, Singer Internship in Sculpture
Tallix Foundry, Beacon, NY 1990/91
MEMBERSHIP Royal British Society of Sculptors
SELECTED JURIED/INVITATIONAL EXHIBITIONS
2020
“edu: Art Faculty of the Hudson Valley”, Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY
2019
“Contemporary Abstraction”, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY
“Mixed Media”, SITE Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2018
“JuxtaPositions”, The Painting Center, New York, NY
“Peculiar Rarities”, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY
2017
“Interlock: Color and Contrast in Abstraction”, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY
“Donise English: Encaustics”, Catskill Art Society, Livingston Manor, NY
2016
“Let’s Stay in Touch”, Howard County Center for the Arts, Ellicott City, MD
“Under, Over, After Over”, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
2015
“Off the Grid”, Arts & Culture Program, Albany International Airport, Albany, NY
“Gridspace”, KMOCA, Kingston, NY
“Abstraction”, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY
“Assuming Identity”, NY Institute of Technology, New York, NY
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“Modern Artists”, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY
“Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region”, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
Stone Canoe/Community Folk Art Center, Syracuse, NY
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“Strange Glue: Collage at 100”, Cambridge School, Weston, MA
“Dear Mother Nature”, Dorsky Museum, SUNY New Paltz, NY
“Fresher Paint”, Rockland Center for the Arts, Nyack, NY
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“Spring Awakening”, NY Institute of Technology, New York, NY
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“Working in Wax”, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
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“Suckers and Biters: Love, Lollipops, and Exquisite Corpse”
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Hawk Bird Of Prey Framed Original Mid 20th Century Powerful Watercolor Painting
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Dame Elisabeth Frink.
English ( b.1930 - d.1993 ).
Hawk, 1969.
Watercolor.
Signed & Dated Lower Right.
Image size 25.4 inches x 19.5 inches ( 64.5cm x 49.5cm ).
Frame size 34.4 inches x 28.1 inches ( 87.5cm x 71.5cm ).
Available for sale; this original painting is by Dame Elisabeth Frink and is dated 1969.
The painting is presented and supplied in a glazed frame and mount dating from June 1997.
This vintage watercolor is in very good condition, commensurate with its age.
The watercolor is signed and dated lower right.
Previously with Beaux Arts, London and Bath in 1999.
Dame Elisabeth Frink was one of Britain’s most important post-war sculptors, an accomplished draughtsman, illustrator and teacher. She was part of the post-war school of expressionist British sculptors dubbed the Geometry of Fear, and enjoyed a highly acclaimed career that was commercially successful, broke boundaries and contributed greatly to bringing wonderful sculpture to public places.
She was born on 14 November 1930 in Thurlow, the daughter of a cavalry officer, and brought up in rural Suffolk near to an active airbase. She was brought up a Catholic and educated at the Convent of the Holy Family, Exmouth.
She then studied at the Guildford School of Art from 1947-1949 under Willi Soukop and Henry Moore’s assistant, Bernard Meadows, and then at the Chelsea School in London 1949-1953. She taught at Chelsea School of Art 1951-61, St. Martin’s School of Art 1954-62 and was a visiting instructor at the Royal College of Art 1965-1967, after which she lived in France until 1973.
Frink first came to the attention of the public in 1951 at an exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London. In 1952 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, being described by Herbert Read as “the most vital, the most brilliant and the most promising of the whole Biennale”. The same year the Tate bought its first work by her, and she began to enjoy commercial success. Thereafter she exhibited regularly and was for 27 years associated with Waddington’s, London.
The subjects which Frink was most concerned with were man, dog and horses, with and without riders. Interestingly she seldom sculpted the female form, drawing on archetypes of masculine strength, struggle and aggression. Her work has the recurring themes of the vulnerable and the predatory, in the spirit of an authentic post-war artist. It has been said that she was more concerned with representing mankind that portraits of individuals.
The appeal of her work lies in its directness, provoking a frank statement of feeling. The anatomy is often exaggerated or incorrect; the impact growing more out of her interest in the spirit of the subject. Her animals and birds may be drawn from nature but verge on the abstract, conveying raw emotion and character rather than a realistic depiction. Her unique style is characterised by a rough treatment of the surface which embeds each piece with vitality and her personal impression. In her later work even the distinction between human and bird figures becomes blurred. Commentators have noted that the often rugged, brutal and contorted surfaces of her work reflect the destruction and terror of the six-year world-wide conflict that she witnessed as a child. Frink was an active supporter of Amnesty International.
In the 1960s and early 1970s Frink produced a notable series of falling figures and winged men. Later, living in France during the Algerian war, she began making heads, blinded by goggles which had a threatening facelessness.
Frink produced many notable public commissions, including Wild Boar for Harlow New Town, Blind Beggar and Dog for Bethnal Green, Noble Horse and Rider for Piccadilly, London, a lectern for Coventry Cathedral, Shepherd for Paternoster Square beside St. Paul’s Cathedral and a Walking Madonna for Salisbury Cathedral. In the early 1980s she produced a set of three larger than life figures The Dorset Martyrs which stand on the edge of the old walled town of Dorchester on the site of the old gallows, as a memorial to those who had been executed there ‘for conscience sake’.
Frink’s Canterbury Tales was a collection of 19 etchings drawn directly on to copper plates and etched by her. The ‘book’ was issued in three limited editions. Her illustrations have been praised as “amongst the most successful illustrations of the century, encompassing the mood of the text in concise delineations and disarmingly ribald humour”. She illustrated other books with colored lithographs or drawings.
Frink was on the Board of Trustees, British Museum from 1976, and was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission 1976-81. CBR (1969), DBE ((1982), Associate of the Royal Academy (1971), Royal Academy (1977). She was made a Companion of Honour in 1992. She died on 18 April 1993, but not before completing her last commission, a monumental but unusual figure of Christ for the front of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, unveiled a week before her death.
For several decades Frink exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. In her later years she lived and worked in Dorset where her home and garden became an arena for her work.
In 1985 she had a retrospective at the Royal Academy. She died on 18 April 1993, but not before completing her last commission, a monumental but unusual figure of Christ for the front of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, unveiled a week before her death. There was a memorial show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall in 1994.
Today Frink is venerated as one of the great twentieth century British sculptors. Her unique work is represented in the Tate Gallery and major public and private collections world-wide.
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Paul Rand drawings and watercolor paintings for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Paul Rand drawings and watercolor paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Paul Rand in crayon, pastel, acrylic paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1950s and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Paul Rand drawings and watercolor paintings, so small editions measuring 20 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Thornton Dial, Irene Pattinson, and Reginald Marsh. Paul Rand drawings and watercolor paintings prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $22,000 and tops out at $22,000, while the average work can sell for $22,000.
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Questions About Paul Rand Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
- 1stDibs ExpertJanuary 19, 2025Opinions may vary on what Paul Rand's most famous work is. However, the American artist is best known for his corporate logos. Over the course of his career, he designed iconic graphics for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ABC and NeXT, among others. Explore a variety of Paul Rand art on 1stDibs.