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Period: Mid-20th Century
Circus Acrobats - ( Friends with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo )
Located in Miami, FL
As they take center stage, four acrobats are depicted, forming an architectural structure composed of contorted human bodies. The small gallery of onlookers displays a variety of ex...
Category

1930s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Sexy French Cabaret Dancers - Folies Bergere Pulp Paperback Book Cover
Located in Miami, FL
Campy and sexy illustration of two French chorus girls for the mid-century Avon paperback Les Girls. Story of the Folies Bergere Unsigned and unframed. George Ziel...
Category

1950s Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Oil, Board

Glamour Fashion Portrait of Model Sara Thom - Mid Century
By Richard Stone
Located in Miami, FL
Dick Stone was a top mid-century illustrator who worked for the most famous brands. He was an assignment artist hired by such esteemed Ad Agencies as BBDO ...
Category

1950s Modern Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Casein, Board, Pen

Lone Horse in Abstract Landscape
By Ethel Magafan
Located in Miami, FL
A stylized horse is depicted grazing in an abstract landscape. Most likely, the location is Woodstock, New York, where the artist lived. Signed Lower Right; Framed; Note: titled and signed on verso. Ethel Magafan (August 10, 1916 – April 24, 1993) was an American painter and muralist. Magafan was born in Chicago to Greek parents who had recently immigrated to the U.S. The family soon relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Magafan's artistic training occurred at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center under the tutelage of Peppino Mangravite, Boardman Robinson and Frank Mechau, who hired Magafan and her twin sister, Jenne, to assist on mural projects. In 1937, aEthel won the commission to paint a mural in the U.S. post office in Auburn, Nebraska, making her the youngest recipient of such a commission. It would be the first of seven government-sponsored commissions for the artist. Murals "Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1814" E. Magafan, 1943 Under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, several programs were created to employ Americans during the Great Depression. The Magafan twins worked under the New Deal's Section of Painting and Sculpture, a program that hired thousands of artists to paint murals in public spaces, particularly post offices. Ethel and her twin sister, Jenne Magafan, became widely known for their murals painted during the Great Depression. Ethel received her first of seven Government commissions when she was commissioned to produce a painting for the United States post office in Auburn, Nebraska, titled Threshing.Other murals commissioned by the US Government hang in the United States Senate Chamber, the Social Security Building and the Recorder Deeds Building in Washington, D.C., and in post offices in Wynne, Arkansas, titled Cotton Pickers in 1940; in Madill, Oklahoma, titled Prairie Fire in 1941; and Englewood, Colorado, titled The Horse Corral in 1942.Her final mural, entitled Grant in the Wilderness, was installed in 1979 in the Chancellorsville Visitor Center at the Fredericksburg National Memorial Military Park in Virginia, She was a member of the National Academy of Design. Magafan died April 24, 1993, in Woodstock, New York, at the age of 76. References "Collections National Academy Museum". Retrieved 2017-03-08. "Jenne Magafan". Retrieved 2017-03-08. Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. "Browse New Deal projects by State and City". Living New Deal. Retrieved 9 January 2015. "Ethel Magafan Passes Away". New York Times. No. Obituary. April 29, 1993. Opitz, Glenn B, Editor, Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book...
Category

1960s Contemporary Animal Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Tempera

High Drama Adventure Scene - Italian Illustrator Mid-Century Jules Verne
Located in Miami, FL
Original illustration was done by Renna for the novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne, published in 1963. What makes this work special is how brilliantly the subj...
Category

1960s Surrealist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Tempera, Illustration Board

Street Life New York - Haunting Faces Windows Expressionism Mid-Century
By Lawrence Kupferman
Located in Miami, FL
Mid-century artist Lawrence Kupferman paints a madly eerie New York street scene. An exaggerated upward view of two 19th-century walk-ups is split by a forced perspective of a downwa...
Category

1940s Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor, Pen

Gnarled Tree - African American Artist
By Charles Alston
Located in Miami, FL
Executed in 1930, this abstract yet representational biomorphic charcoal work by African American Artist Charles Henry Alston prefigures his ...
Category

1930s American Realist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Thought Provoking Rock Quarry - Mid Century Abstract
Located in Miami, FL
This meticulously planned, designed, and executed work depicts an ultra-wide angle view of a rock quarry/mine. The viewer looks down at close-up-stylized rock formations and then out at a horizon line with rust-colored mine trestles. Atherton hints at perspective with a broken white line that is wider in the foreground and tapers to a hairline as it recedes to the background. The work was done in 1951 at the height of America's most important art movement: Abstract Expressionism. John Atherton absorbs its influences but retains elements of representation. Atherton was an in-demand commercial artist who worked for most blue-chip clients. It is possible that this was an editorial assignment for Fortune Magazine. At the same time, Atherton was also a fine artist and the work could be an expression of pure creative pursuits. The work looks better in person and one can look at it for hours and not get bored. Look carefully and you may discover a deeper meaning in this painting of precisely arranged rocks. Signed lower right. Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, sold to benefit the acquisitions program ____________________ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia John Carlton Atherton (January 7, 1900 - September 16, 1952) was an American painter and magazine illustrator, writer and designer. His works form part of numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art,[1] Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.[2][3][4] Early Years He was the son of James Chester Atherton (1868-1928) and Carrie B. Martin (1871-1909). He was born in Brainerd, Minnesota.[5] His father was Canadian born. His parents relocated from Minnesota to Washington State, with his maternal grandparents whilst he was still an infant. He attended high school in Spokane, Washington. Career During his early years he never displayed an aptitude for art; rather, his first love being nature and the activities he relished there, mainly fishing and hunting. He enlisted in 1917, serving briefly in the U.S. Navy for a year during World War I. At the end of the war, determined to get an education he worked various part-time jobs, as a sign painter and playing a banjo in a dance band to pay his enrolment fee at the College of the Pacific and The California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Once there, he also worked in the surrounding studios developing his oil painting techniques. A first prize award of $500 at the annual exhibition of the Bohemian Club in 1929, financed his one way trip to New York City, which helped to launch his career as an artist.[6] Atherton had aspired to be a fine artist, however his first paid jobs were for commercial art firms designing advertisements for corporations such as General Motors, Shell Oil, Container Corporation of America, and Dole. However, by 1936, encouraged primarily by friends, such as Alexander Brook, an acclaimed New York realist painter, he returned to the fine arts. Atherton continued to accept numerous commissions for magazine illustrations; such as Fortune magazine, and over the years he would paint more than forty covers for The Saturday Evening Post starting with his December 1942 design, “Patient Dog.” This picture is reminiscent of his friend Norman Rockwell ‘Americana style’ and captures a poignant moment of nostalgia, where a loyal dog looks toward a wall of hunting equipment and a framed picture of his owner in military uniform. Selected One person Exhibitions Atherton accomplished his first one-man show in Manhattan in 1936. His Painting, “The Black Horse” won the $3000 fourth prize from among a pool of 14,000 entries. This painting forms part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection in New York.[7] Atherton achieved recognition in New York City and elsewhere during the 1930s. Having exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York,[8] his paintings began to be collected by museums; including the Museum of Modern Art[9] and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His reputation increased with his art deco stone lithograph poster for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1941, his design won first place in the Museum of Modern Arts “National Defense Poster Competition”. Selected Public Collections Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, Vermont Albright-Knox Art Gallery,[10] Buffalo, NY Art Institute of Chicago,[11] Chicago Wadsworth Atheneum,[12] Hartford, CT Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art,[13] New York Whitney Museum of American Art,[14] New York Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[15] Philadelphia De Young Museum,[16] San Francisco Smithsonian American Art Museum,[17] Washington DC Butler Institute of American Art[18] Youngstown, OH The Famous Artists School Founded in 1948 in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A. The idea was conceived by members of the New York Society of Illustrators (SOI), but due to the Society's legal status, could not be operated by it. SOI member Albert Dorne led the initiative to set up a separate entity, and recruited the support of Norman Rockwell, who was also an SOI member. For the founding faculty, Dorne recruited Atherton, as well as accomplished artists such as Austin Briggs, Stevan Dohanos, Robert Fawcett, Peter Helck, Fred Ludekens, Al Parker, Norman Rockwell, Ben Stahl, Harold von Schmidt and Jon Whitcomb.[19] He collaborated with Jon Whitcomb with the book “How I Make a Picture: Lesson 1-9, Parts 1”.[20][21] Society of Illustrators Atherton as an active member from his arrival in New York. The society have owned many of his works. Ex-collection includes: Rocking Horse (ca. 1949) [22] Atherton, as his peers had many of his works framed by Henry Heydenryk Jr.[23] Personal On November 2, 1926, he married Polly “Maxine” Breese (1903-1997).[24][25] They had one daughter, Mary Atherton, born in 1932. Atherton's often chose industrial landscapes, however found himself spending considerable time in Westport, Connecticut, with an active artistic community, and it became home for him, and his family. He then moved to Arlington, Vermont.[26] Norman Rockwell enlisted Atherton in what was to be the only collaborative painting in his career.[27] He was part of a group of artists including a Norman Rockwell, Mead Schaeffer and George Hughes who established residences in Arlington.[28] Atherton and Mead Schaeffer were avid fly fishermen and they carefully chose the location for the group,[29] conveniently located near the legendary Battenkill River. In his free time, Atherton continued to enjoy fly-fishing.[30] He brought his artistic talent into the field of fishing,[31] when he wrote and illustrated the fishing classic, “The Fly and The Fish”.[32] He died in New Brunswick, Canada in 1952,[33] at the age of 52 in a drowning accident while fly-fishing.[34] Legacy The Western Connecticut State University holds an extensive archive on this artist.[35] His wife, Maxine also published a memoir “The Fly Fisher and the River” [36] She married Watson Wyckoff in 1960. Ancestry He is a direct descendant of James Atherton,[37][38] one of the First Settlers of New England; who arrived in Dorchester, Massachusetts in the 1630s. His direct ancestor, Benjamin Atherton was from Colonial Massachusetts...
Category

1950s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Gouache, Board

Journey to the Center of the Earth Illustration
Located in Miami, FL
20th Century Italian Illustrator Gianna Renna depicts a emotionally-charged scene of three men on a raft descending into a fiery abyss. His conception and execution of Jules Verne's ...
Category

1960s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Tempera

Art Deco Prancing Horse with Female Nude
By Boris Lovet-Lorski
Located in Miami, FL
Famed Art Deco Sculptor Boris Lovet-Lorski depicts his signature "Stallion." in this stunningly elegant drawing. It features a nude female that is c...
Category

1930s Art Deco Animal Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Crayon, Paper

Don Quixote - Nobleman on Horse with Sheep - Action Painting
Located in Miami, FL
Italian illustrator Gianni Benvenuti depicts a dramatic scene from the epic Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. With unrivaled skill, Benvenuti captures a peak moment of drama when...
Category

1960s Abstract Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Tempera, Pencil

Pulp Magazine Marine Combat Scene Shoot Out in Blue Noir
Located in Miami, FL
What makes this work important? It's not that it's a commissioned artwork for a men's 60s pulp adventure magazine depicting the instant a soldier is shot. The big point of the painting is how brilliantly the formal elements are thought out, designed, and executed. John McDermott tells a story using a complex figural composition in an unexpected wide-angle vision. The work is as abstract as it is representation. His use of light is significant because it creates a high-contrast two-color style that bears the mark of its creator. This is a work done by a master artist/illustrator without peers compared to artists living today. If the contemporary art world gave awards for draftsmanship, painting technique, and graphic design .... John McDermott would win the highest accolades. Initialed lower left - unframed John McDermott (August 30, 1919 – April 20, 1977), also known under the pen names J.M. Ryan and Mariner, was an American illustrator and author noted for action and adventure illustrations.[1] McDermott worked as an in-between and effects animator for Walt Disney Studios and as a US Marine combat artist,before establishing himself as a cover illustrator for 1950s paperbacks and pulp magazines such as Argosy, American Weekly, and Outdoor Life. Under his J.M. Ryan pen name, he wrote the novels The Rat Factory (1971), a derogatory satire of Walt Disney and the Disney studio; Brooks Wilson Ltd (1967), on which the 1970 film Loving was based; and Mother's Day (1969) about Ma Barker. Under his own name, he novelized director-writer Bo Widerberg's screenplay for the 1971 film Joe Hill, which would be his final published book. Early life John Richard McDermott was born 30 August 1919 in Pueblo, Colorado, the younger of two sons of Henry McDermott, an oil broker. McDermott was a young child when his father committed suicide.[4] The family eventually moved to Los Angeles where McDermott's mother, Hazel, worked in a beauty parlor. He graduated from Hollywood High School in 1936. Although he had had no formal art education, he took a job as an artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Career Disney At Disney, McDermott worked as an in-betweener and effects animator on Brave Little Tailor, Pinocchio, The Reluctant Dragon and Fantasia. His experiences while working at Disney, particularly during the time of the 1941 Disney animators' strike, would later become the basis for his 1969 satirical novel The Rat Factory. McDermott left Disney to fight with US forces during World War II. US Marines McDermott World War II sketch titled "Buddy is Wounded" On September 29, 1942, McDermott enlisted with the US Marine Corps. He served as a "pistol and palette" combat artist assigned to the map-making section. As a sergeant with the III Amphibious Corps, McDermott was involved in battles in the South Pacific theater of war, documenting the Guam, Okinawa and the Guadalcanal Campaigns. McDermott considered his wartime years to be his art education. "In the Marines, as a combat artist, I traveled with the troops and for three years got all the drawing opportunity anyone could want. My work changed enormously during this time and I’m sure it was due to constant drawing, every single day, from life, just putting down what I saw around me. In a few instances it was a dangerous kind of scholarship." According to the Marine Corps history journal Fortitudine, McDermott was so prolific that his contemporary style pen-and-ink sketches became easily recognizable to both Marines, from published work in Leatherneck Magazine, and civilians, from glossy copies supplied by the Marine Corps to the nation's press.His wartime art appears in World War II history books and is displayed at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Illustration Following the end of World War II, McDermott moved from California to New York City to work as a freelance illustrator. McDermott made his reputation drawing modern action, war and adventure scenes. His work adorned the covers and inside story pages of popular pulp magazines of the 1950s such as Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book, Outdoor Life and American Weekly. McDermott's illustrations appeared on numerous covers of 1950s paperback novels published by Dell, Fawcett Gold Medal, Bantam Mystery and others. His action graphics were geared toward thriller and detective genres, such as Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm books Murderers' Row and The Betrayers. He also created covers for science fiction comic titles such as Voyage to the Deep[citation needed] and horror-themed paperbacks such as the classic 1955 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers...
Category

1960s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Illustration Board

Voodoo Devils Take the Sick - The Fight of Good vs Evil - Vodou
By Wilson Bigaud
Located in Miami, FL
Devils depicted. Artist Wilson Bigaud paints a graphic narrative of mid-century life in Haiti without modern medicine. A man is dying yet there is no doctor present. In the struggle...
Category

1950s Outsider Art Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Marché Cluny - Market at Cap-Haitien - Haitian Street Art
Located in Miami, FL
A bustling street scene of everyday life in front of the famed Marché in Cap-Haïtien is rendered in Sénèque This is a relatively early work by Obin's signature brightly colored and flat naive style. Signed lower right. Provenance: Galerie Issa - Port-Au-Prince, Haiti - Owned by Issa El Saieh of later named El Saieh Gallery Sénèque Obin...
Category

1950s Outsider Art Landscape Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Nonconformist Removed by the State. Satyr / Pan Mythology
Located in Miami, FL
This cartoon by Charles Addams is generations ahead of its time. To get the punch line, the viewer must know the meaning of a Satyr or Pan. Satyr: Part man and part beast. - A male ...
Category

1950s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor

Figures Running - Early Abstract Expressionism like Willem de Kooning
By Salvatore Grippi
Located in Miami, FL
Salvatore Grippi was my art professor at Ithaca college from 1970- 1971 Who was doing paintings like this in 1950? Jackson Pollack, Willem De Kooning and Salvatore Grippi, and a few...
Category

1950s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Early Street Art - New York Urban Factory Scene - Mid Century - Factory X
By Dong Kingman
Located in Miami, FL
This early work from 1955 by Dong Kingman N.A. is as surreal as it is a document of a place. The artist effectively captures a slice of American urban life but constructs the compo...
Category

1950s Surrealist Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Rag Paper

Princess and Prince, Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina Fairy Tales
Located in Miami, FL
Italian illustrator Gianni Benvenuti paints a charming fantasy scene. It's of an extreme closeup of a tiny crowned and winged Prince and Princess They are standing upright in a dand...
Category

1950s Surrealist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Street Costumes, Gay Nineties Fashion - Female Illustrator
Located in Miami, FL
Street Costumes by Ruth Kreps. Signed lower right. Most likely for a book published in the 1930's about turn of the century women's fashion. "Costume Design of the Gay Nineties" T...
Category

1930s Academic Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor, Board

Pre-War Abstraction - Modernism - Tan Bronze Tope - Nonrepresentational
By Elsie Driggs
Located in Miami, FL
Pioneering female abstract artist Elsie Driggs paints stylized abstract organic forms in a warm palette of orange browns and tope. She merges abstraction with some figuration. A structured face composed of lines and tone emerges from an orange background. It's 1939, and even though Driggs is not well known, she is preceding many of the marquee names of abstraction by a decade. Although under the radar, this is a major work and is titled on the back stretcher is " Egyptian Gothic." It features the artist's inventiveness with her fine pencil lines incorporated in flat washes of color and collage elements. Signed lower right and inscribed on frame verso with title, artist and the date of 1939. Provenance, Christie's, Freemans. Framed under glass.. Elsie Driggs (1898 – July 12, 1992 in New York City) was an American painter known for her contributions to Precisionism, America's one indigenous modern-art movement before Abstract Expressionism, and for her later floral and figurative watercolors, pastels, and oils. She was the only female participant in the Precisionist movement, which in the 1920s and 1930s took a Cubist-inspired approach to painting the skyscrapers and factories that had come to define the new American landscape. Her works are in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Houston Museum of the Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. She was married to the American abstract artist Lee Gatch. Career Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Driggs grew up in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City, in a family that was supportive of her artistic interests. After a summer spent painting with her sister in New Mexico in her late teens, she felt she had found her life's calling. At twenty, she enrolled in classes at the Art Students League of New York, where she studied under George Luks and Maurice Sterne, both of whom were charismatic, inspirational figures in her early life. She also attended the evening criticism classes held at the home of painter John Sloan. Driggs spent fourteen months in Europe from late 1922 to early 1924, drawing and studying Italian art. There she met Leo Stein, first in Paris and later in Florence, who became an important intellectual influence, and who urged her to study Cézanne. He also introduced her to the works of Piero della Francesca, the Renaissance artist for whom she felt throughout her life the greatest admiration.[1] Driggs eventually settled in New York City, where she found representation with the progressive Charles Daniel Gallery.[2] (Advised that the old-fashioned and misogynistic Daniel would be unlikely to take on a woman artist, she signed the works she left for his consideration simply "Driggs" and waited to meet him in person until he had expressed his eagerness to include her in his gallery.)[3] In sympathy with those artists Daniel represented who were part of the burgeoning Precisionist movement, such as Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, George Ault, Niles Spencer, and Preston Dickinson, she too painted "the modern landscape of factories, bridges, and skyscrapers with geometric precision and almost abstract spareness."Impressionism and academic or Ashcan realism represented the past, in Driggs' view, and she intended to be resolutely modern. She was an attractive and engaging woman, but her demeanor belied a strong ambition and a clear sense of what it would take to make her mark in the New York art world. Driggs was part of the pre-eminent first group of Precisionist painters, including Demuth and Sheeler, who exhibited at the Daniel Gallery in the 1920s. Although a later group of Precisionist painters, including Louis Lozowick, Ralston Crawford and others, came on the American Art scene during the 1930s, Driggs felt that the style came to an end with the 1929 stock market crash.[5] In 1926 she painted her most famous work, Pittsburgh, a dark and brooding picture now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, which depicts the gargantuan smokestacks of the Jones & Laughlin steel mills in Pittsburgh. Its focus is an overpowering mass of black and gray smokestacks, thick piping, and crisscrossing wires with only clouds of smoke to relieve the severity of the image, yet it was an image in which she found an ironic beauty. She called the picture "my El Greco" and expressed surprise that viewers in later years interpreted the painting as a work of social criticism. Like the other Precisionists (e.g., Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Louis Lozowick, Stefan Hirsch), she was concerned with applying modernist techniques to renderings of the new industrial and urban landscape, not in commenting on potential dangers the overly mechanized modern world of 1920s America might present. If anything, Precisionism, like Futurism, was a celebration of man-made energy and technology. One year later, she painted Blast Furnaces, in a similar vein. As noted above, Piero della Francesca's mural depicting "The Story of the True Cross" in Arezzo, with its tubular, static and frozen forms was the major influence on Driggs' "Pittsburgh" (it may have been the major influence for "Blast Furnaces" as well).[7] After Pittsburgh, Driggs' most acclaimed work was probably Queensborough Bridge...
Category

1930s Mixed Media

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Pencil

Happy California Prune Farmers - Female Illustrator - Mid Century
Located in Miami, FL
Commercial illustration depicting happy California framers for California Prunes. The work is rendered in a charming and highly stylized manner. Unfr...
Category

1950s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Arabian Nights, Sea Monster - The Thousand and One Nights
By Gustaf Tenggren
Located in Miami, FL
Arabian Nights, Sea Monster - The Thousand and One Nights Gustaf Tenggren - Attributed - unsigned, unframed. Good condition with very sl...
Category

1940s Art Deco Animal Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Illustration Board

On the Balcony - American Scene Female Artist
By Louise Lue Osborne
Located in Miami, FL
Female artist Louise Lue Osborne paints a classic composition with an interaction of two women and a child soaked in golden late light. The figural gro...
Category

1930s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Synthetic Resin, Fiberboard

Mid-Century Children's Party Scene . Red and Orange, Native American
Located in Miami, FL
Broad areas of bold, flat red, magenta, and pink characterize this mid-century painting by Barbara Warren Ebersole ( Barbara Tate Ebersole ). It depicts a block party festooned with balloons and a street organ grinder with a smartly dressed performing monkey. The overall look of a lot mid-century art inspires many of today's most celebrated contemporary artists. Signed and dated upper left. Oil on Masonite. Barbara Warren Ebersole was a painter and an author. She may have been of Native American...
Category

1950s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Arabian Nights - Guard and Sitting King - Islamic Golden Age - Gustaf Tenggren
By Gustaf Tenggren
Located in Miami, FL
One Thousand and One Nights - It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights. What is notable about this work is how magnificently composed, designed, and rendered it is. Its l...
Category

1950s Art Deco Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Intoxicated Skid Row Bowery Homeless, Gritty Street Photography
By Mitchell Funk
Located in Miami, FL
Enter the Wood Chipper. Before the Bowery was a trendy destination, it was America's most famous Skid Row. Vagrant flophouses, 10-dollar prostitutes, dive bars, and what used to be ...
Category

1960s Realist Figurative Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Pregame Football Players Lined Up Abstraction of Blue Jersey and Orange Numbers
By Bob Peak
Located in Miami, FL
It's 1964, and the brilliantly inventive artist/illustrator Bob Peak is turning the world of commercial art upside down. In "Pregame Football Players" for Sports Illustrated, Peak pu...
Category

1960s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Pencil

Harbor Scene - Golden Gate Bridge, Mid-Century Illustration, Female Illustrator
Located in Miami, FL
Original mid-century illustration for the children's book "Good Work" by John G. McCullough, Young Scott Books, N.Y. It depicts a busy harbor filled with commercial and leisure traffic. Notice all the charming little people, busy at work - dotting the docks and boats. Ipcar masterfully designed the work so that your eye effortlessly travels from more prominent foreground elements to more minor elements in the distance. But her color scheme limited only to two colors sets "Harbor Scene" apart from the humdrum and elevates it to a sophisticated children's book illustration. The suspension bridge in the back of the composition is modeled after the Golden Gate. The illustration bears the hallmarks of modernism with its flat shapes and quick painterly style. "Harbor Scene" represents the artist's early style. By the '60s and '70s, her work began to take on a new direction with intricate patterns and depicting animals. Signed lower right with the artist's label on verso. Dahlov Ipcar...
Category

1940s Contemporary Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Pencil

Seductive Platinum Blond Hair and Blue Eyed Pin Up in Turquoise Hat
By Alberto Vargas
Located in Miami, FL
Study of a sultry and seductive reclining platinum blond Pin Up with a wide-brimmed sun hat. Most likely done for Playboy. This work is very finely rendered and looks better the ...
Category

1960s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Pencil

Ballantine Beer Ad. Mid-Century American Illustration
Located in Miami, FL
Only Ballantine Ale Brews "Brewer's Gold," ad illustration appeared in the major magazines of the day. A magic moment is caught at a peak point of drama. It's the instant of friends having fun. A cold beer from the fridge is offered and it's is acknowledged with a head nod. The woman in the foreground covers her giggling face reacting to a funny comment. The decisive moment is preserved. Sounds like a critique of an art photograph? No, it's an illustrator. This ingenious Infiniti "S" composition simultaneously represents the best of photography and painting. Cartier-Bresson could have captured the precise moment. While Nicolas Poussin could have rendered the complex figural composition. Add to it , a painting technique and color scheme with the quick drama of a post-impressionist. We have a great work of art by an overlooked American illustrator/artist/painter, Mike Ludlow...
Category

1950s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Board

Mid Century Golden Age of Illustration- Narrative Art - Norman Rockwell School
By Alex Ross
Located in Miami, FL
“Graduation Day” is emblematic of mid-century American Illustration. But the real story of this storytelling work is that it embodies the lost art of portrait painting and graphic design. Alex Ross borrows on the classical tradition and flaunts his skills as a narrative painter. In “Graduation Day”, he paints a complex composition involving at least thirteen portraits. The subjects are beautifully rendered and lit. They are set against a dark grey background and jump off the surface at the viewer. The composition is complexly designed. The future graduate in the red jacket engaging with a girl photographer is a compositional device that leads the viewer's eye to the main subject - a father congratulating his son on graduating from medical school. Creating art that relies on facial expressions and body gestures is a talent absent in contemporary art. Why? It’s very hard to do and takes years and training and practice to get it right. Despite Alex Ross's folksy subject matter, this work is a high example of naturalism and representation by an important member of the Golden Age of American Illustration. Signed lower right Born in the town of Dunfermline, Scotland, Alexander Sharpe Ross (1908-1990) moved with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1911. After attending Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University), Ross moved to New York and joined the Charles E. Cooper Studio, where he worked among such notable illustrators as Ward Brackett, Stevan Dohanos, J. Frederick Smith...
Category

1940s Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Two Women, Erotic Nude Woman - Lesbian Dream - Existential Magic Realism
By George Tooker
Located in Miami, FL
Two Women by George Tooker is a psychologically engaging portrait of contrasts. An untidy, older, overweight woman is seen slumped in a chair, asleep and lost in a dream. Her head ti...
Category

1950s Surrealist Nude Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pencil

Wedding Day - Norman Rockwell Americana - Female Illustrator
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Recently, women artists have been soaring in price to millions of dollars. In many cases, many of these women were quite obscure. For example, recently acknowledged Gertrude Abercrombie, a naive surrealist artist, has recently seen her paintings rise to the area of $400K. Lorraine Fox, who is a consummate female artist/ illustrator whose work rivals any of the recently anointed female stars is still an unknown quantity. She has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and is in the collection of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, and she is a member of the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut along with Norman Rockwell, Today she is relatively unknown and completely off the radar of the so-called art establishment. Wedding Day is a wonderful example of her mid-century, somewhat naive style. The work is signed lower right and was exhibited at the Brandywine River...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Haitian Couple in Bed Simultaneously Adjusting their Radios, Surrealism
By Wilson Bigaud
Located in Miami, FL
Wilson Bigaud is an idea artist in who showcases visual ideas in many of his paintings. In this work, a married Haitian couple tunes their radios in sync as they lie in bed. Bigaud was greatly interested in radios, which appeared in many of his works. This work rises to the level of Surrealism in that Bigaud is doing more than just depicting a normal bedroom moment. There is something very strange and bizarre in the couple's synchronized actions. Also of note, it looks like the woman is swallowing the edge of the radio. Signed lower right in a handmade and hand-painted frame. Wear to the edges of board, including delamination in the corners, some dents and losses. Frame rubbing with associated wear. Areas of white discoloration to the bed and headboard...
Category

1960s Surrealist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Fashion Illustration with Two Leggy Models in Monochromatic Greys
Located in Miami, FL
Two elegant and leggy models are rendered and meticulously designed in this illustration for Geoffrey Beene. Miyake's composition is one model as two or two models as one. We see th...
Category

1960s Contemporary Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Permanent Marker, Carbon Pencil

Portrait of Chinese Couple. Pearl S. Buck Tiger Tiger Illustration Cosmopolitan
By Dean Cornwell
Located in Miami, FL
Among the many accolades I would grant Dean Cornwell, the one that rises to the top would be that he is one of America's greatest portrait painters. With a few strokes, he captures h...
Category

1930s American Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Americana, Horse Drawn Sled Christmas Celebration with Barking Dog
Located in Miami, FL
Good wholesome mid-century Americana is on full display in the joyous illustration that depicts a red horsedrawn sled of merrymaking folks being rreated at an inn. Signed lower left ...
Category

1940s American Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Board

Father and Son at the Beach - Female Illustrator
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Generations ahead of the pack, little-known Lorraine Fox developed a simple, charming and flat style that is emulated today but not equaled. Her work is rooted in sound academic trai...
Category

1940s Feminist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gouache, Board

Looking Into a Neighborhood - Ginger Bread Houses - Women Illustrators
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Looking Into a Neighborhood , Dear Paul This is an intriguingly charming work by an overlooked and brilliant mid-century female artist - illustrator, and educator. Lorraine Fox. ...
Category

1950s Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Red Women - like Gertrude Abercrombie - Surrealist Women Artists
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Somewhat like Gertrude Abercrombie but the work is better painted, conceived, and designed - Magazine Illustration. Most likely for: Good Housek...
Category

1950s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Garden Scene with red trees - Women Illustrators
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Most likely for a Magazine like Redbook, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal or Woman's day Lorraine Fox is Hall of Fame member of the Society of Illustrators She...
Category

1950s Symbolist Still-life Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Woman Baking, Redbook Illustration, Mid - Century
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Signed lower right, unframed - Interior Illustration for Redbook Magazine
Category

1950s American Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Gouache

Redhead Girl in Window with Flower Pots - Woman Illustrator
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Redhead Girl in Window with Flower Pots by Lorraine Fox can be a joyful addition to your home. A beautiful redheaded young girl looks back at us from ...
Category

1950s Post-Impressionist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Oil

Introspective Woman / Actress on Movie Set. Mid Century Art, Female Illustrator
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Lorraine Fox was an American illustrator and commercial artist who illustrated magazines, book covers, and advertisements. Among the magazines, she illustrated for were Woman's Day, ...
Category

1960s Post-Impressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache, Board, Pencil

Young Girl Red Dress lost in Thought, Mid Century Woman's Magazine Illustration
By Lorraine Fox
Located in Miami, FL
Lorraine Fox (1922–1976) was an American illustrator and commercial artist who illustrated magazines, book covers, and advertisements. Among the magazines, she illustrated for was Wo...
Category

1960s Feminist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Blond Pin up with Perfect Smile Tennis Racket - Women Illustrators
Located in Miami, FL
Julia (Elsie Julia Miller) Schleicher (Canadian/American, 1916-1988) she was an important female illustrator Woman Tennis Player Pastel and gouache on boa...
Category

1940s Romantic Portrait Paintings

Materials

Pastel, Gouache

The Court Ladies Dressed Gerda - Women Illustrators
Located in Miami, FL
Women illustrators were alive, well, and quite active in the early 20th century. Most of their production was associated with topics that dealt with the home, children or fairy tales. In this masterfully rendered work in pen and ink, Jacobs displays great technical skill in presenting three maidens dressing a beautiful female member of the Court wearing a tiara. Signed in a cartouche lower right From: Stella Mead, Great Stories from Many Lands, London: James Herbert and Co, 1936, page 78 " Red and White Roses" Provenance: Chris Beetles Work is elegantly matted and not framed. Helen Mary Jacobs was born in Ilford, Essex, the sister of the writer W.W. Jacobs; she studied art at the West Ham...
Category

1930s Art Nouveau Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Pencil

Elegant Nude Woman in Dancing - Mid-Century Monochromatic
By Walter Charles Klett
Located in Miami, FL
Excellent Mid-century nude by famous illustrator/ artist Walter Charles Klett. The work is masterfully painted with a sound understanding of the basic academic principles guiding t...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Realist Nude Paintings

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Noir Crime Drama Shooting - Saturday Evening Post Illustration
By Thornton Utz
Located in Miami, FL
Saturday Evening Post Illustrator Thornton Utz captures the peak moment of action in this Noir Crime Drama, Shooting illustration on an interior page in the famed magazine in 1958 —...
Category

1950s American Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Board

Formal Portrait of a Chinese Man in Traditional Dress
Located in Miami, FL
Dressed in traditional clothing, a handsome Chinese man is depicted as he sits resolutely with one hand on his leg and the other holding a baton. Female Artist Joyce Ballantyne...
Category

1940s Academic Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Wheels of Industry Past and Present, Golden Age of Illustration - Standard Oil
Located in Miami, FL
This Golden Age of Illustration painting juxtaposes modern and ancient industrial practices. Giant eclectic generators from the current ti...
Category

Mid-20th Century Academic Landscape Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Board

Futurist Vision - Mid-Century New York Skyline - Industrial Progress
Located in Miami, FL
Rarely do you come across a work of art that is vastly different than just about anything you see. This work is undeniably brilliant and a sheer pleasure to behold. Alexander Leydenfrost...
Category

1950s Art Deco Landscape Paintings

Materials

Gouache, Board, Graphite, Charcoal

Flag Raising in Leroy Street - Old New York - Vintage New York
By Kyra Markham
Located in Miami, FL
Flag Raising in Leroy Street. This masterfully designed work featuring a complex arrangement of figures with multiple light sources that depicts a celebra...
Category

1940s American Realist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Crystal City - Pushed Color Greens and Yellow
Located in Miami, FL
This is most likely a self-portrait. We see the artist in a reflection holding a small 1950s camera while his wife in the foreground holds a large bran...
Category

1950s Fauvist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Wonderland Tale - Fairy Tale - Female Illustrator
Located in Miami, FL
Wonderland Tale - Fairy Tale - Female Illustrator - The work is meticulously rendered in an exacting technique of line to the point of wonderment. Yet, Baxter can obtain an ethereali...
Category

1950s English School Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Pen

Snowstorm, Morningside Heights, New York City - Monochromatic
Located in Miami, FL
Eugene Camille Fitsch Am./Fr., 1892-1972 - Signed lower right. Framed dimensions 20 3/4" x 34 7/8" framed Provenance: Studio of the Artist to Private Collection Boston, Massachuse...
Category

1940s Abstract Expressionist Landscape Paintings

Materials

Casein

Midnight Madness - Witches on Night Flight
Located in Miami, FL
Pioneering female illustrator Gwenda Morgan creates an exuberantly complex image of a squad of broom-riding - pointed-hatted witches with black cats in tow. They fly through an inky black moonlit sky and are witnessed by only a rooftop owl. With the simple means of black and white, Morgan has rendered a highly charged composition that pluses with electricity. The whole image is on the cusp of being abstract while being representational. It is brilliantly designed with great attention to detail and is evocative of a sorcerer's malignant powers. Unframed. not signed Printed from the original block as part of the suite of 8 prints that accompanied the limited edition book Diary of a Land Girl, Whittington Press, 2000. The suite of prints was included with the first 50 copies of the book, and a further 8 suites were printed, from which this print comes. Gwenda Morgan (1 February 1908 – 1991) was a British wood engraver. She lived in the town of Petworth in West Sussex. Early life Morgan was born in Petworth, her father having moved there to work at the ironmongers, Austen & Co, of which he later became proprietor. He was the son of a Welsh-born military farrier. Education Following school in Petworth and at Brighton and Hove High School, Morgan, studied at Goldsmiths' College of Art in London from 1926. From 1930 she attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico where she was taught and strongly influenced by the principal, Iain Macnab. The Grosvenor School was a progressive art school and the championing of wood engraving and linocuts fitted with its democratic approach to the arts. Works Morgan was commissioned to illustrate a number of books published by private presses. For the Samson Press she produced the frontispiece for Duke Hamilton...
Category

1950s Contemporary Figurative Prints

Materials

Woodcut

Art Deco Couple In Front of Black and White Art Deco Architecture
Located in Miami, FL
Art Deco Illustrator Charles Perry Weimer creates a powerfully graphic depiction of a 1930s couple in front of a classic Art Deco building with a...
Category

1930s Art Deco Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink

The Thinker
By Willem de Kooning
Located in Miami, FL
A large charcoal-on-paper rendering by arguably one of America's most influential artists. It comes from the pioneering Allan Stone Galleries, who ...
Category

1960s Abstract Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Miss Twisty: Back to the City - Mid-Century Female Illustrator
Located in Miami, FL
Miss Twisty is a story of a young girl who leaves the big city to spend time in the country. The book is filled with insight and humor. This work is a deftly rendered black-and-wh...
Category

1940s Academic Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Graphite

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