Robert Funk Fine Art

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...

Commercial illustration depicting happy California framers for California Prunes. The work is rendered in a charming and highly stylized manner. Unfr...

Abstract City - Ephemeral Golden Building New York Architecture Can a street photograph be a grab shot and precisely designed at the same time? Mitchell Funk says yes. He brings fine...

Street photographer Mitchell Funk captures abstract street patterns in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Absorbing the influence of both the Color Field and Non-Objective painters, Funk ...

Arabian Nights, Sea Monster - The Thousand and One Nights Gustaf Tenggren - Attributed - unsigned, unframed. Good condition with very sl...

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...

Folsom Street Fair featuring public spanking - Gay Interest This archival color photograph by fine art photographer Mitchell Funk is signed, dated and nu...

A gathering of different animal species has one thing in common: The sun. Photographer Mitchell Funk captures a congregation of Central Park residents basking in the warm light of s...

A chic, high-fashion model clad in high heels and a chic hat holds a refreshing drink as she sits on a pedestal. She is depicted in silhouette as a burst of zoomed fireworks explode...

In a 1971 interview with Ebony Magazine, Alvin Hollinsworth commented on his African Jesus Christ painting, "I have always felt that Christ was a Blac...

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...

Follow the rainbow flags, and it will lead you to the famous Gay Beach on Miami Beach. Beyond the couples in the foreground, we see a packed scene of engaged in-shape men in bathing...

A sparking plumaged pigeon is perched on a railing in the Carl Schurz Park promenade. Street Photographer Mitchell captured him while a young woman sits on a park beach...

A fresh and bold paintbrush characterizes a classic view of Florence. Mitchell Funk's application of vibrantly bold orange effects a rebirth of the birthplace of the Renaissance. Wra...

The same year, the iconic science fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released, visionary still photographer Mitchell Funk shot this SciFi-like image. It's of an un...

Two light sources reveal that this is not a straight shot. As a pioneer of multiple-exposure photography, "Romantic Sunset over Ottawa Canada" is typical of Mitchell Funk's experime...

Rays of golden light burn through New York's streets and illuminate a man dressed in a vivid African-themed shirt with matching shorts. He dominates the composition that emphasizes ...

A tourist bus adorned with punchy hi-key graphics passes in front of a soaring Times Square billboard of similar nature. Street Photographer Mithcell Funk captures the precise momen...

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...

In the 1970s, the Times Square/ Mid-Town area of New York City was a gritty place of X-rated movies, Strip Bars, Pimps, Street Walkers, and cheap by-the-hour Hotels. The place was a...

Generations ahead of his time, Mithcell Funk rejects straightforward documentary photography and interprets the Noguchi Cube in a style as fresh and inventive as the Cube itself. It...

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 ...

It's 1971, and most photographers were shooting in black and white. Fine Art Photography was not yet in the mainstream vocabulary of museums — almost no art galleries considered or ...

The ethereal neon sign of a Miami Beach classic glows at night. Customers of Wolfie's Restaurant are seen through a window, while a backlit bus stop lightbox illuminates a single ma...

Mitchell Funk follows the light. Come along with him and become illuminated. Ephemeral rays of golden light strike an Upper East Side pre-war facade under renovation. The resulting...

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...

This powerful and graphically composed image of a black man with white angel wings was painted in a realist style by African American artist Thomas Blackshear...

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...

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 ...

Mitchell Funk revisits popular tourist locations and shoots them in a way that perhaps millions of tourists never imagined. Not unlike Pop Art, he shows us a new way to look at icon...

A New York City street sign is viewed from the back. Posted to it's metallic surface are two street bills featuring a religious figure in a ...

Occupying the lower third of the picture plane, a herd of humans stride down Fifth Avenue. They form an overall pattern. The top of the picture is also comprised of a simple pat...

Photographer Mitchell Funk revisits many popular tourist locations and shoots them in a way that perhaps millions of tourists never imagined. In "Billionaires Row from Central Park Reservoir...

Like a painting by Monet, an expansive field of blooming flowers fill the top two-thirds of the picture plane. A flock of migrating birds fly over a Shingle-style East Hampton house...

Mediterranean Revival style, Bendle Apartments, constructed in 1923, is located at 826 Collins Ave. Miami Beach, Florida, is seen here th...

Assisted by the right angle and right light, Street Photographer Mitchell Funk designs an image of Times Square Billboards that is as abstract as it is representational. Two huskies ...

Dawn's skimming light illuminates a New York City urban park and is captured from a high vantage point. The colors and long shadows make the image as abstract as it is representation...

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...

Two participants at Fifth Avenue's Easter Parade flaunt their artistic Millinery. Veteran street photographer Mitchell Funk captured this dramatic and hyper-colorful double portrait...

Golden sunlight filters through the autumn trees to illuminate two lovers on a Central Park bench. As a popular tourist location, Central Park is endlessly photographed. But Mitch...

"Surreal Desert Landscape" is an example of Mitchell Funk's early work. It depicts Monument Valley in an unexpected way. It's 1976 and color photography was not even seriously acknow...

“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...

A lonely-looking wide-eyed boxer peers out a car window in anticipation that his owner will return. On closer examination, this is not a photograph of a real Boxer but a cut out of...

The ephemeral nature of weather is on display in this hyper-dramatic photograph of Manhattan's Flatiron Building. Dark storm clouds crack open for a brief moment and spotlight the w...

An endless road is pictured in a timeless landscape. As the road winds through the vast expanse of the American West, the grandeur of the surrounding landscape minimizes a solitary c...

The ephemeral nature of fleeting light is captured in Kodachrome in this early color photograph taken in 1971. The work is signed, dated, and numbered 3/15 lower right recto, other s...

I think this is one of the finest paints Gustavo Novoa has done. It's from his early period in the mid-1970s. I am privileged to own it. The artist creates a dreamy world of magica...

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...

Surreal Fantasy Album Cover Beck & Sanborn for CTI records. This image is signed, dated and numbered 3/15 lower right recto. Other sizes are available. The work is unframed and print...

Pioneering SciFi photographer Mitchell Funk experiments with altered realms of reality by juxtaposing two landscapes of unnatural color to form a never-before-seen original vision. A single silhouetted figure looks out on a day-glow yellow sea leading to a dreamscape of trees. The yellow of water is picked up in the trees to unify the different perspectives. Published Popular Photography Magazine, February 1976...

Punchy pink and outrageous orange outfits shine as brightly as the subject smiles in this street photograph taken on Fifth Avenues Easter Day Parade. Signed, dated and numbered 2/15,...

An unexpected pedestrian is caught walking across Park Avenue on a rainy day. We are not sure where he came from or where he is going, but he seems to be on a mission. The Astronaut...

A 19th-century red fire call box is smothered in street advertisements and graffiti. It dominates the left half of the composition. Behind i, a street-l...

Golden light pours through trees creating intermittent shadows that dance on the limestone facade of a serene upper eastside townhouse. The shadows frame a bronze relief of a nude ar...

A contrast of two art styles describes this street photograph. A school bus-covered chaotic brush-stroked graffiti is juxtaposed with a symmetrical, color field-like umbrella compose...

Mitchell Funk's approach to the industrial world is always poetic. One would not think of a city highway to be aesthetic, but Funk seeks out beauty in unexpected places. "Motorcycle...

Ducks float on a cinnamon pond in loose formation, forming an overall pattern. Their arrangement recalls the work of minimal artists of the 50s and 60s. Yet, a single duck breaks r...

Illuminated in rim lighting, a lone man sits crouched in front of an early example of street art. A giant abstract painting raises seven stor...

Light jumps out. Players jump up. Light bounces off a window. Basketball bounces off a backboard. The interplay of extreme light and shadow makes "Street Basketball with Angelic Light " a unique and pioneering photograph. Taking in 1974, it was a rejection of contemporary color photography at the time, which was not concerned with light. This image by Funk is a glorification of light. As light strikes form, it becomes stylized and almost abstract, creating a new relationship between subject and style. An indication of the date this was taken is revealed by the old fashion TV antennas...

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...