Smith Blanchard Art

In "Case", banal, everyday things meet in this painting to create an unusual, strange, absurd and ironical situation derived by the disproportional scale size of things. keywords;...

Lionel Kalish (American B.1931) "A Villa on the Sea", c. 1980 Oil on canvas Hand signed lower right L.Kalish Bark Frameworks Inc. N.Y. label verso 16" x 24" Lionel Kalish born...

In The New York Times Arts in America column, Edward M. Gomez wrote of Valton Tyler: Visionary seems the right word for describing his vivid, unusual and technically refined painting...

Artist: William Skilling, After Giuseppe Arcimboldo Title: Vertumnus Year: circa 1950 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed l.r. Size: 42 in. x 36 in. (106...

Jean Pierre Serrier (French, 1934-1989) Oil on canvas painting depicting four figures Hand signed lower right. Measures (frame) 26.5" x 30" wide, and (sight) 18.25." x 22.25" wide. Jean Pierre Serrier (1934 – 1989) was a French painter known for surrealism and absurdist art. Jean-Pierre Serrier was born in Montparnasse, Paris and attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. the son of Louis and Solange Serrier. His father fought in World War II and became a prisoner of war. In 1940, as a six-year-old, he and his mother fled Paris for Corrèze in southwest France. Childhood memories of close escapes from German bombardments would later influence his absurdist philosophy of life. Passionate about drawing, in 1951 he applied and was admitted to the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art in Paris. He shared an attic apartment in the 16th arrondissement with fellow student Jean-Baptiste Valadié. For income, he decorated shop windows. A trip to Spain provided motifs for early works. His student work might be characterized as art naïf (Naive art). While still a student, he sold a ceramic artwork to the poet and publisher Pierre Seghers, who would later commission drawings from him. He frequented jazz clubs in Saint-Germain des Près, and while listening to Sidney Bechet at the Vieux Colombier, he met his wife, Yvette.One of the last French Surrealist and follower of Nietzsche. His art conveyed the message to all of mankind that we are only human. The other Surrealist to center his art in philosophy was Rene Magritte whose paintings reflect his understanding of Sigmund Freud. He had his first exhibition in 1955, before being sent to Algeria to complete his military service. After graduating in 1955, he was drafted for military service, spent time in Germany and Morocco, and was sent to the front lines of the Algerian War. In 1959 he exhibited works at two Parisian galleries and at Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d'Azur. From 1961, he exhibited annually at the Salon des Artistes Français. In 1962, the City of Paris purchased his painting Un dimanche In 1961, Serrier made his first visit to the United States to exhibit at a New York gallery. In 1975 and 1979, he had successful exhibitions in New Orleans, and his work was included in art and news magazines, including Time and Newsweek. Beginning in the 1950s, his works included stylized portraits similar in some ways to the "big eyes" art of Margaret Keane, though it is uncertain that either artist influenced the other. Keane painted children, and so did Serrier, sometimes from life, but Serrier’s models are usually somewhat older, though uniformly slender and with androgynous features. A gallery owner introduced Serrier to American collectors Edgar Garbisch and his wife, Bernice Chrysler (daughter of Chrysler founder Walter P. Chrysler), who had a particular interest in naïve art; they commissioned a series of portraits from Serrier. At the same time, he met Reine Ausset in Paris, who in 1961 invited him to New York to take part in an exhibition at Galerie Norval on 57th Street. The show also included work by Moïse Kisling, and the exhibition program explicitly linked the two artists, saying that Serrier, who considered Moise Kisling "the Master," had found his own technique, but "the same vision joins the grand Kisling to the young Serrier: plenitude of shapes, sureness of palette, precision in outlines." In the 1960s he began painting slender, young, androgynous figures in groups, set in sparse landscapes with suggestions of the surreal and sometimes wearing costumes of the Commedia dell'arte. In some of these paintings the eyes of the figures are completely black, a motif that would continue in his later work. In 1965, he exhibited at Forest and Reed Gallery in London. Also in 1965, he discovered the small town of Martel, and with his old roommate Jean-Baptiste Valadié purchased a house that they opened as the gallery La Licorne (The Unicorn) in 1967. Responding to the political upheavals of May 1968 in France, and following the advice of Geneva gallery owner Roger Ferrero, Serrier's work became increasingly complex, idiosyncratic, and surreal. Imagery included the Tower of Babel, bodies suspended in space, and crowds of people all dressed alike, with identical features and entirely black eyes. Mannequins, playing cards, nudes, and levitating orbs also figured in the work. In a nod to Magritte, his men sometimes wear bowler hats. Another influence may have been the works of the Franco-Belgian surrealist Gaston Bogaert (1918-2008). Serrier's first major exhibit of these works, in Geneva in 1971, was titled Le Réalisme Fantastique. (Magic Realism) In 1972, he was made a member of the Société du Salon d'Automne, under whose auspices he was invited by the Polish government to exhibit in Warsaw in 1973, as part of a cultural exchange across the Iron Curtain. In 1976, he served on the jury of the Salon d'Automne. In 1975, New Orleans gallery owner Kurt E. Schon brought his work to several cities in the United States. A copiously illustrated monograph in English, Surrealism and the Absurd: Jean Pierre Serrier, was published in 1977. Author Thomas M. Bayer wrote: Serrier's world is one where—to use Friedrich Nietzche's term—the "human herd animal" is being confronted with the overwhelming task of coping with the world, his solitude, and at times, his resignation in the face of its monstrous size and duration. It is a world where the characterless, "blind" man faces the institutions, rules and symbols that made him into the being he now is…But Serrier does not lose himself in this world he portrays. He never forgets the old French tradition, the "black" humor, à la Molière. This classical humor at times is more felt than seen, in a manner that can be terribly funny, because it is horrifying, laughable, poignant and always true. Serrier told a friend, "In each of my paintings there's a message of hope amid the crowd of stereotypical figures. It could be an escaping dirigible, or a nymphet who flees like a deer under the red and blue trees of paradise...

Atlantis, A large spectacular nautical, marine magic fantasy. (without the frame it is 32X39 inches) The roots for Peter Kolin’s fascinating world of Surrealist Fantasy, Magic Realist images can be traced back to the art of Mannerism, a brief period - approximately 1520 to 1610 - between the Renaissance and Age of the Baroque. In Mannerist paintings composition had no focal point and space could be ambiguous. Surreal figures could be characterized by athletic bending and twisting with distortions, exaggerations, elastic elongation of the limbs, bizarre or graceful posturing and the rendering of the heads as uniformly small and oval. (reminds me very much of some of the compositions of Salvador Dali) The composition was full of clashing symbolist colors very unlike the balanced, natural and often dramatic colors of the High Renaissance. Mannerist works presented instability and restlessness and also showed a fondness for allegories with lascivious undertones. Kolin, an exceptionally gifted painter within this tradition, creates gorgeous and mysterious fantasies of Surrealism with each work opening a new and more exciting fantastic world. His narrative world of images and symbols is presented in his own metaphorical language but with a visual accuracy solidly rooted in technical perfection. Today Kolin is a widely acclaimed artist of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. (Together with, Arik Erich Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner...

Steven H. Rehfeld (American, born 1954) "Immateriality" 2006 Oil Paint, Pencil, Canvas, Stretcher Bars The artist signed the back of the painting. In "Immateriality", Steven H. Rehf...

Artist: Rodolfo Opazo, Chilean (1935 - ) Title: Cabeza Year: 1983 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed l.l. and verso Size: 39 x 32 inches

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 dimensions 56 x 46 in. Rina Sut...

Artist: Nina Usacheva-Green, Russian Title: Sirin and Alkonost Year: 1981 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed Size: 40 x 29 inches Frame: 49 x 38 inches

Artist: Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Russian (1941 - 2015) Title: Flying Saucers Year: 1985 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed Size: 52 x 23.75 in. (132.08 x ...

An oil painting by Ernst Neizvestny from 1984. An abstract modernist depiction of two figures in a dramatically expressive scene of pathos. Artist: Ernst Neizvestny Title: Kepmovr?...