Rainer Küchenmeister Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Carl Hofer (German, 1875 – 1955) Abstract figures Pencil on paper 8.1/4 x 9 in. (21 x 23 cm.) With studio stamp (on the reverse) and signature of the artist’s wife Elizabeth Hofer Provenance: These works come from the artist’s second wife Elizabeth and from then by descent. Carl Hofer was a German expressionist painter and the director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. One of the most important painters of the Expressionist movement, his work was among those that was considered degenerate art by the Nazis. He studied in Karlsruhe under Hans Thoma. He first visited Paris in 1899 making acquaintance with Julius Meier-Graefe. In 1902 he studied in Stuttgardt and became friends with the sculptor Hermann Haller...

This dynamic abstract watercolor by acclaimed New Mexico artist William Lumpkins (1909–2000) exemplifies his signature fusion of vibrant color, spir...

Mid-century lyrical surrealist abstract watercolour on paper by French artist Jean Clerté, signed and dated bottom right. Presented in mid-century frame. Jean Clerté , born in 1930 in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienne, is a French painter, engraver, draftsman, watercolourist and sculptor . This work is a great example of his more humorous and expressive work influenced by Alechinsky from the late 1960s onwards. There is a light playfulness and yet the watercolours are more vivid than his previous palette. Jean Clerté works in series. His sequential narrations testify both to a youthful spontaneity and to a perfect mastery in the distribution of forms and images on the painted surface. The narration is not only an accumulation of juxtaposed fragments and symbols, it forms a whole, it takes on and gives meaning. In general, we can say of Clerté that he practices an “eco-art” that feeds on primary hungers: the feeling of being united with nature, the vegetable, the mineral, the aquatic. In his colourful canvases, his inks, his boxes, his objects, like a shaman on the path of his dreams, the painter Clerté mounts an assault on beasts and demons, elves and gnomes. From the Poitevin marshes to the tropical forests emerges a fauna caught in the meanders of a design that marvels at the appearance of these grotesque idols. Jean Clerté began to draw and paint at a very young age, and at the age of 15 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers. Then in 1949, curious about the capital, he moved to Paris. Having very few financial resources, he could not continue his studies at first, worked as a model to survive, and met other artists; he was then admitted to the studio of Ossip Zadkine and, from 1952, he was also able to study engraving at Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter, an English engraver and printer living in Paris associated in the 1930s with surrealism. At the end of the 1960s, he worked alongside Pierre Alechinsky, founding member of the Cobra movement, engraving Alechinsky's originals, benefiting from his advice, and discovering acrylic as a medium. From 1976, Jean Clerté became associate professor at Hayter. Clerté had taught previously, in 1971 at the Salzburg Summer University and in 1972 he gave courses at the Paris-Sorbonne University . In 1981, he was appointed professor at the School of Decorative Arts , where he had Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas as a student and, from 1983 to 1988, he was Alechinsky's assistant professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts. His first works are part of the current of lyrical abstraction, and are nourished by impressions of nature (landscape motifs, e.g. forest fires, waterscapes), then around 1968, encouraged by Alechinsky, he rejects abstraction, and his work becomes more figurative with expressive and humorous elements. From this period his colours are more subdued, often with pastel tones, he works on series. Jean Clerté has created a world in a space where drawing, painting, objects participate in a playful figuration. From his drawings were born sculptures and sometimes mobiles (Le Moulin à dessin). If it is the artist who makes astonishing, polychrome, whimsical “toys”, it is the painter who appeals to adults through his caustic and satirical humour. His first exhibitions in France took place at the Galerie Massol , then at the Galerie Pascal...

Carl-Henning Pedersen (Denmark, 1913 - 2007) The Blue Earth II, 1971 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower right, signed, dated and titled verso 30.5 x 21.5 inches Carl-Henning Pedersen was born in Copenhagen in 1913. At an early age he began taking part in politics, first in the youth association of social democrats and later in the youth association of communists, which better suited his revolutionary activist nature against fascism. In 1933, he attended the public high school of Humblebaek where he met the painter Else Alfelt, who he would marry in 1934 and with whom he would have two daughters. For many years the family divided its time between Copenhagen and the city of Bovbjerg, located on the North Sea, where Carl and Else had a studio. Between 1935 and 1940, Pedersen started to sketch and paint. He exhibited for the first time, together with his wife, in “Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling” (The Artists' Fall Exhibition) in Copenhagen in 1936. Pedersen associated with the young painters close to abstract movements, and like them, worked under difficult conditions. He went to Paris in 1939, where he encountered the work of Picasso, Matisse and Chagall. Between 1940 and 1945, he contributed to the journal Helhesten. In the same journal, Pedersen published the text "Arte astratta o arte immaginaria," that supplied the most complete and precise definition, up to that point, of the work principles of the young generation of painters, of which he was a part. This definition, in many ways, was close to that which would be the program of the group Cobra. Between 1945 and 1960, the Danish artists went abroad and, along with Dutch and Belgian artists, founded the group Cobra, which was active between 1948 and 1951. During this period in 1948, Pedersen participated in the Biennial of Venice. He exhibited extensively with Cobra in shows such as its first important show which was held at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in 1949, “International Experimental Art.” Afterwords, Pedersen distanced himself from the group and began to travel frequently. His destinations included Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Norway, Lapland, Iceland, Turkey, Nepal, and Jerusalem. He received the Eckersberg Award in 1950 from the Royal Danish Academy of Art. In 1952, he participated in “Contemporary Drawings from 12 Countries, 1945/1952,” an exhibition held at the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, the exhibition also traveled to other museums in the United States, while in 1955, he took part in the group exhibition “Expressionism 1900/1955,” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (also a traveling exhibition throughout the United States). He participated in the 1952, 1955, 1958, 1961, 1964, and 1967 editions of “The Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture” at the Museum of Art of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The same museum also honored him with solo exhibitions in 1961 and 1968. In 1966, he exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York in the show “European Drawings” that also traveled to Hawaii, Canada, Argentina, and Germany. In 1967, he showed at the “2. Internationale der Zeichnung” in Darmstadt, and then in 1968, he participated in the Premio Marzotto and the “Exhibition of Expressionist Art after 1950” at the Kunstmuseum of Lucerne, which then toured in Romania, Australia, Belgium, and Finland. Pedersen received the medal of Prince Eugen in 1980, and he participated in the exhibition “Danish Artists, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Else Alfelt, Egil Jacobsen...

"Sleeping Figures" Watercolor Abstract Painting 10" x 14"in by Shaker El Maadawy signed & dated Shaker El Maadawy graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in painting in 1967 in his...

In apparent disagreement with the state of grace of human anatomy, Nicola Cucchiaro goes to the very origins of artistic endeavor. His production consists of combining and displacing...

Grisha Bruskin Study 8, 1990 Ink and Gouache on paper Hand signed and inscribed by the artist on the front Original vintage frame with Marlborough Gallery label included This work is...

Highly detailed india ink abstract pointillist drawing of figures and roses with watercolor and gouache by Ben Black (American, 1922-2003), c.1990's. Signed "Ben Black" lower right. ...

Frame measures 13.5 X 11.5 Paper measures 6.5 X 4 inches Hand signed lower right Watercolor painting of prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated h...

Watercolor painting of standing prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, ...

French painting in bright green, blue and yellow tones of someone sitting at a table by artist Jean-Charles Lauthe, 1971. Signed and dated lower right. Original artwork on paper dis...

Stunning modernist avant-garde figurative abstract pastel in deep royal blue, with red and yellow accents by Henry Elinson (Californian/Russian 1935-2010), 1996. Signed and dated "H....