Shmuel Katz

Western Wall, Jerusalem Watercolor

Abstract watercolor composition bearing the influence of the earlier color-block compositions of Paul Klee. Pawel August Kontny, (Polish-German-American artist) He was born in Laurahuette, Poland, in 1923, the son of a wealthy pastry shop owner. In 1939 he began studying architecture in Breslau where he was introduced to the European masters and to the work of some of the German Expressionists, soon afterward banned as "degenerate artists" and removed from museums throughout Germany by the Nazi regime. His studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, traveling in many countries as a soldier, he sketched various landscapes but in 1945, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. After the war, he studied at the Union of Nuremberg Architects to help design buildings to replace ones destroyed in the war. He recorded his impressions of the local population and the landscapes through his watercolors and drawings. Pawel Kontny thereafter moved to Nuremberg, Germany, becoming a member of the Union of Nuremberg Architects and helping to rebuild the city's historic center. He soon decided to concentrate on his professional art career. He married Irmgard Laurer, a dancer with the Nuremberg Opera. Pavel Kontny 's career as an artist was launched with his participation in an all German exhibition, held at the Dusseldorf Museum in 1952. He held one-man shows in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. During his trip to the United States in 1960, Kontny became instantly enamored with Colorado, and decided to relocate to Cherry Hills with his wife and two children. He quickly established himself in the local art community, being affiliated for a time with Denver Art Galleries and Saks Galleries. His subject matter became the Southwest. During this time he received the Prestigious Gold Medal of the Art Academy of Rome. His extensive travel provided material for the paintings he did using his hallmark marble dust technique. he also worked equally in pastel, watercolor, charcoal and pencil-and-ink. in a style which merged abstraction and realist styles, influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting and South Western American landscapes. This one bears the influence of Sam Francis. In the early 1960s he was one of only a few European-born professional artists in the state, a select group that included Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), a member of the prewar Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Germany, and Roland Detre (1903-2001), a Hungarian modernist painter. As a Denver, Colorado resident, Pavel Kontny exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States, Germany and Japan. There, he was inspired by frequent trips to Native American pueblos in the Southwest, as well as by the study of the Plains Indians of Montana and Wyoming. Over the years Kontny had a number of students and generously helped young artist by hosting exhibitions at his Cherry Hills home. For many years he generously donated his paintings to support charitable causes in Denver. Influences during his European years included German pastelist C.O. Muller, German Informel painter Karl Dahmen and Swiss artist, Hans Erni. In the early 1950s his painting style showed the influence of the Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905 who had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the twentieth century in Germany. By the middle of the decade his style incorporated more referential abstraction and total abstraction, resulting in part from his study of Hans Hartung, a German artist based in Paris who exhibited his gestural abstract work in Germany. The American moon landing in 1969 inspired Paul Kontny...

In this piece the artist choice of colors is vibrant, and there is minimal blending of them. The artist takes a naive, Folk Art approach at rendering the subject simplifying the figu...

Street scene village market, well executed watercolor and pencil drawing, artist titled and signed illegibly, attributed to Moisey Kogan Russian 1924-2001. Image size about 27"x18"F...

Original watercolor on archival paper of a busy French beach scene with a host of sailboats just off the shore. Signed by the artist lower left with inscription. Condition is excellent. Circa 1965. The watercolor is housed in a narrow gold gallery frame with a wide and very deep mat. Under glass. Overall framed measurements are 17 by 22.5 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota. Florida collector. About the artist: Jean Monneret, born November 27, 1922 in Chalon-sur-Saône, is one of the best known painters of the School of Paris after the war. He is founding president of the Federation of Fairs historic Grand Palais. From 1944 to 1949, Jean Monneret is a student at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the studio of Jean Dupas after preparation to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lille. At the same time, it passes the support of education in fine arts high schools. As a teacher, as well as course director Montmartre (1960-1975), that when he became professor of fine arts and art history at the National School of Applied Arts in Paris (1974 - 1988), it maintains the study of drawing as many teachers are no longer able to teach it or waive it. His painting, figurative, with a graphic black outlines to very expressive part of a modern context. Present in most rooms with paint, and very representative of the spirit of freedom of the painters, it is duly elected president of the Salon des Independants from 1977 to 2001. Among his friends painters include Jean Carzou particular, Jean-Pierre Alaux, Pierre-Henry...