Serj Tankian Art

The artist constructs his spirit animal through mixed media. 48" x 60" Spray Paint, Oil, Construction Paper, Acrylic, Pastel, Marker

Acrylic on masonite. This is a pivotal work in deep and radiant cobalt blue from 1950. It dipicts calligraphic and hieroglyph structures over a grid and pyramidal base by the first generation abstract expressionist. Provenance: Skinner: November 13, 1992 [Lot 00219}, The entry in the Skinner catalog indicates that the painting came directly from the artist to the family of the consignor to Skinner. Kaminsky Auctions. There is an unbroken paper trail that traces the ownership of the painting from the current owner, through two auction houses to the artist. Perfect unbroken provenance. Pousette-Dart was among the most inventive of the Abstract Expressionist generation, His uncanny talent was to expand the nature of abstraction and still make each mark each element very much his own; a reflection of what he called   "the concealed power of the spirit," he said, “not of the brute physical form."   His was not aiming for a singular, realized aesthetic formula but to expand the possibilities of painting; the transcendental in painting. Typical of such invention and exploration is this  painting  Untitled 1950 when the artist was only 34 years old and represented by one of the champions of the new American painting, Betty Parsons.  
A banner year for Pousette-Dart, the Museum of Modern Art acquired their first painting by the Minnesota born artist.  He worked on easel size works such as this painting an oil on masonite. At the same time Pousette-Dart was also working on larger scale works such as Path of the Hero, running over ten feet in length now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Both contain fields of color articulated by a highly sophisticated white hieroglyphic vocabulary. Rather than demonstrate an expressionist sensibility, Pousette-Dart harnesses his more cerebral ideas transforming thick areas of paint into a more refined composition of geometric forms akin to the pattern and forms of say a stained glass window. In a way he is looking back at Fugue, 1940 a black and white composition which makes use of a similar format of painting albeit smaller. Color and form are minimal, but what Pousette-Dart has maximized is the rhythmic and syncopated character of painting casting his ideas into purely symbolic terms that one might link to the pictograms of Adolph Gottlieb. Nonetheless, nature is always at the core of Pousette-Dart’s thinking and dreaming. Here he has transformed the local Ramapo Mountains—where he will eventually move with his family to live and work— into a complex series of articulated fragments linked by style, scale and color.  The painting’s imagery built on two large triangles and reduced to just two colors, cobalt blue and white all outlined in black.  Pousette-Dart symbols stacked in horizontal and vertical rows:  blue is ground, white is language, symbolic of light, consciousness and awareness . The painting maintains a mystical character images compounded that formulate a secret code and linked to the series of white paintings Pousette-Dart authored in the first half of the 1950s. Get up close to the picture and you discover images within images a kind of picture puzzle...

"In A Mood" 2023, 72" H x 96" W. Large scale abstract painting consisting of acrylic, pencils, and oil pastels on canvas by Argentine-born artist Karina Gentinetta (featured in Elle ...

"Masquerade" 2024, 48" H x 60" W. Large-scale, multi-colored abstract painting consisting of acrylic, house paint, pencils, and oil pastels on canvas by Argentine-born artist Karina ...

Large Scale Mid 20th Century Acrylic Painting by Vanguard Studios Signed Van Gaard Classic 1950s to 1960s acrylic painting of a guitar against a colorful ab...

David Rankin, American (b. 1946) Rocky Hillside, (1990) Oil on paper Hand signed lower right, signed and titled verso. 30 x 22 1/2 inches David Rankin is a New York-based, British-born Australian post-war and contemporary artist known for his expressionistic abstract paintings. His work can be categorized by his use of quick, loose brushstrokes, reminiscent of scribbles on a page. Rankin works predominantly in oil painting and acrylic on canvas, but also works with paper, prints, sculptures and ceramics. Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities across the world, including New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Mexico, Vienna, Berlin and Cologne, as well as all over Australia. Represented in many of the world’s leading public and private collections and museums, David Rankin’s work is featured in Australia’s leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery. David Rankin was born in Plymouth, Devon, England in 1946 then emigrated to Australia with his family in 1948. He spent his childhood in the 1950s in the semi-rural Port Hacking region South of Sydney and his teenage years in country New South Wales, from Hay, Wagga Wagga and Albury in the South to Bourke and Brewarrina in the North. Rankin is self-taught, developing his techniques and ideas in the outback towns of his youth. He was inspired by the greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Paul Klee as well as being influenced by the history of Buddhism and Asian art. In his travels before he arrived in Sydney in 1967 he developed a concept of what he wanted to achieve as an Australian artist. His dream was to express the anima, the life spirit or the essence of God in all nature. As an Australian artist he believed could bring the elements of Western Art together with an understanding and love for the cultures of Asia and the Australian Aborigine. He also felt that as Australia was closer to Asia than Europe it made sense to think about the art of Indian, Chinese and Japanese artists, and that one could not be an authentic articulate Australian artist without a love and respect for the artistic and spiritual expressions of the various Aboriginal artists, peoples and cultures. His work combined elements of Abstract Expressionist painting with Jewish and Aboriginal influences. In 1979 his first wife, Jennifer Mary Roberts (née Haynes) died. Rankin subsequently met his current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parents being survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife's death fused into what he calls "the dark blessing of my life." The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted judaica imagery, Black...

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Untitled #34” was created by Sam Gilliam, one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. It is dated and signed on the lower front. The thick handmade paper is rich with folds and texture and the colors lively. In addition to Acrylic paint on the surface there appears to be imbedded color in the handmade paper which has additional embossed accents. Unframed the piece measures 16 x 14. Provenance of Yaw Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan is on the verso along with the note that the Paper Surfaces in contact with this artwork are acid free. In the mid-1960s he emerged from the Washington D.C. scene with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. One profound manner was the sculpture aspect of the painting giving it a free flowing expression of pure color. In the latter half of the 1950s, Washington D.C. saw a flourishing of abstract art that emphasized the form-making capabilities of pure color. Known as The Washington Color School, the loosely affiliated group of abstract painters knew each other through various teaching experiences. The moniker has an uncertain origin but likely originated with the title of a 1965 exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, "Washington Color Painters," curated by Gerald Nordland. The show exhibited the works of Kenneth Noland, Paul Reed, Morris Louis, Howard Mehring, Thomas Downing, and Gene Davis. Additionally, Leon Berkowitz...

Mid Century Abstract Expressionist Portrait of Man with Beard Original mid century abstract expressionist of man with beard by California artist Genevieve Rogers (American, 1904 - 1...

2024, Shizico Yi takes on an innovative project she named it "The Weaver," inspired by the heritage of family's Tartan, the rich lineage and history of the Clan. Within the patterns...

Title: Blue Vase of Joy Qianlong Vase Flowers Blue Colorful Abstract Art Investment Large Painting This large and striking artwork of flowers in a Qianl...

To Shizico, a triptych is a compilation of visual prayers; it embodies a meditative voyage akin to a form of meditation. For her, the repetition of motifs within the triptych serves ...

2024, Shizico Yi takes on an innovative project she named it "The Weaver," inspired by the heritage of family's Tartan, the rich lineage and history of the Clan. Within the patterns...