David Cook Galleries

Original semi abstract southwestern landscape painting titled, 'Walpi #4 (Hopi Village on First Mesa, Arizona)' by Bert Van Bork (1928-2014). Native American Pueblo village with adobe buildings set high on a mesa, painted shades of deep blue, yellow, orange, and pink. Presented in a custom white frame with all archival materials and UV protectant glass, outer dimensions measure 8 ½ x 10 ½ x ½ inches. Image size is 4 ¾ x 7 inches. Provenance: Estate of Bert Van Bork, Evanston, Illinois About the Artist: Bert Van Bork - Student of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, confidant to Jacques Lipchitz, Joan Miró and numerous artists of the 20th century, nominee by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Short Documentary in 2000 — was himself an artist, photographer, filmmaker, writer and world traveler whose talent and respectful observance of the communities he visited allowed him rare entrance into artist studios in Europe, Mexico and the United States, including selected Native American villages in the Southwest. Born in Augustusburg, Saxony, Germany, at the age of 15, he entered and won a statewide competition to study at the prestigious Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (State College of Fine Arts) in Berlin, where he had the opportunity to join Masterclasses by Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff, a pioneer of the German Expressionism movement “Die Brücke”. After WWII, Van Bork continued his studies at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (College for Graphic Arts) in Leipzig, Germany. Later returning to Berlin to work, he became an active contributor to a small and struggling post-war artist community. One of his poignant woodcuts titled Witwe (Widow) was chosen in 1949 to be featured on the poster for the art exhibition of the Kunstamt Berlin-Mitte. In 1954 Van Bork immigrated to the United States, arriving in New York and later settling in Chicago. There, he began his diverse career as an artist, printmaker, master-photographer and film producer. He produced more than 100 documentary and educational films, which won him numerous national and international film awards. In 1998 he began production on the documentary film entitled “EYEWITNESS, the Legacy of Death Camp Art...

Original oil painting of a western mountain landscape, likely California or Colorado by Turner B. Messick (1878-1952), with snow covered pea...

Abstract art by 20th century Denver, Colorado woman artist Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Untitled Monotype on paper signed lower right and numbered, 1 of 1, lower left. Colors include blu...

"The Coast" vintage midcentury circa 1950s - 1970s original oil painting of a marine landscape in moonlight by 20th century New Mexico artist, Marjorie Chambers (1923-2006). Painted in evening colors of blue, green, brown and white. Nocturne oil painting on wood panel, signed by the artist lower right and titled on the reverse. Presented in a custom frame with a dark finish and gold lip; outer dimensions measure 18 ¼ x 21 ¾ x 1 inches. Image size is 11 x 15 inches. About the Artist: Marjorie Bell Chambers (Marjorie Bell, Marjorie Chambers) was born in New York in 1923. In 1943, she graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Art History and political science and went on to earn a Master of Arts (M.A.) from Cornell University in 1948. She married physicist, William H. Chambers in 1945 and the couple moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico a few years later where he worked in the National Laboratory. Chambers spent the following years raising their children and worked as a substitute teacher in Los Alamos. In 1974, Marjorie Chambers received a PhD in History and Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She went on to serve on the faculty of the University of New Mexico and served as dean of the Midwest region of the Union Institute Graduate School. Marjorie Chambers served as the first woman president of Colorado Women's College (a division of the University of Denver). Chambers also served as president of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). A lifelong advocate for women's rights, Dr. Marjorie Bell Chambers was appointed her to the National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs in 1976 by President Gerald Ford. Chambers served as vice-chair and acting chair of President Carter...

"Enchanted Garden", by Edward Marecak, vintage 1980s original abstract painting. Oil painting on canvas, titled and estate stamp on reverse. Abstract composition with geometric of interconnected geometric shapes. The painting has a great texture due to the impasto of the series of dots of paint. Colors include brown, red, yellow, pink, purple, blue, green and black. Unframed, custom framing options are available. Provenance: Estate of Edward Marecak About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett's Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation's leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world's most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak's studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson's specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High...

Original large format southwestern landscape painting of the Grand Canyon in Arizona by Pawel Kontny. Evening scene with sunset coloring over the canyon with dramatic clouds and trees in the foreground. Colors include blue, purple, green, red/brown and white. Original painting with Kontny's unique process combining marble dust, gesso and oil glaze on masonite to create rich tones and a sense of depth and texture. Signed by the artist, lower left. Presented in a custom frame, outer dimensions measure 45 ¼ x 59 ¼ x 1 ½ inches. Image size is 34 x 48 inches. About the Artist: The second oldest of five children of a prosperous bakery shop-café owner, Pawel Kontny (Paul Kontny, Pawel August Kontny) began sketching and drawing Indians based on Karl May's popular Western novels which he read as a youngster growing up in Europe. Initially designated to take over the family business, Kontny's father finally accepted his son's interest in art. After relocating the family to Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia (today, Gliwice, Poland) in 1936, he engaged an unemployed artist, Michael Uliga, to provide Paul some initial art instruction. In high school Kontny received additional encouragement and direction from Professor Pautsch. While still a student he was commissioned to paint a large image of St. Anthony for the family's parish church in Gleiwitz. In addition to formal instruction, Kontny's father financed Paul's trip to the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden (the home of his aunt) and to the Silesian Fine Arts Museum in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). The trip provided him a firsthand introduction at age thirteen to painting and drawing by European masters and to the work of some of the German Expressionists, soon afterward banned as "degenerate artists" and removed from museums throughout Germany by the Nazi regime. After graduation from Emperor Wilhelm State High School in Gleiwitz, Kontny briefly studied at the local mechanical engineering and metallurgy school, addressing his parents' concern about the economic prospect of his earning a decent livelihood as an artist. In 1940 he transferred to the technical college in Breslau where he studied architecture until being drafted into the German army in 1941. His first choice had been the Breslau Art Academy, but the Nazi authorities closed it down in 1932. After 1940 he had no other formal art training. During World War II his army unit served on the Eastern Front in the former Soviet Union. He documented his wartime experiences there and elsewhere in Eastern Europe with sketches and drawings which he temporarily stored in his gas mask canister until mailing them to his parents in Gleiwitz. Captured in northern Italy by Allied forces at the end of the war, his talent impressed General Wade H. Haislip of the 7th Army and the Western Military District in Germany who dispatched him under armed guard on a private sketching trip to northern Italy, including Venice. After his release from captivity, Kontny initially lived with his cousin's family in Eberhardsbühl, Germany, before being hired to help build the new European publishing center of Stars and Stripes, the American military newspaper, in Altdorf near Nuremberg, Germany. During his free time, he bicycled and sketched the small, historic Bavarian towns near Altdorf. His involvement with the Stars and Stripes project and his postwar village reconstruction work in Bavaria earned him an architect's card and membership in the Nuremberg Architects' Association in 1946. One of eleven architects on its working team, he helped design new housing in the city's residential areas destroyed by Allied bombing during the war. In the late 1940s he also designed the building for the Giesenhagen insurance company and the interior of the Schrafft Delicatessen in Nuremberg, and with two other colleagues a private home in Bavaria influenced by the International Style in architecture. After completing his work with the architects' association in Nuremberg where he also painted urban landscapes of the bombed wartime ruins, he returned to Eberhardsbühl where he began depicting the local residents and the landscape in a modernist style. In 1949 his work was introduced to the public in a lecture at the Amerika Haus in nearby Sulzbach-Rosenberg by art critic, Janheinz Jahn. His encouragement prompted Kontny to relocate to Nuremberg where he joined the Association of Independent Professional Nuremberg Artists and participated in its 1949 exhibition. His early success in Nuremberg led to solo shows at the Galerie Schröder and Galerie Stenzel in Munich, as well as at the Alioth Gallery in Basel and Saint Moritz, Switzerland. He also had a solo show at the Little Studio Gallery in New York in 1957 and at the Pogzeba Gallery in Denver in 1958. His participation in the all-German "Iron and Steel" exhibition at the Dusseldorf Museum in 1952 enhanced his reputation as an artist outside of Bavaria. The money he received from the sale of his work at that exhibition financed his first trip to France, Spain and North Africa. His urbanscapes of cities in North Africa reflect the influence of the earlier color-block compositions of Paul Klee, one of his favorite artists. Another influence was J.W.W. Turner whose work he studied at the Tate Gallery in London on a summer trip to England and Ireland in 1953 with Professor F.W. Schoberth of the Academy for Economics in Erlangen, Germany. Kontny did a number of sketches of people he observed during his trip, as well as watercolors and pastels of the various locations he visited. In the early 1950s his painting style showed the influence of the Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 who had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century in Germany. By the middle of the decade his style incorporated more referential abstraction and total abstraction, resulting in part from his study of Hans Hartung, a German artist based in Paris who exhibited his gestural abstract work in Germany. Kontny also benefitted from his contact with Karl Dahmen, a German abstract painter artist in the Rhineland. His friendship with Dahmen led him to experiment with marble dust for added texture in his work. Along with his painting, he produced lithographs of figures and urban vignettes for about five years beginning in the mid-1950s. At the same time he also sculpted in bronze and stone which he continued into the following decade. In the early 1950s he also did a number of drawings of authors, musicians and artists for the Nürnberger Nachricten (Nuremberg News), and illustrated the writings of German authors, Wolfgang Borchert and Hans Pflug-Franken. In 1960 the president of the Schaefer Pen Company, a collector of Kontny's work, invited him and his family for a summer trip to the United States that included New York, Chicago and Denver. Kontny visited the Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums and the New York galleries, acquainting himself firsthand with the postwar developments in American art. He traveled with his family to Chicago to see the Marshall Fields Gallery where he had exhibited in 1957, and then on to Denver to meet gallery dealer John Pogzeba who had arranged his first solo show in the Mile High City in 1958. Pogzeba took the Kontnys to Taos and Santa Fe whose Native American and Hispano cultures provided Paul with abundant subject matter after relocating to Denver, Colorado, in 1962. He facilitated shows of Konty's work at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, and the Maxwell Galleries in San Francisco. In Denver Kontny refined his marble dust technique during the 1960s, producing various grades shifted through his wife's pantyhose. He switched to masonite for his painting surface after discovering that traditional canvas could not adequately support his gessoed marble dust mixture. He used the mixture to sculpt the image on the masonite, then allowing it to dry before applying oil glazes. His marble dust technique easily lent itself to depicting the architecture of Paris, Naples, and Dubrovnik, as well as the multistoried tribal pueblos in northern New Mexico and Arizona. His initial encounter with Native Americans in New Mexico extended his search for subject matter to the Plains Indians in Wyoming and Montana whom he had read about in Karl May's adventure novels and whom he chose to depict in oil, watercolor and pastel. He also applied his marble dust technique to three non-representational series he pursued until the end of his life – Cosmos, inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 and Carl Sagan's Cosmos television series in the 1980s; the Age of Technology, symbolizing his admiration for modern technological achievement; and Ancient Memories, synthesizing his life-long interest in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Babylon, as well as those of the Aztecs, Mayan and Incas of the Western Hemisphere. Although based in Denver, Kontny remained an inveterate traveler. His frequent trips to Europe, Mexico and Hawaii provided him a wealth of new material, augmented with portraits and still lifes including the official portrait of Governor Richard Lamm in 1976 for the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. To keep his eye fresh throughout his career, Kontny did hundreds of ink drawings in both representational and nonobjective styles. He likened them to a pianist's need for daily keyboard practice. His love of classical music and jazz is reflected in nonobjective paintings and pastels done both in Europe and the United States. Apart from his disciplined daily studio schedule in Denver, Kontny willingly trained a younger generation of professional artists, sharing with them his extensive knowledge of art history and the techniques of his facility in oil, watercolor, pastel and drawing. Among those benefitting from his instruction, counsel and assistance were Lorenzo Chavez, Tim Cisneros, Len Garon, Carol Katchen, Desmond O'Hagan, Leon Loughridge, George Tate...

"Demeter and Persephone", vintage 1960s original signed oil painting on canvas by 20th century Denver artist, Edward Marecek. Based on greek mythology, this mid century modern figural abstraction painting depicts the ancient greek goddess of the harvest, Demeter, and her daughter, Persephone. The two female figures are holding a bouquet of flowers. Rendered in a geometric, cubist, style in colors of brown, black, pink, purple, green, blue, orange, red, white, and green. Presented in the original/vintage frame, outer dimensions measure 34 ½ x 20 ¼ x 1 ½ inches. Image size is 17 ½ x 13 inches. Provenance: Estate of Edward Marecak About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett's Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation's leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world's most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak's studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson's specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High...

"Mystic Writing", ink and acrylic on paper by Denver artist Edward Marecak (1919-1993) of an abstract image with mystical symbols in blue/green rectangles and a border of brown squares. Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 22 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches. Image size Provenance: Estate of Edward Marecak About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf," awakening his interest in art. In his senior year in high school he did Cézanne-inspired watercolors of Ohio barns at seventy-five cents apiece for the National Youth Administration. They earned him a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art (1938-1942) where he studied with Henry George Keller whose work was included in the 1913 New York Armory Show. In 1940 Marecak also taught at the Museum School of the Cleveland Institute. Before being drafted into the military in 1942, he briefly attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, one of the nation’s leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design. A center of innovative work in architecture, art and design with an educational approach built on a mentorship model, it has been home to some of the world’s most renowned designers and artists, including Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind and Harry Bertoia. Marecak’s studies at Cranbrook with painter Zoltan Sepeshy and sculptor Carl Milles were interrupted by U.S. army service in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Following his military discharge, Marecak studied on the G.I. Bill at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center from 1946 to 1950, having previously met its director, Boardman Robinson, conducting a seminar in mural painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Although he did not work with Robinson at the Fine Arts Center, who had become quite ill - retiring in 1947 - he studied Robinson’s specialty of mural painting before leaving to briefly attend the Cranbrook Academy in 1947. That same year he returned to the Fine Arts Center, studying painting with Jean Charlot and Mary Chenoweth, and lithography with Lawrence Barrett with whom he produced some 132 images during 1948-49. At the Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Donna Fortin, whom he married in 1947. Also a Midwesterner, she had taken night art courses at Hull House in Chicago, later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago with the encouragement of artist Edgar Britton. After World War II she studied with him from 1946 to 1949 at the Fine Arts Center. (He had moved to Colorado Springs to treat his tuberculosis.) Ed Marecak also became good friends with Britton, later collaborating with him on the design of large stained glass windows for a local church. In 1950-51 Marecak returned to the Cleveland Institute of Art to complete his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. A year later he was invited to conduct a summer class at the University of Colorado in Boulder, confirming his interest in the teaching profession. In 1955 he received his teaching certificate from the University of Denver. Vance Kirkland, the head of its art department, helped him get a teaching job with the Denver Public Schools so that he and his family could remain in the Mile High City. For the next twenty-five years he taught art at Skinner, Grove, East, George Washington and Morey Junior High Schools. Prior to coming to Colorado, Marecak did watercolors resembling those of Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Charles Burchfield. However, once in Colorado Springs he decided to destroy much of his earlier ouevre, embarking on a totally new direction unlike anything he had previously done. Initially, in the 1940s he was influenced by surrealist imagery and Paul Klee, and in the West by Indian petroglyphs and Kachinas. His first one-person show at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs in 1949 featured paintings and lithographs rendered in the style of Magic Realism and referential abstraction. The pieces, including an oil Witch with Pink Dish, foreshadowed the output of his entire Colorado-based career, distinguished by a dramatic use of color, intricacy of execution and attention to detail contributing to their visual impact. He once observed, "Each time I start a new painting I always fool myself by saying this time keep it simple and not get entangled with such complex patterns, color and design; but I always find myself getting more involved with richness, color and subject matter." An idiosyncratic artist proficient in oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache and casein, he did not draw upon Colorado subject matter for his work, unlike many of his fellow painters in the state. Instead he used Midwest landscape imagery, bringing to life in it witches and spirits adapted from the Slovakian folk tales he heard growing up in Ohio. A number of his paintings depict winter witches derived from the Slovak custom in the Tatra Mountains of burning an effigy of the winter witch in the early spring to banish the memory of a hard winter. The folk tale element imparts a dream-like quality to many of his paintings. A devote of Greek mythology, he placed the figures of Circe, Persephone, Sybil, Hera and others in modern settings. The goddess in Persephone Brings a Pumpkin to her Mother, attired as a Midwestern farmer’s daughter, heralds the advent of fall with the pumpkin before departing to spend the winter season in the underworld. Train to Olympus, the meeting place of the gods in ancient Greece, juxtaposes ancient mythology with modernity creating a combination of whimsy and thought-provoking consideration for the viewer. Voyage to Troy #1 alludes to the ancient city that was the site of the Trojan Wars, but has a contemporary, autobiographical component referencing the harbor of the Aleutian Islands recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. In the 1980s Marecak used the goddess Hera in his painting, Hera Contemplates Aspects of the Art Nouveau, to comment on art movements in the latter half of the twentieth century Marecak’s love of classical music and opera, which he shared with his wife and to which he often listened while painting in his Denver basement studio, is reflected in Homage of Offenbach, an abstract work translating the composer’s musical colors into colorful palette. Pace, Pace, Mio Dio, the title of his earliest surrealist painting, is a soprano aria from Verdi’s opera, La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny or Fate, a favorite Marecak subject). His Queen of the Night relates to a character from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. In addition to paintings and works on paper, he produced hooked rugs, textiles and ceramics. He likewise produced designs for ceramics, tableware and furniture created by his wife Donna, an accomplished Colorado ceramist. Both of them generally eschewed exhibitions and galleries, preferring to quietly do their work while remaining outside of the mainstream. He initially exhibited at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 1948 receiving a purchase award. The following year he had his first one-person show of paintings and lithographs at the Garrett Gallery in Colorado Springs. In the 1950s and early 1960s he participated in group exhibitions at the Print Club (Philadelphia); Amarillo Public Library (Texas); annual Blossom Festival Show (Canon City, Colorado); Adele Simpson’s "Art of Living" in New York; Denver Art Museum; and the Fox Rubenstein-Serkey Gallery (Denver); but he did not have another one-person show until 1966 at the Denver home of his friends, John and Gerda Scott. They arranged for his first one-person show outside of Colorado held two years later at the Martin Lowitz Gallery in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, California. That same year his work was featured at the Zantman Galleries in Carmel, California. Thereafter he became an infrequent exhibitor after the 1970s so that his work was rarely seen outside his basement studio. In 1980 he, his wife and Mark Zamantakis...

'Girl on a Swing' vintage 1950s-1960s landscape painting by Mexican-American folk artist, Martin Saldana (1874-1965). This painting depicts a female figure on a swing with two other...

Vintage 1960s Mid century modern oil on canvas abstract expressionist painting by Walter Blakelock Wilson (1929-2011). Painted in rich jewel tones of Sapphire blue, emerald green, umber, gold, yellow, and brown juxtaposed with neutral shades of tan, creamy white, olive and beige. Signed and dated by the artist, "W.B. Wilson '62". Presented in a custom gold leaf frame; outer dimensions measure 45 ½ x 37 ½ inches. Canvas size is 43 ¼ x 35 ¼ inches. Colors included Orange, red, golden yellow, reddish brown, green, gray, beige, camel, teal blue and white. About the Artist: Walter Blakelock Wilson (1929-2011) was born in Auburn...

Hand of Ishmael by Tony Fitzpatrick (born 1958). An original aquatint etching with Chine-collé. Design elements include a hand with red nails and numerous tattoos, birds, celestial elements, eyes and thorns. Dominant colors include yellow, blue, black, red and white. Signed, titled and dated, lower margin in pencil by the artist. Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 29 ½ x 23 ½ x ¾ inches. Image size is 13 ¾ x 17 ¾ inches. About the Artist: Born in 1958, Tony Fitzpatrick lives in Chicago and is well known for his fine art prints, paintings and drawings. He has found inspiration from the street culture of Chicago, tattoo designs, folk art and places...

An original vintage 1950s-1960s oil painting titled "Harbor Masters House, Santa Cruz, California" by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987). Northern California landscape...

Set of three original abstract artworks by Denver modernist, Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). The abstract compositions were created in colors of blue, gray, red and white and were created ...

Original vintage 1960s landscape painting with deer grazing in a meadow in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming by Harold Skene (1883-1978). Golden As...

Little Bear is a traditional Landscape painting by Harold Skene (1883-1978). The mid 20th century painting depicts a brown or black bear crossing on a log...

Barns in Soquel, California, vintage circa 1950s original signed oil painting on canvas board by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987). Barn and outbuildings with large trees in a California la...

Original landscape painting, 'Old airfield in Capitola, California', vintage 1950s-1960s Northern California landscape painting with trees, white house with green roof, red tractor...

Vintage 1960s original California landscape painting of coastal Mendocino in Northern California, titled 'Mendocino Hippies'. A camp with tents under a grove of trees. Colors includ...

Original mid 20th century landscape painting of Northern California with a white farm house and barn by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987). Vintage painting circa 1950-1960s plein air style...

Composition #1, an original vintage 1990s abstract oil painting by Bonney Goldstein. Signed and dated 1995 by the artist, lower right. Late 20th century painting in colors of golden...

Semi-abstract figurative oil painting by Denver modernist Edward Marecak (1919-1993). Titled 'Zeus, Venus, and Hera', painted in 1982 . Cubist, stylized figures depicting gods and goddesses from ancient mythology. Central to the painting is a male figure depicting Zeus, the Greek god of the sky, shown in the nude in rich shades of brown with a beard and bright blue eyes. His arms are wrapped around Venus, the Roman goddess of love, and Hera, the Greek Goddess of marriage and women. The trio is seated on a blue green chair...

The Three Fates Confused, a vintage 1970s figural abstraction oil painting by Denver modernist, Edward Marecak (1919-1993). Semi-abstract composition depic...

Original large format abstract painting by 20th -21st century New Mexico woman artist, Suzanne VandeBoom. The artist is known for her Abstract compos...

Original large format abstract painting by 20th -21st century New Mexico woman artist, Suzanne VandeBoom. The artist is known for her Abstract compos...

Vintage midcentury modern large format oil painting on canvas from the 1960s by 20th century Colorado woman artist, Mary Chenoweth. A cheerful post-mod...

Abstract monotype painting by Colorado woman artist Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Abstract composition in deep jewel tones of green, orange, teal and purple on a black background. Monotype (numbered 1/1) printed on paper, signed by the artist lower right and upper left. Presented in a custom white frame with all archival materials. Provenance: Estate of the artist, Wilma Fiori About the Artist: Wilma Fiori (Wilma Denny) was born in Youngstown Ohio in 1929 and was raised in Great Bend, Kansas. She studied at Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado. Fiori graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in 1952. Two years later, she married Bob Fiori, a fellow student from Lorreto Heights. She remained active as an alumna for the College while raising four children. During this time, she developed an interest in anthropology and, in 1979, Wilma earned a Masters of Arts in Anthropology degree from the University of Denver. Fiori worked as a curatorial assistant to Richard Conn...

Collection of two 19th century Neoclassical black and white etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi housed in gold frames. Left: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Ornamental Frieze, 19th ce...

1940s modernist mountain landscape painting, near Gunnison, Colorado with a white farmhouse and out buldings and trees in a meadow/valley with mountains in the background. Painted in...

Colorado Modernist landscape, watercolor on paper by Turner B. Messick (1878-1952) from 1938. Tree with houses and mountains in the background, pain...

Winter Palace is an abstract acrylic and watercolor on paper painting by Edward Marecak (1919-1993) with pastel pinks, blues and greens. Presented in a new custom frame, outer dimensions measure 19 ¾ x 23 x 1 inches. Image size is 11 ⅝ x 14 ⅝ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of Edward Marecak Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Born to immigrant parents from the Carpathian region in Slovakia, Marecak grew up with his family in the farming community of Bennett’s Corners, now part of the town of Brunswick, near Cleveland, Ohio. When he turned twelve, his family moved to a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Slovenians in Cleveland. His childhood household cherished the customs and Slavic folk tales from the Old Country that later strongly influenced his work as a professional artist. During junior high he painted scenery for puppet shows of "Peter and the Wolf...

California coastal painting by early 20th century artist, Charles Partridge Adams circa 1925. Watercolor on paper, not signed, attributed ...

Monotype, ink on paper, featuring an abstract red and beige composition by Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials measuring 20 x 19 1⁄2 x 1 ...

Abstract monotype on paper featuring red, green, and blue rectangles on a gray background by Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials measurin...

Girl with Sheep and Car is a oil on board landscape painting depicting figures and animals in a Folk Art style painted in the mid-twentieth century by Martin Saldana (1874-1965). Presented in a custom frame measuring 29 3⁄4 x 33 1⁄2 x 1 inches; image size is 19 1⁄2 x 23 1⁄2 inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born Mexico 1874 Died 1965 Born in 1874, Saldaña grew up at Rancho Neuvo in Mexico. In 1950, at the age of 76, he began attending children's art classes at the Denver Art Museum. For the next fitfteen years, Saldaña Imaginatively documented whimsical memories from his childhood in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, portraying ranch life, landscapes, and his great love of animals. The prolific artist painted every day, completing a new piece about every three days and amassing an impressive body of work for the former cook at the Denver landmark, the Brown Palace Hotel. Saldaña’s vibrant palette and geometric figures are reminiscent of the tapestries of his Mexican heritage and the paintings, primarily in oil, are innocent and endearing. Saldaña is considered to be a outsider artist, a folk artist who is self-taught, whose work is simple, direct, and high personal. Works Held: Denver Art Museum, University of Wyoming Art Museum, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, International Folk Art Museum, Neuss In Aberthor Museum, Stedelijk Museum ©David Cook Galleries...

Vintage 1980s original abstract painting by Denver, Colorado artist, Mark Travis. Large format artwork painted with oil on masonite board. Abstract compos...

Abstract monotype in blue, brown and black on paper by Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Print is presented in a custom frame with all archival materials measuring 20 1⁄2 x 19 1⁄4 x 1 inches....

Oil on canvas modernist city scape painted circa 1950 by Paul K Smith (1893-1977) titled Central City, Colorado. Portrays a city scene of historic buildin...

Oil on board painted in 1958 by Harold Vincent Skene (1883-1978) titled 'Mountain Sunset'. Colorado mountain autumn landscape featuring changing leaves...

Oil on canvas painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1987-1968) titled 'View from the Park'. Presented in a custom frame measuring 28 ¾ x 32 ¾ inches; image size is 22 ½ x 26 inches. ...

"Tree in Ranchitos II" (New Mexico) is a lithograph initialed lower right by artist Andrew Michael Dasburg (1887-1979) from 1975. Presented in a custom frame measuring 30 ½ x 36 ¼ inches. Image size is 16 ½ x 23 ¼ inches. About the Artist: Born France, 1887 Died New Mexico, 1979 Andrew Dasburg was born in Paris, but emigrated to New York City in 1892 with his mother. A childhood sickness left him lame, and his artistic propensities were first recognized by a teacher at the crippled children’s school. She enrolled him in the Art Students League in 1902. There he studied under Kenyon Cox, Frank Vincent Dumond, and Birge Harrison. Later, he began taking night classes from Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. Dasburg spent 1908-1910 in Paris, where he was introduced to the great impressionist painters Matisse and Cezanne. Inspired by the work of the European modernists, Dasburg returned to the United States, where he moved to Woodstock, New York. In Woodstock, he and his wife, Grace Mott Johnson, lived with Morgan Russell...

Oil on board painting titled 'Seated Girl and Hummingbird' by artist Martin Saldana (1874-1965) depicting three figures standing next to a house surrounded by plants and birds. Signed by the artist in the lower center of the piece. Painted in vibrant shades of green, red, yellow, black, and gray. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born Mexico 1874 Died 1965 Born in 1874, Saldaña grew up at Rancho Neuvo in Mexico. In 1950, at the age of 76, he began attending children's art classes at the Denver Art Museum. For the next fitfteen years, Saldaña Imaginatively documented whimsical memories from his childhood in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, portraying ranch life, landscapes, and his great love of animals. The prolific artist painted every day, completing a new piece about every three days and amassing an impressive body of work for the former cook at the Denver landmark, the Brown Palace Hotel...

Untitled abstract oil on canvas painting by Henriette "Yetti" Stolz in colors of brown, red, and orange. Presented in a new custom hand carved wood frame measuring 31 ¼ x 36 ¼ inches. Image size measures 34 x 28 inches. Provenance: Estate of the artist...

"Convolution" is a lithograph on paper by Herbert Bayer (1900-1985) from 1948 of an abstract kinetic movement shape. Presented framed in all archival materials, outer dimensions measure 23 x 26 ¾ x 1 ¼ inches. Image sight size is 17 x 22 inches. Print is clean and in very good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: Herbert Bayer Born 1900, Haag am Hausruck, Ausstria Died 1985, Montecito, California Herbert Bayer enjoyed a versatile sixty-year career spanning Europe and America that included abstract and surrealist painting, sculpture, environmental art, industrial design, architecture, murals, graphic design, lithography, photography and tapestry. He was one of the few “total artists” of the twentieth century, producing works that “expressed the needs of an industrial age as well as mirroring the advanced tendencies of the avant-garde.” One of four children of a tax revenue officer growing up in a village in the Austrian Salzkammergut Lake region, Bayer developed a love of nature and a life-long attachment to the mountains. A devotee of the Vienna Secession and the Vienna Workshops (Wiener Werkstätte) whose style influenced Bauhaus craftsmen in the 1920s, his dream of studying at the Academy of Art in Vienna was dashed at age seventeen by his father’s premature death. In 1919 Bayer began an apprenticeship with architect and designer, Georg Schmidthamer, where he produced his first typographic works. Later that same year he moved to Darmstadt, Germany, to work at the Mathildenhöhe Artists’ Colony with architect Emanuel Josef Margold of the Viennese School. As his working apprentice, Bayer first learned about the design of packages – something entirely new at the time – as well as the design of interiors and graphics of a decorative expressionist style, all of which later figured in his professional career. While at Darmstadt, he came across Wassily Kandinsky’s book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and learned of the new art school, the Weimar Bauhaus, in which he enrolled in 1921. He initially attended Johannes Itten’s preliminary course, followed by Wassily Kandinsky’s workshop on mural painting. Bayer later recalled, “The early years at the Bauhaus in Weimar became the formative experience of my subsequent work.” Following graduation in 1925, he was appointed head of the newly-created workshop for print and advertising at the Dessau Bauhaus that also produced the school’s own print works. During this time he designed the “Universal” typeface emphasizing legibility by removing the ornaments from letterforms (serifs). Three years later he left the Bauhaus to focus more on his own artwork, moving to Berlin where he worked as a graphic designer in advertising and as an artistic director of the Dorland Studio advertising agency. (Forty years later he designed a vast traveling exhibition, catalog and poster -- 50 Jahre Bauhaus -- shown in Germany, South America, Japan, Canada and the United States.) In pre-World War II Berlin he also pursued the design of exhibitions, painting, photography and photomontage, and was art director of Vogue magazine in Paris. On account of his previous association with the Bauhaus, the German Nazis removed his paintings from German museums and included him among the artists in a large exhibition entitled Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) that toured German and Austrian museums in 1937. His inclusion in that exhibition and the worsening political conditions in Nazi Germany prompted him to travel to New York that year with Marcel Breuer, meeting with former Bauhaus colleagues, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy to explore the possibilities of employment after immigration to the United States. In 1938 Bayer permanently relocated to the United States, settling in New York where he had a long and distinguished career in practically every aspect of the graphic arts, working for drug companies, magazines, department stores, and industrial corporations. In 1938 he arranged the exhibition, “Bauhaus 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art, followed later by “Road to Victory” (1942, directed by Edward Steichen), “Airways to Peace” (1943) and “Art in Progress” (1944). Bayer’s designs for “Modern Art in Advertising” (1945), an exhibition of the Container Corporation of America (CAA) at the Art Institute of Chicago, earned him the support and friendship of Walter Paepcke, the corporation’s president and chairman of the board. Paepcke, whose embrace of modern currents and design changed the look of American advertising and industry, hired him to move to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946 as a design consultant transforming the moribund mountain town into a ski resort and a cultural center. Over the next twenty-eight years he became an influential catalyst in the community as a painter, graphic designer, architect and landscape designer, also serving as a design consultant for the Aspen Cultural Center. In the summer of 1949 Bayer promoted through poster design and other design work Paepcke’s Goethe Bicentennial Convocation attended by 2,000 visitors to Aspen and highlighted by the participation of Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Rubenstein, Jose Ortega y Gasset and Thornton Wilder. The celebration, held in a tent designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, led to the establishment that same year of the world-famous Aspen Music Festival and School regarded as one of the top classical music venues in the United States, and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in (now the Aspen Institute), promoting in Paepcke’s words “the cross fertilization of men’s minds.” In 1946 Bayer completed his first architecture design project in Aspen, the Sundeck Ski Restaurant, at an elevation of 11,300 feet on Ajax Mountain. Three years later he built his first studio on Red Mountain, followed by a home which he sold in 1953 to Robert O. Anderson, founder of the Atlantic Richfield Company who became very active in the Aspen Institute. Bayer later designed Anderson’s terrace home in Aspen (1962) and a private chapel for the Anderson family in Valley Hondo, New Mexico (1963). Transplanting German Bauhaus design to the Colorado Rockies, Bayer created along with associate architect, Fredric Benedict, a series of buildings for the modern Aspen Institute complex: Koch Seminar Building (1952), Aspen Meadows guest chalets and Center Building (both 1954), Health Center and Aspen Meadows Restaurant (Copper Kettle, both 1955). For the grounds of the Aspen Institute in 1955 Bayer executed the Marble Garden and conceived the Grass Mound, the first recorded “earthwork” environment In 1973-74 he completed Anderson Park for the Institute, a continuation of his fascination with environmental earth art. In 1961 he designed the Walter Paepcke Auditorium and Memorial Building, completing three years later his most ambitious and original design project – the Musical Festival Tent for the Music Associates of Aspen. (In 2000 the tent was replaced with a design by Harry Teague.) One of Bayer’s ambitious plans from the 1950s, unrealized due to Paepcke’s death in 1960, was an architectural village on the outskirts of the Aspen Institute, featuring seventeen of the world’s most notable architects – Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, Minoru Yamasaki, Edward Durrell Stone and Phillip Johnson – who accepted his offer to design and build houses. Concurrent with Bayer’s design and consultant work while based in Aspen for almost thirty years, he continued painting, printmaking, and mural work. Shortly after relocating to Colorado, he further developed his “Mountains and Convolutions” series begun in Vermont in 1944, exploring nature’s fury and repose. Seeing mountains as “simplified forms reduced to sculptural surface in motion,” he executed in 1948 a series of seven two-color lithographs (edition of 90) for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Colorado’s multi-planal typography similarly inspired Verdure, a large mural commissioned by Walter Gropius for the Harkness Commons Building at Harvard University (1950), and a large exterior sgraffito mural for the Koch Seminar Building at the Aspen Institute (1953). Having exhausted by that time the subject matter of “Mountains and Convulsions,” Bayer returned to geometric abstractions which he pursued over the next three decades. In 1954 he started the “Linear Structure” series containing a richly-colored balance format with bands of sticks of continuously modulated colors. That same year he did a small group of paintings, “Forces of Time,” expressionist abstractions exploring the temporal dimension of nature’s seasonal molting. He also debuted a “Moon and Structure” series in which constructed, architectural form served as the underpinning for the elaboration of color variations and transformations. Geometric abstraction likewise appeared his free-standing metal sculpture, Kaleidoscreen (1957), a large experimental project for ALCOA (Aluminum Corporation of America) installed as an outdoor space divider on the Aspen Meadows in the Aspen Institute complex. Composed of seven prefabricated, multi-colored and textured panels, they could be turned ninety degrees to intersect and form a continuous plane in which the panels recomposed like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He similarly used prefabricated elements for Articulated Wall, a very tall free-standing sculpture commissioned for the Olympic Games in Mexico...

Abstract oil on canvas painting by Vincent Pershing O'Brien (1919-1999) painted in 1962. Presented in a custom frame measuring 46 x 71 x 1 inches. Canvas size measures 43 1⁄4 x 68 in...

'Abandoned (Colorado)' is an oil painting by William Sanderson (1905-1990) depicting an abandoned house in green grass hills. Presented in a custom frame measuring 13 ¼ x 16 ½ inches; image size measures 8 ½ x 11 ¼ inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born Latvia 1905 Died Colorado 1990 The elder son of a construction engineer, he was born Wilhelm Tsiegelnitsky in a seaside resort near Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Grigori Mojesevich (later Anglicized to Gregory) was of Russian-Jewish heritage, while his mother Berta (Bertha) came from a German-Jewish background. Because preference in awarding construction contracts at that time were being given to members of the Russian Orthodox Church, his father had the whole family baptized in that church which he kept a secret from Sanderson’s grandparents. His father’s profession took the family to a number of cities in various parts of the Russian Empire including Warsaw, Kharkhov, Kiev, and Samarkand in Asia. To his mother’s annoyance, he scribbled on anything within easy reach, deciding by age ten that he would make art his lifetime goal. During the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 the family lived with relatives in Rostov-on-the-Don where his mother enrolled him in the local Chinyenov Art School, marking the first step in his art career. Feeling that they would have no place in the new Communist political reality, in 1921 the family left Rostov for Kiev, emigrating to Italy and Greece on short-term visas before arriving in New York two years later, sponsored by Gregory’s relatives in New Jersey. The Tsiegelnitsky surname was changed to the more pronounceable Siegel. Experiencing the frustration shared by most immigrants seeking to establish themselves in a new, unfamiliar environment, Sanderson sufficiently mastered English by 1924 to attend the Fawcett School of Industrial Art in Newark (later the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art) where he studied with Ida Wells Stroud, herself a student of William Merritt Chase and Arthur Dow and part of the early twentieth-century Arts & Crafts Movement. Seeking a more challenging curriculum, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan (1924-1927), studying painting with Charles Hawthorne, etching with William Auerbach-Levy, and life drawing with Charles L. Hinton. Sanderson won the Suydam Medal for Life Drawing, First Prize in Composition, and Honorable Mention in Etching. He also briefly attended the Art Students League in New York in 1928, studying lithography with Charles Locke who in 1936 taught a summer course in the medium at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. However, Sanderson quit the League when he could no longer afford the tuition. With his art studies behind him, he began a successful career in illustration in New York. Briefly associated with the Evening Graphic, he maintained a decade-long affiliation with the New Masses, honored to be in the company of such established artist-contributors as Jean Charlot, Stuart Davis, Adolf Dehn, Louis Lozowick, Reginald Marsh, Jan Matulka and Boardman Robinson – some of whom later were affiliated with the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in the 1930s and 1940s. As a young immigrant he came to share some of the popular views of the left-wing intellectual community in American in the 1920s and early 1930s; but in 1936 he severed his connections with the New Masses because he did not like the direction it had taken by that time. In 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, he began doing commercial book illustration in New York which he continued until being drafted during World War II. However, his steady income disqualified him from participation in the Works Progress Administration (WPA)-era art projects. A barometer of his success was his inclusion in the Fifth Exhibition of American Book Illustration in 1935 sponsored by American Institute of Graphic Arts whose jurors included Edith Halpert of The Downtown Gallery in New York. Among the book titles he illustrated were: Marian Hurd McNeeley, The Jumping Off Place; P.N. Krasnoff, Yermak the Conqueror; Joe Lederer, Fanfan in China; Fay Orr, Freighter Holiday; and The Cavalcade of America. His images of a covered wagon and a Daniel Boone prototype in the last-named publication anticipate subjects he later explored more fully in his easel painting in Colorado with likenesses such as The Woman of the Plains and Hombre. In the 1930s and early 1940s he also produced illustrations and covers for leading American magazines such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Cue, and Harper’s. In 1931 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in Manhattan and by 1936 began informally using Sanderson as his surname, making the change official in 1941. In 1937 he was given a solo show at the American Contemporary Art (A.C.A.) Gallery in New York. The following year he became art director at the McCue Ad Agency in New York where he worked until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Looking forward to the day when he could give up illustration for the fine arts, his career change was set in motion when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in March 1942. After basic training at Kessler Field near Biloxi, Mississippi (where the Tuskegee Airmen also trained) he shipped out at his own request to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, becoming part of the Army Air Corps and taking an instant liking to Colorado. At Lowry his humorous drawings of barracks life were published in the base newspaper, The Rev-Meter. In the summer of 1943 he had his first solo exhibition in Colorado at the Denver Art Museum-Chappell House that consisted of black-and-white drawings of army life. He also began painting watercolor scenes from memory of his previous life in the East. His two visits to Vance Kirkland’s studio in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, while stationed at Lowry, occasioned a lifelong friendship and professional association. On Sanderson’s excursion in 1943 to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center he met his future wife, Ruth Lambertson from Cedar Falls, Iowa, whom he married eight weeks later, initiating a union lasting forty-seven years. His fluency in Russian landed him an assignment as an interpreter with the American ground forces meeting up with the Soviet Army marching westward toward Berlin in the last months of World War II. His impressions and photos of the bombed-out city formed the basis of his montage, Berlin 1945, painted in Denver in 1947. Its palette and collage-like quality and that of some of his other paintings from this period reflect the influence of American modernist, Stuart Davis. Following his military discharge and some brief design work for the Kistler Stationery Company and the A.B. Hirschfeld Press in Denver, Sanderson swapped commercial art for academia in 1946 when Vance Kirkland hired him as Assistant Professor of Advertising Design at the University of Denver, which subject he taught until retiring in 1972. Along with Kirkland and other faculty artists, he became a charter member of the 15 Colorado Artists. Founded in 1948, the group comprised some of the state’s leading contemporary artists seeking to distance themselves from much of the traditional imagery then being produced and exhibited in Denver and elsewhere. Reflecting the viewpoint of his fellow charter members Sanderson said, "I’m very taken with the nature scenes in this region, but it’s not the function of the artist to paint them when there are photographers around." Paraphrasing Picasso, the leading representative of contemporary art at that time, he added: "The painting is the artist’s representation of what nature is not." The financial security and stability of his teaching position at the University of Denver (DU) gave him the freedom to develop his easel painting. He produced a large body of oils and watercolors in both stylized Realism and Surrealism depicting, respectively, Colorado-inspired subject matter and social criticism of modern life and industrial civilization. One of his first canvases, Steamship Ruth, titled in honor of his wife and incorporating elements remembered from the port of Rostov in Russia has large, precisely-arranged areas of flat color with crisp edges seen in many of his Colorado paintings in the 1950s and 1960s. Similarly, Mountain Rhythm employs a bright palette and undulating lines conveying his fascination with the overall composition of irregular mountain and cloud shapes. Trailer Park, near the foothills west of Denver, provided abundant material for a geometric form study, while Composition with Fried Eggs in the Denver Art Museum’s collection essentially is a semi-cubistic arrangement of interlocking planes and spaces that was reproduced in the August 25, 1952, issue of Time Magazine. His work was also shown in group exhibitions outside Colorado at the Dallas Fine Art Museum, Museum of New Mexico (now, New Mexico Museum of Art) in Santa Fe, Joslyn Memorial Museum in Omaha, San Francisco Art Association, Salt Lake City Art Center, and the Cedar City Art Museum Association in Utah. The positive notice accorded his work in the early 1950s earned him a commission from the Ford Motor Company to illustrate an article, Fort Garland, by Marshall Sprague in the June 1954 issue of Ford Times. (Similar commissions were also given at that time to Denver’s Vance Kirkland and Richard Sorby.) In the mid-1950s Sanderson also executed several murals in different techniques for secular and religious buildings in Colorado, reminiscent of artists’ commissions under the Federal Arts Projects (FAP) during the Depression era: the Graland School lobby and the Colorado Tobacco Building, both in Denver; St. Joseph’s School, Salida; Mesa Elementary School, Cortez; as well as the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Sanderson’s life in Europe and illustration work for the New Masses in New York made him very aware of ethnic and racial prejudice. He said, "I believe the artist is first of all a human being with the ability to see and depict the hope, aspirations and the despair of other human beings." In the 1950s he recorded the political movement for Black racial equality in paintings such as Noon Hour, Whites Only...

Oil on board painting by Donna Marecak (1922-1998) titled 'Artist and his Family' from 1950. Interior scene with four figures, a baby, and a cat gathere...

Oil on board painting by Martin Saldana (1874-1965) titled 'Farm and Figures'. Presented in a custom frame measuring 21 ½ x 26 ¼ inches; image size is 14 x 19 ⅛ inches. Titled by the artist verso. Dark green background with flowers, houses, and hills with two figures in the upper left corner holding hands. Painted with colors of orange, white, purple, and yellow. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born Mexico 1874 Died 1965 Born in 1874, Saldaña grew up at Rancho Neuvo in Mexico. In 1950, at the age of 76, he began attending children's art classes at the Denver Art Museum. For the next fitfteen years, Saldaña Imaginatively documented whimsical memories from his childhood in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, portraying ranch life, landscapes, and his great love of animals. The prolific artist painted every day, completing a new piece about every three days and amassing an impressive body of work for the former cook at the Denver landmark, the Brown Palace Hotel. Saldaña’s vibrant palette and geometric figures are reminiscent of the tapestries of his Mexican heritage and the paintings, primarily in oil, are innocent and endearing. Saldaña is considered to be a outsider artist, a folk artist who is self-taught, whose work is simple, direct, and high personal. Works Held: Denver Art Museum, University of Wyoming Art Museum, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, International Folk Art Museum, Neuss In Aberthor Museum, Stedelijk Museum ©David Cook Galleries...

'Gateside Conversation' is an original signed lithograph by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) from 1946. Singed by the artist in the lower right margin and titled verso. Portrays a figu...

Pink, orange, and red abstract watercolor on paper by Lynn R. Wolfe (1917-2019). Signed by the artist in the lower left corner. Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials measuring 27 ½ x 34 ¼; image size is 22 ¼ x 30 inches. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Lynn R. Wolfe Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born 1917 Red Cloud, Nebraska Died 2019 Boulder, Colorado A versatile artist proficient in painting, sculpture, stained glass and mosaics, Wolfe grew up on his family’s dairy farm near Red Cloud, Nebraska. For much of his early life he was known as Bob until officially adopting the first name of Lynn in 1939. When he was six months old he contracted the "Spanish flu" in the 1918 influenza pandemic that stunted his growth, making him the smallest student in class. To compensate for his small stature, his family engaged a Black boxer to give him boxing lessons so he could always defend himself against any bullies he encountered at school. Before he started grade school in Red Cloud, one of his grandfathers - a Latin scholar - taught him how to read. His early connection with sculpture occurred when as a youngster he looked for clay in the sandpits near his home to mould figures, including a likeness of his older brother. Similarly, his adult interest in archaeology developed from their search for arrowheads brought to the surface after rainstorms on the family farm. As a teenager he read The Temple Warriors in Chichen Itza, Yucatan, by Earl and Ann Morris with illustrations by Jean Charlot. After World War II Charlot taught fresco painting and worked with Lawrence Barrett on several editions of lithographs at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. In 1947 Wolfe served as Charlot’s chauffeur when he came up to lecture at the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU), and in appreciation received one of the artist’s etchings personally inscribed to him. Following graduation as valedictorian of his high school class, Wolfe enrolled in 1935 as an undergraduate on scholarship at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, earning his B.A. degree in fine art in 1940. He studied art with Frederick Dwight Kirsch (himself a student of fellow Nebraska native Robert Henri at the Art Students League in New York) who served as Chairman of the Art Department and Director of the University Art Galleries – now the Sheldon Museum - until 1950 when he became director of the Des Moines Art Center. In Nebraska Wolfe painted representational scenes of local buildings such as grain elevators in a landscape setting and small-town street scenes with automobiles. It took Wolfe five years to earn his undergraduate degree because he worked while going to school. In his final year he worked to pay the taxes on the family farm to avoid foreclosure during the Great Depression. While at the University, he prepared fossils and did low relief sculptures of prehistoric animals for the Nebraska State Museum located in Morrill Hall on campus. He also participated in Pleistocene fossil digs in Nebraska and Texas. One of his first jobs after graduation was supervising fossil preparation in Lincoln by twenty-nine workers employed in a Depression-era project sponsored by the federal government. In 1939 he met his future wife Arlene at a sock hop at the University of Nebraska. His first impression of her was a "stunning blond across the room" with whom he shared an interest in the arts and travel. During World War II when she was living and working in Omaha, he proposed to her from New Guinea where he was stationed in the South Pacific. He said that he would take her to Florida if she married him. He later took her and their family on a number of trips to most of Europe, and to Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, China, Japan and Fiji. During the last year of the war he taught photo intelligence in Orlando, Florida, while stationed at the local Air Force base. Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, he worked in the Engineer Corps doing color, texture and illusion. During the war he spent four years in the military, shipping out as a buck private and later advancing to the rank of captain. His classroom experience in Florida helped transition him at war’s end to the University of Nebraska where he taught art for two semesters to fellow intelligence officers studying there on the G.I. Bill. In the summer of 1946 he also was a visiting artist at the University of Alaska where he taught watercolor. In 1947 he relocated to CU in Boulder for his Master of Fine Arts degree on the G.I. Bill. As part of his application earning him a graduate fellowship, he included a photograph of his wife and himself in his captain’s uniform. He took painting and sculpture courses with Muriel Sibell Wolle...

Expressionist style self portrait of the artist, Cornelis Ruhtenberg (1923-2008), oil on board painted in 1949. Signed by the artist on verso. Interior scene of the artist painted in...

Oil on canvas painting by Ferdinand Kaufmann. Signed by the artist in the lower left corner. Mountain landscape painting, likely of Colorado or California in summer with a rushing...

Original abstract oil painting signed by Wilma Fiori (1929-2019) painted in 1994. Signed and dated by the artist on verso. Large format horizontal abstract...

Morning Near Arizona, (Desert Landscape) is an original color pencil drawing from 1888 by George Elbert Burr (1859-1939). Portrays a spring/summer landscape with a tree and fauna, cl...

Graphite on paper drawing of houses on a hill by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968) circa 1935. Presented in a custom hardwood frame with all archi...

Abstract expressionist oil painting on board from 1955 by Charles Bunnell. Abstract shapes in layers of sage green, light blue, brown, gold, and black. Presented in a custom frame, o...

Brightly colored semi-abstract oil painting titled 'Small Nude' signed by Martin Saldana (1874-1965). Presented in a custom frame measuring 28 ½ x 22 ½ inches; image size is 20 ½ x 17 3⁄4 inches. Portrays a single female form surrounded by birds and flowers. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born Mexico 1874 Died 1965 Born in 1874, Saldaña grew up at Rancho Neuvo in Mexico. In 1950, at the age of 76, he began attending children's art classes at the Denver Art Museum. For the next fitfteen years, Saldaña Imaginatively documented whimsical memories from his childhood in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, portraying ranch life, landscapes, and his great love of animals. The prolific artist painted every day, completing a new piece about every three days and amassing an impressive body of work for the former cook at the Denver landmark, the Brown Palace Hotel...

Oil on canvas painting, titled 'Early Spring' (Thompson's Studio) painted in 1933 and signed by John Edward Thompson (1882-1945). Impressionist style portrayal of the artists studio ...

Pastel on paper drawing by Sushe Felix (20th Century) portraying an American Modernist view of Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs. Presented in a custom frame with all archi...

Abstract yellow, green, blue and red oil on canvas painting titled 'Homage to Diebenkorn' signed by Wilma Fiori (1929-2019). Wrapped canvas with finished e...

Tempera on board painting titled 'The Carved Door' by Archie Musick, signed by the artist in the lower right corner. Depicts a semi-abstract landscape with flora and fauna. Presented...