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The Ledge
By Georgina Klitgaard
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Georgina Klitgaard (1893 – 1976) The Ledge, by 1931, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 32 1/8 x 50 1/8 inches, exhibited: 1) 44th Annual Exhibition of American Paintings & Sculptur...
Category
1930s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Johnny Walker’s Place
By Georgina Klitgaard
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Johnny Walker’s Place, by 1929, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 34 x 42 inches, exhibited 1) 28th International Exhibition of Paintings, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, Octobe...
Category
1920s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Judy and Rita on Porch at Afton
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Judy and Rita on Porch at Afton, c. 1936, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches, title inscribed on tacking margin; “Judy” and “Rita” inscribed verso, NB: purchased together with The New Roa...
Category
1930s American Modern Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Tennessee WPA Textile - Musical Abstraction (Untitled)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Musical Abstraction (Untitled), c. 1935 - 1942, handwoven and embroidered textile on linen, 23 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches, label verso reads "Tenn. WPA Project handwoven / Related Art Dep. ...
Category
1930s American Modern More Art
Materials
Textile
Still Life (Untitled)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Still Life (Untitled), c. 1935 – 1940, oil on canvas, signed lower left, magazine cover has a 1934 date, 32 x 26 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso
In their essay for the gro...
Category
1930s American Modern Still-life Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Peck Slip
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Peck Slip, 1950, oil on cardboard, 15 x 20 inches, exhibition label verso reads: “Oil on cardboard, 20 x 15, 1950 / Title: Peck Slip / Price: $100 / Artist and Owner: Fiske Boyd / 30...
Category
1950s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Unfinished Problem
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Unfinished Problem, by 1953, oil on canvas, signed lower right, signed and inscribed verso on stretcher “Charles Goeller/1272 Clinton Place, Elizabeth, NJ...
Category
1950s American Modern Interior Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Interior (Untitled)
By Robert Freiman
Located in Los Angeles, CA
nterior (Untitled), 1958, watercolor and ink on paper mounted on cardboard, signed and dated lower right, 11 ½ x 16 ½ inches (sight); 12 x 18 inches (sheet); inscribed lower left “To...
Category
1950s American Modern Interior Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Watercolor
Cityscape (Untitled)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Cityscape (Untitled), c. 1950s, mixed media on board, signed lower left, 13 1/2 x 18 inches, presented in its original frame
Jean (Yanko) Varda was a Greek-born multi-media artist ...
Category
1950s American Modern Mixed Media
Materials
Paper, Oil, Photographic Paper, Board, Magazine Paper
Three Chimneys
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Three Chimneys, 1956, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower left, 18 x 36 inches, titled verso, presented in its original frame
Three Chimneys is a prime example of Ethel Margolies’ Precisionist-influenced industrial scenes. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Margolies made a name for herself by painting the Northeast’s factories, foundries, and manufacturing plants. Although this subject matter is often associated with male artists, Margolies is part of an important lineage of female modernists who depicted symbols of America’s industrial might. Starting with artists like New Jersey’s Elsie Driggs and Chicago’s Yvonne Deluc Pryor, Margolies is part of a through line of women Precisionist painters that also included the West Coast’s Vanessa Helder. Whereas these artists tended towards a stark and pristine realism, Margolies seems to have been influenced by the 1920s and early 1930s work of Charles Demuth’s and Charles Sheeler’s highly designed paintings from the same period, as both adopted a cubo-futurist oriented brand of Precisionism.
Ethel Polacheck Margolies was a Connecticut painter...
Category
1950s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
Seoul, Korea
By Dong Kingman
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Seoul, Korea, 1954 - 56, watercolor on paper, signed lower right 21 x 28 inches (sight), Midtown Galleries label with artist’s name and title verso, likely exhibited at Kingman’s solo exhibition, Midtown Galleries, 1956, literature: Gruskin, Alan D., Saroyan, William (introduction), The Watercolors of Dong Kingman and How The Artist Works, The Studio Publications, Inc. in association with Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York and London (1958), p. 54 (illustrated) (“In Seoul on April 27th and 28th Kingman did some mountain sketching [see reproduction, on page 54, of handsome Kingman painting, “Seoul,” owned by Robert Clary...
Category
1950s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Paper, Watercolor
Autumn Landscape
By Robert Vickrey
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Autumn Landscape, by 1958, tempera on Masonite, 24 x 36 inches, signed lower left, exhibited: 1) 133rd Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design, New York, NY, February 20 – March 16, 1958 (Henry Ward Ranger Purchase Prize); and 2) Henry Ward Ranger Centennial Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, September 25 - October 12, 1958, #133 (see Levin, Meyer, Illustrative Paintings Gathered for Ranger Show at National Academy, St. Petersburg Times, October 13, 1958 (“There’s a warm, low-keyed picture of golden fields, with distant structures, called “Autumn Landscape,” by Robert Vickrey, whose magic realism is felt in so “regular” a subject.”), literature: 1) Watson, Ernest William, Composition in Landscape and Still Life, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1959, pp. 24, 155 and 157 (illustrated); and 2) Vickrey, Robert and Cochrane, Diane, New Techniques in Egg Tempera, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1973, p. 111 (illustrated); ex collection National Academy of Design
Reflecting on his art, Robert Vickery...
Category
1950s American Realist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Egg Tempera
Cylinder and Pear
By Walter Tandy Murch
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Cylinder and Pear, c. 1959, oil on board, 18 x 24 inches, literature: W. Meyers, Walter Tandy Murch: Paintings and Drawings 1925-1967, New York, 2021, p. 176, pl. 41, illustrated; pr...
Category
1950s American Modern Still-life Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
On a Spanish Motif
Located in Los Angeles, CA
On a Spanish Motif, 1956 – 1973, mixed media collage and painting on thick canvas, signed and dated lower right, 38 ½ x 26 inches, signed verso, labeled verso includes title, artist's name, address and size of work, presented in its original strip frame
Justin Faivre...
Category
1950s Abstract Mixed Media
Materials
Metal
Hail Victoria
By George Marinko
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Hail Victoria, by 1955, oil on Masonite, signed lower left, 20 x 16 inches, exhibited 26th Annual Exhibition of Paintings of Contemporary New England Artists, Jordan Marsh Company, B...
Category
1950s American Realist Still-life Paintings
Materials
Board
hree Freedoms - Worship, Communication and Assembly
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Three Freedoms - Worship, Communication and Assembly, February, 1960, mixed media on paper, signed lower right, 28 x 19 3/4 inches, exhibited Portrait of Freedom, Lehigh Art Alliance...
Category
1960s Abstract Paintings
Materials
Paper, Watercolor, Gouache
Mickey Finn Youth Club
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Mickey Finn Youth Club, 1951, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower right, signed, titled and dated verso, 20 x 24 inches, presented in an older frame
Edgar Kiechle was a Los Ange...
Category
1950s American Realist Interior Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Broadway
By Jean Dominique van Caulaert
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Broadway (?), 1952, oil on Masonite, signed and dated lower left, 15 x 18 inches, inscription verso may say "Broadway", presented in its original frame
Jean Dominique van Caulaert w...
Category
1950s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
The Orchestra
Located in Los Angeles, CA
The Orchestra, 1950, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left, 21 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches, labeled verso “Brown University, Trustee, The Walter Feldman Trust for Artwork” titled verso,...
Category
1950s Abstract Geometric Abstract Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
The Demagogue or Tale in a Tub
Located in Los Angeles, CA
The Demagogue or Tale in a Tub, 1952, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, titled, and dated verso, presented in a newer frame
The Demagogue is an iconic Bendor Mark painting fro...
Category
1950s American Modern Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled (Highrise)
By Karl Benjamin
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Untitled (Highrise), 1954, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 20 x 20 inches, presented in its original frame
Karl Benjamin was a California-based artist who is best known...
Category
1950s Hard-Edge Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Two Figures
By Robert Chester Thomas
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This sculpture is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s.
Two Figures, 1949, ebony wood, 24 x 7 x 5 inches, unsigned, but comes from Thomas' daughters and includes a copy of a 1949 photo of this work listing the artist's name, title of work and date
Robert Chester Thomas was a California sculptor. A native of Wichita, Kansas, Thomas moved with his family to Southern California as a child. During World War II, he joined the army and served for a time in the European theater. When he returned to California, he studied sculpture with David Green in Pasadena in 1946 and 1947, before taking advantage of the GI Bill in 1948 to study with Ossip Zadkine in Paris. He first exhibited at Galerie St. Placide as part of an exhibition of American artists working in late 1940s Paris...
Category
1940s American Modern Sculptures
Materials
Wood, Ebony
Blue Lake
By George Marinko
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s.
Blue Lake, c. 1940s, oil on masonite, signed lower right, 20 x 36 inches, label and inscriptio...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
My Only Working Tool
Located in Los Angeles, CA
My Only Working Tool, 1949, oil on panel, signed and dated lower right, 16 x 12 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, exhibited at the Art News Second Annual National Amateur Competition, National Academy of Design, New York, NY, December, 1950 (see The Best Amateurs, Art News, volume 49, issue 8, December 6 to 20, 1950, p. 65 – 66), presented in a period frame
Fausto Sansone...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
Untitled (Industrial Street)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
Untitled (Industrial Street), c. 1940s, watercolor on paper mounted on illustration board, estate stamp verso (signed by Peter Corbridge, the artist’s son); 14 x 21 inches; unframed
Edgar Corbridge was a Massachusetts-based precisionist painter who mainly worked in watercolor. In 1916, three years after immigrating from England, Corbridge completed a course of study in sign painting at the Fall River, Massachusetts Technical High School and obtained an apprenticeship with the Armour Sign Shop. Throughout his career, Corbridge was mainly self-taught as a fine artist. In 1918, Corbridge received his first recognition as an artist for his entry in a Fall River Women’s Club poster competition. During much of his professional life, Corbridge worked as a self-employed window trimmer and operator of the Corbridge Display Service, supplemented by income from the occasional sale of his paintings. Corbridge gleaned the subjects for his works in and around his home in Fall River, Massachusetts, as well as Provincetown. In the 1940s, Corbridge began to exhibit frequently, including at the annual exhibitions at the Jordan Marsh Company...
Category
1940s American Modern Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Watercolor, Board
Army Poker
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
Army Poker, c. 1943, probably tempera on board, signed upper right, 16 x 20 inches, inscribed verso a) “Army Poker / Mervin Honig / 421 W 42 St. N.Y.C.,” b) “Mervin Honig / US Army Air Force – Seymour Johnson Field – Goldsboro, NC / Circa 1943,” and c) “(This painting was done before men was (sic) shipped off to the Mariana Islands (Saipan) The Second World War.” Note: four pencil sketches for this work included
Mervin Honig was a New York-based painter and illustrator who is best known for his realistic depictions of everyday life and sports themes. Honig was raised in Brooklyn and recalled almost never being without a paintbox in hand from the time he started elementary school. Honig had a deep reverence for the Old Master painters, Vermeer and Bellini, as well as the Americans Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. He initially studied art from 1939 through 1941 with Francis Criss. At the outbreak of World War II, Honig worked as a mechanic for Republic Aviation, but in August 1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and was stationed at Seymour Johnson Field in Goldsboro, North Carolina. During the war, Honig began to exhibit nationally, including as part of the Portrait of America exhibitions which originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveled around the country, as well as at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. He painted Army Poker in 1943 while stationed at Johnson Field. In this work, Honig draws inspiration from Paul Cezanne's The Card Players (Metropolitan Museum of Art), with a similar placement of the four figures, but Cezanne's table is replaced with an Army cot, the pipe rack with a soldier's mess kit and the drapery in the right background with a heap of discarded uniforms. Unlike the vibrancy of Cezanne's composition, the limited palette of Honig's work suggests the drabness and monotony of stateside Army life.
After being discharged from military service, Honig furthered his studies with Amadee Ozenfant in 1946 and Hans Hoffman from 1947 through 1950. Additional exhibitions included the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Provincetown Art Association, and the National Academies Galleries of the Allied Artists Association. He was represented by the venerable Frank Rehn...
Category
1940s American Realist Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board, Tempera
A Valley Streetscape at Night
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This work is part of our exhibition - American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
A Valley Streetscape at Night, 1948, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower right, 18 x 24 inches; literature: King, Chloe, The Paintings of Edgard O. Kiechle – Unearthed After 60 Years, Ventura Blvd, January/February, 2023, pp. 46 – 53 (illustrated)
Edgar Kiechle...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
Untitled (Cubist Portrait)
By Jerre H. Murry
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
Untitled (Cubist Portrait), 1945, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower middle, 20 x 16 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, perhaps exhibited at Murry's solo exhibition at the Los Angeles's Screen Cartoonists' Gallery, July , 1945, presented in its original frame
Jerre Murry was a California modernist painter. Born in Columbia, Missouri, Murry studied at the Detroit Academy of Art and worked as an artist for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. Murry traveled to the Bahamas, where he was inspired to paint modernist scenes of island life and people. By the early 1930s, Murry had relocated to Los Angeles, where he caught the attention of Synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald Wright, State Supervisor for the Federal Art Project (FAP) in Southern California. MacDonald Wright enrolled Murry into the FAP. Murry’s Gauguin-influenced painting Sun Image was exhibited together with other FAP artists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1936, and Murry was also included in the FAP exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1937. Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, the Chamber of Commerce Gallery in Santa Barbara, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art also showed Murry’s work during the 1930s. Murry created a murals for Los Angeles Water & Power Company, the Boise, Idaho Post Office, and Glendale Junior College. In 1939, Murry's work was exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition and the New York World's Fair. He also was included in the All California Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of art that same year. He went on to exhibit in Los Angeles at the Foundation of Western Art's Trends in Southern California Art shows in 1940 and 1941, at Raymond and Raymond Gallery in Hollywood and USC’s Elizabeth Holmes...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
Untitled (Elevated Platform)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our current exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
Untitled (Elevated Platform), 1950, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 30 x...
Category
1950s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled (Farm in Winter)
By Julius M. Delbos
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s
Untitled (Farm in Winter), 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 26 x 30 inches, presented in an original frame
Julius Delbos...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Riders of Pigeon Hill
By Jon Corbino
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Riders of Pigeon Hill, c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 24 x 36 inches, label verso with title, artist’s name and address; same information inscribed verso; ex-collection...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Orange Grove Landscape
By Dorr Bothwell
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Orange Grove Landscape, 1941, gouache on illustration board, 14 inches x 18 inches (image), 22 x 26 inches (framed) signed and dated lower right, newly framed with museum glazing
...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Gouache, Board
Rabbit Hunters
By Roger Medearis
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Rabbit Hunters, egg tempera on Masonite, 12 x 9 inches, 1947, signed and dated lower left, signed, titled and dated verso “Rabbit Hunters Egg Tempera Roger Medearis 1947,” exhibited at Medearis' solo show at Kende Galleries, New York, in 1949 (Medearis’ record book, a copy of which is held by Vose Galleries in Boston, MA, indicates this is painting “No. 23” and that is was completed in 1947 and sold via Kende Galleries (at Gimbel Brothers...
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Tempera, Board
Landscape
By Marcel Emile Cailliet
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Landscape, 1940, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, signed, dated and titled verso: “Marcel Cailliet ’40 – S.C.” and “Marcel Cailliet Landscape”; likely exhibited at the annual juried st...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled (Collapsed Shacks)
By Karl Fortress
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Untitled (Collapsed Shacks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 ½ x 26 ½ inches, presented in a period frame
This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: ...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled (Houses and Railroad Tracks)
By Harry Lane
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Untitled (Houses and Railroad Tracks), c. 1940s, oil on canvas board, signed lower right, 16 x 20 inches, presented in a newer frame
This work is part of our exhibition America Coas...
Category
1940s American Modern Paintings
Materials
Oil, Board
The Old World
By Russell Cowles
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Old World, by 1943, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 43 ½ x 30 ½ inches, artist’s name and title inscribed verso; exhibited 1) Romantic Painting in America, Museum of Modern Art, N...
Category
1940s Modern Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled (Modernist Three-Panel Screen)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Untitled (Modernist Three-Panel Screen), 1948, mixed media on paperboard mounted into a three-section screen, 58 x 45 inches, signed and dated on each panel upper right
This work is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s.
Charles Malcolm Campbell...
Category
1940s Cubist Mixed Media
Materials
Board
Paradise Lost Collection
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This collection of drawings is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
1. Paradise Lost (But His Doom)
Crayon on paper, 17 ½ x 12 ½ inches (image), 22 x 15 inc...
Category
1940s American Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Paper, Crayon
Untitled (Hulda Goeller)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This sculpture is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Carved and painted wood and gesso, 23 x 15 3/4 x 3 inches, Signed verso "Carved by Charles L. Goeller...
Category
1930s American Modern Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Gesso, Wood
Flood
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This drawing is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Crayon on paper, 10 ½ x 9 inches (image), 14 x 11 inches (sheet), Signed...
Category
1930s American Modern Landscape Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Crayon, Paper
Abandoned Wharf
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This drawing is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Crayon on paper, 20 x 12 (image), 22 x 14 inches (sheet), Signed lower right, Matted, but not framed
Ex...
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Crayon, Paper
Man Trimming Tree
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This drawing is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Crayon on paper, 11 5/8 x 9 inches (image), 14 x 11 inches (sheet), Signed lower right, Matted, but no...
Category
1930s American Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Crayon, Paper
She Gets Her Way (Couple with Vase)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This drawing is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Crayon on paper, 11 ½ x 9 inches (image), 14 x 11 inches (sheet), Signed...
Category
1930s American Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
Materials
Crayon, Paper
Arthur Kill
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 15 ¾ x 24 inches, Signed and titled verso on stretcher
Exhibited:
[Solo Exhibition] Cha...
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
Church in Trees
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 13 x 9 inches, Signed lower left
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
Across the Street
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, Signed lower right
Exhibited:
1) [Solo E...
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
Suburb (in Winter)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 20 x 15 inches, Signed lower right
Exhibited:
1) Portrai...
Category
1940s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
The Shelf
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Oil on canvas, 18 x 20 inches, Signed lower right
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Exhibited:
1) (likel...
Category
1930s American Modern Still-life Paintings
Materials
Oil
Abstract
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 29 x 22 inches, Signed on frame verso “Painted by Charles L. Goeller”
Exhibited:
(Perh...
Category
1930s American Modern Abstract Paintings
Materials
Oil
Tom
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches, Signed lower right, Signed verso on stret...
Category
1930s American Modern Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil
Seated Figure (Portrait in Landscape – Paris Model Against Landscape)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition Charles Goeller: A Wistful Loneliness.
Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 inches, Signed lower left
Price Upon Request
Category
1920s American Modern Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil
Industry and Commerce
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This mural study is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Industry and Commerce, 1936, tempera on panel, 16 ½ x 39 ½ inches, signed verso “John Ballator, Portland Ore.” provenance includes: J.C. Penney Company, represented by Russell Tether Fine Arts Assoc.; presented in a newer wood frame
About the Painting
Industry and Commerce is a prime example of WPA Era muralism. Like a Mediaeval alter, this mural study is filled with icons, but the images of saints and martyrs are replaced with symbols of America's gospel of prosperity through capitalism. Industry and Commerce has a strong narrative quality with vignettes filling the entire surface. Extraction, logistics, design, power generation, and manufacturing for printing, chemicals, automobiles and metal products are all represented. To eliminate any doubt about the mural's themes, Ballator letters a description into the bottom of the study. Ballator also presents an idealized version of industrial cooperation, as his workers, lab-coated technicians and tie-wearing managers work harmoniously toward a common goal in the tidy and neatly designed environments. Although far from the reality of most industrial spaces, Ballator's study reflects the idealized and morale boosting tone that many mural projects adopted during the Great Depression.
About the Artist
John R Ballator achieved success as a muralist, lithographer, and teacher during the Great Depression. Born in Oregon, he studied at the Portland Museum Art School, the University of Oregon and at Yale University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Art. In 1936, Ballator was commissioned to paint a mural panel for the new Department of Justice Building in Washington DC, an important project that spanned five years with several dozen artists contributing a total of sixty-eight designs. Ballator completed murals for the St. Johns Post Office and Franklin High School, both in Portland, Oregon. He also contributed to the 1938 murals at Nathan Hale School in New Haven, Connecticut. During the late 1930s, Ballator taught art for several years at Washburn College in Topeka, Kanas, where he completed a mural for the Menninger Arts & Craft Shop before accepting a professorship at Hollins College...
Category
1930s American Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Tempera
Circus Wagons
By Millard Sheets
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This watercolor is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Circus Wagons, 1927, watercolor on paper, signed and dated lower left, 10 x19 ¾ inches (sight), provenance includes Stary-Sheets Art Gallery (Gualala, CA); J. Ralph & Louis Stone Foundation; presented in a newer metal frame behind glazing
About the Painting
Millard Sheets was only twenty years old and in his third year of studies at the Chouinard Art Institute when he painted Circus Wagons. Despite his youth, Sheets was already an accomplished artist who had publicly exhibited his work and won prestigious prizes. Within several years, he would have his first solo exhibition at one of Los Angeles’ premiere galleries and become a painting instructor at his alma mater. In Circus Wagons we already see Sheets deft handling of the watercolor medium and his interest in the California Scene. In this case, Sheets captures a back lot view of a traveling circus, a subject he sometimes returned to, including in a color screen print in the collection of the National Gallery. Sheets made a career by painting what he knew and observed firsthand. This approach allowed Sheets to capture with authenticity the details of each narrative. Even with a narrowly limited palette and an economy of brushstrokes, Sheets effectively depicts the southern California scene with its strong and mysterious shadows, as well as the workers and circus animals. Seen through the hindsight of his six-decade long career, Circus Wagons offers a fascinating insight into the early development of California Scene painting which would by the mid-1930s become the best recognized style on the West Coast.
About the Artist
Millard Sheets was the dean of California watercolorists. His list of accomplishments is so extensive that his entry in Who was Who in American Art is over forty lines. Born in Pomona, California, Sheets became a painter at an early age, winning a prize at the Los Angeles County Fair in 1918. By the mid to late-1920s, Sheets became a regular at art exhibitions in the western part of the United States, winning several additional prizes before he reached the age of twenty-five. Sheets studied at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute from 1925 through 1929 with Frank Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle and had his first solo show with Los Angeles’ Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in 1929. During the 1930s, Sheets was invited to exhibit at almost every major American Museum and in many ways, his work came to represent the California watercolor school...
Category
1920s American Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
Factory Worker
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Factory Worker, c. 1936, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 18 ¼ x 36 inches; exhibited in City ...
Category
1930s American Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
San Pedro Post Office: History of Writing Mural South, Preliminary Mural Study
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This mural study is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
San Pedro Post Office: History of Writing Mural South, Preliminary Mural Maquette right panel...
Category
1930s American Modern Figurative Paintings
Materials
Mixed Media
Kossack
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This sculpture is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Kossack, c. late 1930s, polychromed cedar and walnut relief sculpture, carved signature under the base of the figure, 15 x 8 x 3 1/2 inches (figure), 10 x 19 inches (board), exhibited at Zeidler's solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art, November - December, 1942 (label verso), label verso reads "Kossack / cedar & walnut / Avis Zeidler"
About the Sculpture
Kossack is typical of Aviz Zeidler’s direct carved wood sculptures of the 1930s. The subject looks directly at the viewer, unfeeling behind a polychromed stare. Seemingly influenced by two of her major teachers, California’s Ralph Stackpole and New York’s William Zorach, Zeidler drew on primitive traditions to create what one critic described as her “gruesome wood sculptures.” Rigid, solid, and unmoving are other words that characterize Zeidler’s statues which often seem to have the deeply rooted ancient power of a totem. Zeidler’s “grimacing artificiality does, indeed, manage to hold a sense of force,” is how The San Francisco Examiner art critic put it in 1938 when describing the artist’s award-winning entry at the San Francisco Art Museum. The same words could have applied to Kossack when it was exhibited at the museum four years later. Perhaps the artist was trying to contain the power of the fearsome Kossacks, the enemy of so many Eastern European peasants, by freezing the image in wood.
About the Artist
Avis Zeidler (Nemkoff) was a California-based artist who is principally known for her sculpture and drawings. She was born in Madison, Wisconsin, but moved to Northern California by the late 1920s where she majored in art at Berkely and studied with Lucien Labaudt, Ray Boynton...
Category
1940s American Modern Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Wood
Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse)
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse), c. 1930s, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches, signed lower right; presented in a newer silver painted frame
About the Painting
Writing about an exhibition of Charles W. Adams’ work at the Eighth Street Art Gallery in the mid-1930s, Emily Grenauer observed in The World-Telegram that the artist’s paintings were “distinguished for their solid form, well organized design and sumptuous color” and the art critic for The Herald Tribune found Adam’s work “a strong, formal realization of his subject . . . he paints with vital emphasis on structure and composition.” Although we do not know which works these critics referenced, it is likely they were writing about paintings like Jefferson Market Library (Courthouse). With its carefully designed reality, strong angles, solid forms, and well-disciplined puffs of smoke in the background, Adams presents a highly structured version of the Greenwich Village landmark, the Jefferson Market Library, which was a courthouse at the time Adams completed this work. The Jefferson Market Library was a prized subject for downtown painters, including the Ashcan School painter, John Sloan, the modernist, Stuart Davis, and the precisionist, Francis Criss...
Category
1930s American Modern Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Music (attributed)
By Philip Kran Paval
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This sculpture is part of our exhibition America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Music (attributed), brass and wire construction, c. 1936, 28 x 14 x 5 inches; perhaps exhibited at Hollywood Riviera Gallery, 1936 (third prize); provenance includes Estate of Jon Spencer Helfen (Los Angeles, CA
About the Sculpture
In 1935, Philip Paval bought a box of metal in a “blind auction.” Paval, a painter, sculptor, and jeweler, had hoped the box contained silver. To his dismay, it was brass. Seeing an opportunity, Paval started to make sculptures from the brass sheets. His subjects included Cinema, Hollywood, Radio, Dance, Aviation and Music. The works were well-received with the Hollywood crowd and critically acclaimed. Actor and comedian, Ben Bard, purchased four of them for his theater, and novelist and screenwriter, Vicki Baum ordered four more for her drawing room. Movie director King Vidor also purchased them. Los Angeles Times art critic, Arthur Millier, described Paval’s “contraptions” as “ingenious, decorative, different.” Paval exhibited these works for several years in the late 1930s, including at the American Artists’ Congress Gallery in Los Angeles in an exhibition called Formalism and Abstraction in 1938 and at a solo show at Stendahl Galleries in 1939. The appeal of these works must have been irresistible, as a 1936 Los Angeles Times article noted, “Two feet of brass art has been stolen from the Hollywood Riviera Galleries. The work is an abstraction. It portrays the spirit of music and rested on the grand piano in the main hall. The work of Philip Paval, it won third prize in the current gallery exhibition at the gallery.” One can only wonder whether this is the “contraption” which was pilfered from the gallery nearly one hundred years ago. Given the description of the work, its subject matter and size, it seems likely.
About the Artist
Philip Paval was a sculptor, painter, and jeweler. Born in Denmark, Paval was apprenticed to a silversmith and studied art in Denmark. He immigrated to the US in 1919 and first worked as a merchant seaman in New York. The following year, Paval settled in Los Angeles where he later opened his own jewelry shop featuring works he designed and produced. Paval became a favorite in the entertainment world, making a good living selling silver...
Category
1930s Art Deco Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Brass
Knight’s Lodging
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This painting is part of our exhibition American Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1930s
Knight’s Lodging, 1941, oil on canvas panel, signed and dated lower left, 16 x 20 inches, exhi...
Category
1940s American Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
