David Cook Galleries

'Space' is an oil on board painting by Marjorie Chambers (1923-2006). Presented in a custom frame measuring 16 ½ x 22 ½ inches, image size is 15 ½ x 22 inches. Painting is in very g...

Set of two contemporary New Mexico landscape graphite drawings by Raye Leith (b. 1956). One is titled 'Full Moon over Snowy Glorieta Baldy, New Mexico and the other is Cloud Staircas...

Vintage acrylic on canvas painting by Suzanne VandeBoom. Abstract composition of warm shades of yellow, gold, blue, brown, and red. Presented in a custom frame measuring 59 ½ x 47 ½ ...

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...

Semi-abstract oil on canvas painting by Edward Marecak (1919-1993). Composition featuring a brightly colored portrait of a woman holding flowers. Presented in an original frame measu...

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). Pre...

'Adobes' is an oil on canvas semi-abstract painting by Ardis S. Sturdy (1918-2003) from 1965. Abstracted southwestern landscape painted in vibrant hues of red, green, blue, yellow, a...

Blue, purple, yellow, and orange abstract oil on masonite painting signed by Mark Travis (1852-2007) painted in 1989. Presented in a custom vintage frame m...

'Arizona' is an oil on canvas painting by Kenneth Warnock Evett (1913-2005) circa 1955. Abstract composition inspired by the American Southwest, painted in shades of pink, lilac, ora...

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...

Circus Series: Target is an abstract crayon on paper drawing by Margo Hoff (1910-2008) created in 1980. Abstract composition in vibrant shades of orange, pink, yellow, and blue with ...

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. ...

Oil on Masonite landscape painting by Ruth Wahl (1925-2014) from mid 20th century, depicting an old, abandoned building in the mountains. Presented in a custom hand carved frame with...

"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...

Oil on board painting by Martin Saldana (1874-1965) titled 'Chicken Farm'. Presented in a custom frame with archival materials measuring 30 ¾ x 25 ¾ inches; image size is 23 ½ x 18 ½...

Oil on canvas painting by Anna Elizabeth Keener (1895-1982) titled 'Chalk Butte (Montana)' painted circa 1916. Signed lower left, titled verso by the artist. Presented in a custom fr...

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...

'Study #5' is charcoal and watercolor on paper by Dale Chisman (1943-2008). Signed by the artist in the lower right margin. Abstract composition of red, pink, green, black, brown, an...

Kansas landscape oil on canvas painting by Robert N. Sudlow (1920-2010) titled 'Pioneer Bluffs in Spring' painted in 1986. Presented in original frame measuring 50 1⁄4 x 46 1⁄2 x 5 1...

Set of two graphite and casein on paper titled 'Silver Linings' and 'Monsoon Abstraction (New Mexico)' by Raye Leith (b. 1956) from June 2021 depicting New Mexico landscapes. Present...

Mid-20th century abstract blue and white serigraph on paper by Margo Hoff (1910-2008). Presented in a custom oak frame with all archival materials and UV/non-reflective glass, outer ...

White and multicolor abstract oil on canvas painting by Clarence Van Duzer (1920-2009). Signed by the artist in the lower left corner. Presented in a custom frame measuring 26 ¼ x 30...

Vintage Modernist WPA era painting by Arnold Blanch (1896-1968) of a Colorado Landscape, likely near Colorado Springs, Colorado, with green fields, red rocks and mountains in the bac...

"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...

Oil on paper, adhered to board abstract painting in orange, red, white, black, and gold, painted in 1963 by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897-1968). Signed and dated by the artist in the lower right corner. Presented in a custom vintage frame, outer dimensions measure 22 ½ x 26 ½ x 1 ½ inches. Image size is 16 ¼ x 20 ¼ inches. Painting is in good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Estate of the artist, Charles Ragland Bunnell About the Artist: Born 1897 Died 1968 Charles Bunnell developed a love for art at a very young age. As a child in Kansas City, Missouri, he spent much of his time drawing. When he was unable to find paper he drew on walls and in the margins of textbooks for which he was often fined. Around 1915, Bunnell moved with his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served in World War I and later used his GI Training to study at the Broadmoor Art Academy (later renamed the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center) during 1922 and 1923. In 1922, he married fellow student, Laura Palmer. He studied with Ernest Lawson in 1927-1928 and, in the winter of 1928-1929, he served as Lawson’s assistant. In the late 1920’s, the Bunnell’s settled just west of Colorado Springs and 1928, they welcomed the first of their three children. Their one-acre homesite, which they referred to as “Old Home Place”, was situated between two sets of railroad tracks at the foot of Pike’s Peak. Charlie converted an old railroad boxcar into his studio, where he later gave lessons. Beginning in 1931, Bunnell spent a year and a half studying under Boardman Robinson. The two men clashed constantly due to a generation gap and markedly different philosophies. Robinson encouraged his students not to stray from realism and though Bunnell mastered Robinson’s preferred style of American Scene painting, he regularly irritated his professor with his abstract sketches. Bunnell taught at the Kansas City Art Institute during the summers of 1929, 1930, 1940, and 1941. Between 1934 and 1941, he painted and taught under federal projects which included assisting Frank Mechau on murals for the Colorado Springs Post Office. However, he did not take to mural making and, after criticism from Boardman Robinson about his use of “heavy daubs which have no place in mural work,” he abandoned mural-making altogether. By the late 1930’s, Bunnell’s work departed from the American Scene/Modernist style he was trained in towards abstraction. This is marked by his “Black and Blue” series, consisting of 83 abstracted ink and watercolors. Affected by the Second World War and the loss of his 10-year old son, Bunnell’s work of the early 1940’s took on a Transcendental and Surrealist tone. The works from this period are moody and readily reflect the political and personal turmoil experienced by the artist. In the late 1940’s, Bunnell began experimenting with Abstract Expressionism. He alone is credited with introducing Colorado Springs to the new style as it was excluded from the Fine Art Center’s curriculum by Boardman Robinson. Bunnell excelled in Abstract Expressionism and continued to evolve in the style through the 1950’s continuing to his death in 1968. He was recently recognized as a premier American Abstract Expressionist by his inclusion in the book American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950’s: An Illustrated Survey. Solo Exhibits: Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri, 1930; Santa Fe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1947; University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 1948; University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 1949; Taos Gallery, Taos, New Mexico, 1951; Carl Barnett Galleries, Dallas, Texas, 1952; The Bodley Gallery, New York, 1955; Amarillo, Texas, 1955; Haigh Gallery, Denver, Colorado, 1955; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1956; Dord Fitz Art Gallery, Amarillo, Texas, December 1956 – February 1957, 1959, 1969 (retrospective). Group Exhibits: Carnegie Institute, 1927-1928; Colorado State Fair, 1928 (1st prize); Artists Midwestern, Kansas City, Missouri, 1929 (Gold Medal); Art Institute of Chicago, 1947 (the exhibit traveled to ten major museums in the United States); “Artists West of the Mississippi”, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado (7 times); Denver Art Museum Western Annual, Denver, Colorado (5 times); Mid-America Annual, Kansas City, Missouri, 1958; First Provincetown Festival, 1958; Southwestern Annual, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Winter 1957-1958; Central City, Colorado; Cañon City...

Original signed abstract by mid-20th century Chicago artist Margo Hoff (1910-2008) titled 'Carnival Series: Zig Zag' painted in 1979. Presented in a vintage frame, outer dimensions m...

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 titled 'Little Ranch, Colorado' by Earnest Lawson (1873-1939) circa 1925-1930. Colorado mountain landscape scene with three structu...

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 gathered around a table. Painted in ...

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...

Oil on canvas painting by Robert N. Sudlow (1920-2010) from 1986 titled 'Foggy Mill Creek (Kansas)'. Signed and dated by the artist in the right left corner. Depicting a rainy day vi...

'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...

Oil on canvas abstract painting titled 'Out of the Deep' by Watson Bidwell (1904-1964) from 1959. Presented in a custom frame measuring 51 ½ x 37 ½ inch...

Circa 1955 abstract charcoal drawing on paper signed by artist Ludwig R. Sander (1906-1975). Presented in a custom frame measuring 32 x 42 x 1 1⁄4 inches. Original drawing measures 21 x 31 1⁄2 inches. Drawing is in very good condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. About the Artist: Born 1906 Staten Island, New York – Died 1975 New York City The son of a musician, Ludwig Sander was exposed to art as a youngster through visits to the Metropolitan Museum and reproductions of Art Nouveau and the Jugendstil in the Manchester Guardian and in German magazines to which his parents subscribed. Having studied architecture and architectural drawing in high school, he entered New York University in 1924, but left two years later to become a painter. In 1927 he took a four-month trip to Europe, returning to New York for independent study with Alexander Archipenko before entering the Art Students League in 1928 where he studied until 1930 with George Elmer Brown...

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 material...

Oil on canvas painting titled 'Snowview of Baldwin (Kansas)' painted in 1989 by Robert N. Sudlow (1920-2010) from 1989. Snowy landscape scene painted in shades of gray, brown, white,...

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...

WPA era oil on canvas landscape painting by Hayes Lyon (1901-1987) titled 'The Hillside' from 1938. American modernist portrayal of a hillside farm with a b...

Oil on canvas painting by Ferdinand Kaufmann. Signed by the artist in the lower left corner. Colorado landscape scene of a rushing river throughout a canyon surrounded by trees and a...

Springtime mountain landscape watercolor on paper painting by Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942) painted in 1898. Colorado landscape sce...

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...

Watercolor on paper landscape painting titled 'Ouray, Colorado (Ghost Town) by Adolf Arthur Dehn (1895-1968) from 1941. Presented in a custom frame with all archival materials, outer...

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 archival materials and UV protectant gl...

Abstract oil and pastel on canvas titled 'Rainbow River' painted in 1979 by artist Margo Hoff (1910-2008). Vertical large scale work with rainbow colored stripes across the canvas. W...

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...

Abstract acrylic and crayon on canvas, in blue, red, pink and black painted and signed by Margo Hoff (1910-2008). Wrapped canvas is ready for hanging, dimensions measure 30 x 45 inch...

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 ...

Set of two graphite and casein on paper titled 'Abiquiu Cottonwoods II (New Mexico) and 'Storm Light, NM' by contemporary artist Raye Leith (b. 1956) from 2...

Abstract acrylic and fabric collage on canvas in purple, red, green, brown and black, signed by Margo Hoff (1910-2008) painted 1974. Unframed, wrapped canvas measuring 54 x 60 x 3⁄4 ...

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...

Two graphite and casein on paper, contemporary abstract landscape drawings titled 'Diablo Canyon (New Mexico)' and 'Turbulent Landforms II (New Mexico)' by Raye Leith...

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...