Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 12

Michael Hafftka
Michael Hafftka Figurative Neo Expressionist Oil Pastel Painting The Wave

1984-1985

About the Item

MICHAEL HAFFTKA "The Wave" Hand signed lower right "Hafftka" Oil and pastel on paper, 30.5" x 22.25". Framed 39" x 31.5". Michael Hafftka (born 1953) is an American figurative expressionist painter and musician, composer, living in New York City. Hafftka was born in Manhattan, New York (1953) to Eva and Simon Hafftka, European refugees and Holocaust survivors. He was raised in the Bronx and attended public schools. His work is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, New York Public Library, McNay Art Museum, Housatonic Museum of Art, Arizona State University Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and Yeshiva University Museum. He was included in the show Jewish Themes/Contemporary American Artists II, The Jewish Museum, New York, Hannelore Baron, Michael David, Audrey Flack, Cleve Gray, Michael Hafftka, Tobi Kahn, Art Spiegelman et al. Hafftka's series of Kabbalah Zohar paintings were shown at the Mizel Center for the Arts, Denver, Colorado in 2010. Chapman University, Orange, CA, mounted a solo show of Hafftka Aleph-Bet, Hafftka designed covers for Urizen Books, including Detour, Wedding Feast and Circuits, by Michael Brodsky. Kevin Begos of Guignol Books published Hafftka's drawings in 1982. His first one-person show was at Art Galaxy. Among the New York galleries that subsequently have featured his work are: the Rosa Esman Gallery, the Aberbach Gallery, the Mary Ryan Gallery, and the DeLaurenti Gallery. He has also exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. He was included in the 1983 show Art of Found Objects at Gallery Schlesinger-Boisante, it including Keith Haring & LA2 (LA ROCK), Fred (FAB 5 Freddy) Brathwaite, Michael Hafftka and Justen Ladda. The Housatonic Museum of Art mounted a retrospective in October 2004. (The catalogue that accompanied the show included an introduction by Robbin Zella and critical essays by Michael Brodsky and Sam Hunter. Michael Brodsky is a well-known and highly respected novelist, the author of 12 published works of fiction and winner of the Hemingway prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Sam Hunter is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Princeton and the author of numerous monographs, including works on Francis Bacon, Isamu Noguchi, and George Segal. Among his books published by Harry N Abrams are "American Art of the 20th Century," "Hans Hofmann," and "Robert Rauschenberg." Professor Hunter was the director of the Jewish Museum in NY, Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.) Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History in New York held a solo exhibition I of the Storm, "New York has scarcely seen figure paintings of such unrelenting solemnity and exasperation, or with so original an authority, since Francis Bacon brought his first exhibition to the city. Like him, Hafftka can be characterized as both an eccentric visionary and an increasingly dazzling technician whose virtuoso painterly expressivity and skills invite comparison with the masters" — Sam Hunter, Princeton University, author of The Museum of Modern Art New York Illustrated Books: Conscious/Unconscious, short stories and drawings by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2007, In the Penal Colony, a short story by Franz Kafka illustrated by Michael Hafftka, Limited Editions Club 1987, The Terror of Loch Ness, a novel by Che Elias, illustrated by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2007, Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors, poems by Peter Klappert with art by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press 2008, To Die Next To You, poems by Rodger Kamenetz with art by Michael Hafftka, Six Gallery Press, 2013 Select Public Collections Museum of Modern art, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Brooklyn Museum, New York Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA New York Public Library Collection, New York San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT Art Museum of S. Texas, Corpus Christi, TX University Museum at Texas State University, Houston Yeshiva University Museum, New York, NY
More From This SellerView All
  • Large Colorful 1983 Neo Expressionist Roberto Juarez Oil Painting Tron Family
    By Roberto Juarez
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Roberto Juarez, (American, 1952- ) Tron Family. 1983. Signed, dated & titled. Oil and oil stick on canvas. Provenance: Robert Miller Gallery, NY., Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, CA Roberto Juarez (born 1952) is an American visual artist known for his paintings, murals, and mixed-media works. Born in Chicago, (parents of both Mexican and Puerto Rican Latino heritage) Juarez received his B.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute (1977) and pursued graduate studies in Television and Film at the University of California, Los Angeles. Juarez frequently employs painterly floral motifs, which are inspired by the traditions of Hispanic, Latin American and non-Western painting. Roberto Juarez has been a significant presence in the art worlds of New York, Miami, Colorado, and beyond since the early 1980s. In 1978, Juarez completed his graduate thesis for UCLA in Paris and decided not to return to L.A. Juarez relocated to New York City, where in 1981, Ellen Stewart offered Juarez a former garage owned by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club as an artist studio. The space, which had no water or electricity, was offered to Juarez rent-free, provided that he clean and maintain it. He was active in the Neo Expressionist era of the the late 1980's along with Julian Schnabel and David Salle. Throughout the 80s and 90s Juarez painted the branching forms of trees and flowers. While living in Miami in the 90s, Juarez began to incorporate peat moss, rice paper, and other natural materials in his canvases. Since 2000, and his move from Miami back to New York, Juarez's imagery turned more abstract, typically featuring geometric forms and systems. In a review from this period, art critic Grace Glueck noted that his works feature “a contrast between the softness of the grounds – blends of transparent and opaque materials in muted colors – and their strong geometric-organic motifs." In his use of elements of nature to portray an idyllic unity, Juarez looks back to such early-20th-century painters as Franz Marc and Henri Matisse. He has done prints with Shark’s Ink Studios in Lyons and Anderson Ranch Arts Center as well as Tamarind Institute. Roberto Juarez is a visual artist who has been active in the areas of painting, printmaking, drawing, and large-scale public commissions throughout his career. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Mexico, and is included in major museum collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Denver Art Museum, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Newark Museum, and the Speed Art Museum. He has completed public art projects and murals for the Miami International Airport, Grand Central Terminal, the Miami-Dade County Courthouse, Whitman College, and the University of Michigan College of Engineering. Juarez won the Prix de Rome in 1997 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001-2002. Select Solo Exhibitions Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO La MaMa Galleria, New York, NY Pace Prints New York, NY Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, KS Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL, Bonnie Clearwater, Curator and Author Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL Galeria Ramis Barquet, Monterrey, Mexico Richard Green Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA Andre Emmerich Gallery, Zurich Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, Canada San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA Select Group Exhibitions 2018 May China 2018, China National Academy of Painting, Beijing, China 2017 Love Among the Ruins, 56 Bleecker Gallery and Late 80's New York, Howl! Arts Incorporated, New York, NY 2015 Inside the Episode: curated by Jack Pierson, Launch F18 Gallery, New York, NY 2015 MTA Arts Design Illustrates the City, The Museum of American Illustration at The Society of Illustrators, New York 2015 The Annual; National Academy Museum, New York, NY 2008 One of a Kind; Monoprints & Monotypes, Spencertown Academy Art Center, Spencertown, New York 2001 Roberto Juarez and Julio Galan...
    Category

    1980s Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Crayon, Oil

  • Matthias Alfen German Sculptor Modern Expressionist Painting Psychogram
    By Matthias Alfen
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Matthias Alfen’s series of Janus figures are an innovation in figural art predicated on the advances made by the Futurist sculptor and painter Umberto Boccioni and the Modernist Alberto Giacometti. The qualities of chance and spontaneity, necessarily excluded in the sculptural work, are clearly evident in his drawings and paintings. “Psychograms” of unchoreographed hand movements display wide variation, repeatedly playing through one form after another. In the end, this multitude of variation serves to enhance the logic, consistency, and seductively rich appearance of Alfen’s designed sculptural works. Represented by Gallery Schuckin in New York, Paris, France, and Moscow, Russia. Matthias Alfen’s was strongly influenced by his family’s experience during World War II. His grandfather Klemens Alfen (1894-1955) was an accomplished painter and photographer, recognized for his landscape photography and for his technique (Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932). He enjoyed the friendship and support of many in the artistic community, a community largely influenced by its German Jewish members. Having lost his entire circle of friends under Nazi oppression. Klemens, although not Jewish, also suffered under the Nazis for refusing to join them and struggling in post-war Germany, which had nothing to offer an artist like him, Klemens took his own life. At around the age of 16 he worked for some weeks as an assistant at his uncle’s art studio. Fritz Koenig...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Plywood, Oil

  • Matthias Alfen German Sculptor Modern Expressionist Painting Psychogram
    By Matthias Alfen
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Matthias Alfen’s series of Janus figures are an innovation in figural art predicated on the advances made by the Futurist sculptor and painter Umberto Boccioni and the Modernist Alberto Giacometti. The qualities of chance and spontaneity, necessarily excluded in the sculptural work, are clearly evident in his drawings and paintings. “Psychograms” of unchoreographed hand movements display wide variation, repeatedly playing through one form after another. In the end, this multitude of variation serves to enhance the logic, consistency, and seductively rich appearance of Alfen’s designed sculptural works. Represented by Gallery Schuckin in New York, Paris, France, and Moscow, Russia. Matthias Alfen’s was strongly influenced by his family’s experience during World War II. His grandfather Klemens Alfen (1894-1955) was an accomplished painter and photographer, recognized for his landscape photography and for his technique (Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932). He enjoyed the friendship and support of many in the artistic community, a community largely influenced by its German Jewish members. Having lost his entire circle of friends under Nazi oppression. Klemens, although not Jewish, also suffered under the Nazis for refusing to join them and struggling in post-war Germany, which had nothing to offer an artist like him, Klemens took his own life. At around the age of 16 he worked for some weeks as an assistant at his uncle’s art studio. Fritz Koenig...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Plywood, Oil

  • Matthias Alfen German Sculptor Modern Abstract Expressionist Painting Psychogram
    By Matthias Alfen
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Figurative Abstraction gestural painting. Matthias Alfen’s series of Janus figures are an innovation in figural art predicated on the advances made by the Futurist sculptor and painter Umberto Boccioni and the Modernist Alberto Giacometti. The qualities of chance and spontaneity, necessarily excluded in the sculptural work, are clearly evident in his drawings and paintings. “Psychograms” of unchoreographed hand movements display wide variation, repeatedly playing through one form after another. In the end, this multitude of variation serves to enhance the logic, consistency, and seductively rich appearance of Alfen’s designed sculptural works. Represented by Gallery Schuckin in New York, Paris, France, and Moscow, Russia. Matthias Alfen’s was strongly influenced by his family’s experience during World War II. His grandfather Klemens Alfen (1894-1955) was an accomplished painter and photographer, recognized for his landscape photography and for his technique (Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932). He enjoyed the friendship and support of many in the artistic community, a community largely influenced by its German Jewish members. Having lost his entire circle of friends under Nazi oppression. Klemens, although not Jewish, also suffered under the Nazis for refusing to join them and struggling in post-war Germany, which had nothing to offer an artist like him, Klemens took his own life. At around the age of 16 he worked for some weeks as an assistant at his uncle’s art studio. Fritz Koenig...
    Category

    Late 20th Century Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Plywood, Oil

  • Large Venezuelan Expressionist Oil Painting Diego Barboza Latin American Master
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Diego Barboza - 1945-2003 Hand signed and dated 1988 Oil on Canvas Diego Barboza was born the Carabobo street of Maracaibo, Venezuela on February 4, 1945. He was a Venezuelan Neo Figurative Painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in Venezuelan art history. Diego Barboza opened a new chapter in Latin America, beyond the surreal or the magical realism of the Modern Latin American Masters. He created a new language of dislocation and transgression. Personages became distorted to the point that was very exaggerated forms His figures twisted and contorted without losing their presence or their pull. Extremities muscles, and bones burst into an explosive compound of divergent and convergent lines. Through eruptive brushstrokes and fractured outlines. Barboza created a world of illusions. Barboza was born into a upper-middle-class family. He stopped going to school at 12 years old, and he registered himself at the School of Visual Art in the City of Maracaibo Venezuela. Barboza studied at the School of Visual Arts in Caracas, Venezuela. Barboza began his training as an artist at age 12 in his native Maracaibo when he left formal education to enroll in the then School of Plastic Arts of Zulia, then Julio Arraga School of Plastic Arts, where he was a student in the modeling, collage and Drawing of Angelina Curiel. His first collages, in the sixties, show the influence of American Pop Art. In 1967 he exhibited at the Ateneo de Caracas his series 'Los Ratones', a proposal then 'criticized by critics as unprecedented in Venezuela'. In his tribute to the film "Nosferatu" Friedrich Murnau included 32 drawings as well as two-dimensional objects. In 1968 he moved to London where he studied at the London College of Printing. From that time is his '30 Girls with Nets', an action in which 30 students of the London College of Printing, dressed in black and covered by white nets, toured London public places, behaving naturally. His 'street expressions', which he later called 'poetic actions', symbolized a breakdown of social restraints through unusual behaviors that sought to provoke public reactions. Upon his return to Venezuela in 1973, Barboza continues with this line of work, being recognized as one of the initiators of Venezuelan conceptual art. In the 1980's Diego Barboza turned to painting, the New Venezuelan Figuration. Here belongings and the feminine figure fill the work of that time, in which he embodied his intimacy and daily life through scenes of furnishings and flowers that included objects from his workshop and home. His nudes were made from live model, then to follow the path of distortion resulting in their unmistakable females: a figure that represented their personal way of appreciating beauty. Barboza presented his first individual exhibition at the Centro de Bellas Artes of Maracaibo Venezuela. In 1963, he traveled to London when the Conceptual Art movement started, he had the support of the London New Art Lab Gallery. On March 7, 1970 Barboza displayed his first work on Conceptual Art, which he called Art of Action. In London with the performance of 30 Girls with nets (30 Muchachas con redes). His second work was Nets and Hats in markets and restaurants (Con sombreros y redes en mercados y restaurantes). In London UK. His third The Centerpiece (El Ciempies) and the fourth Expression on a laundry-mat (Expresiones en una lavandería) In 1974. Baboza returned to Venezuela. Where he presented two very important Conceptual Art works: The Armadillo Box (La Caja del Cachicamo) and from the School of Athens to the New School of Caracas (De la Escuela de Atenas a la Nueva Escuela de Caracas). Closing his cycle of Conceptual Art creation. IN Venezuela a sort of impromptu academy started up at Claudio Perna’s house. Eugenio Espinoza, Roberto Obregón, Antonieta Sosa, Alfred Wenemoser, Yeni and Nan, Sigfredo Chacón, Diego Barboza, Luis Villamizar, Margherita D’Amico, Pedro Terán, Alfredo del Mónaco, as well as international figures who happened to be visiting Venezuela such as Antoni Muntadas, Charlotte Moorman, and Roman Polanski would gather there. Venezuela, especially Caracas, was a rich field of action for modernism in South America. Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction, Op art and Kinetic Art dominated through crucial figures like Jesús Rafael Soto, Gego, Alejandro Otero, and Carlos Cruz Diez, the country’s kinetic art made a fundamental contribution internationally. The Greater London Arts Association and the Arts Council of Great Britain did several exhibitions of (North, Central, South, London, Wales, Scotland and Ulster) to show the actual Visual Arts in all of the United Kingdom and Diego Barboza was invited for this event with a solo exhibition, expressions around a cylinder (Expresiones alrededor de un cilindro). Diego has made numerous solo and group exhibitions, obtaining rewards since 1963. He is represented in the most important museums of Venezuela, as well as in England, Brazil, Colombia and Cuba. In 1986 he was awarded the Municipal Visual Arts Award of the Municipal Council of the Federal District and in 1997 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts granted by the National Council of Culture, CONAC. Select Group Exhibitions 1964 Ateneo de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela 1965 Salón Arturo Michelena, Valencia, Venezuela 1968 Salón Oficial Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela 1971 Art Spectrum London, London, Great Britain 1972 Serpentine Gallery, London, Great Britain 1973 Midland Group Gallery, London, Great Britain 1974 Galería BANAP, Caracas, Venezuela 1975 Casa de Las Américas, La Habana, Cuba Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas Galería de Arte Nuevo, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1976 Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Sao Paulo, Brazil Museo de la Tertulia, Cali, Colombia Bienal de Venecia, Venecia, Italy 1979 Centro de Artes y Comunicación, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1980 Galería NBC, Memphis, Tennessee, USA 1981 Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Medellín, Colombia Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela 1986 Museo de Arte La Rinconada, Caracas, Venezuela 1989 Galería Venzor, Chicago, Illinois, USA 1990 Museo Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile 1992 Ambrosino Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA 1993 Museo de Arte de Petare, Caracas, Venezuela Centro de Arte Lia Bermúdez, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1994 Galería Namia Mondolfi, Caracas, Venezuela 1995 Galería Art Nouveau, Maracaibo, Venezuela Galería Cesar Sassòn, Caracas, Venezuela Maremares Resort, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela Galería Durban, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Odalys, Caracas, Venezuela 1996 Centro de Arte Grupo Li, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Uno, Caracas, Venezuela Centro Cultural Consolidado, Caracas, Venezuela Espacios Unión, Caracas, Venezuela Hebraica, Caracas, Venezuela 1997 Sociedad Dramática, Maracaibo, Venezuela, Venezuela CELARG, Caracas, Venezuela Galería Ocre Arte, Caracas, Venezuela Museo de Arte Contemporáneo , Maracay, Venezuela Galería Medicci, Caracas, Venezuela Awards 1963 Premio Estímulo - IX Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1964 Premio José Ortìn Rodríguez - X Salón d’Empaire, Maracaibo, Venezuela 1965 Primer Premio de Dibujo - III Salón Pez Dorado, Caracas, Venezuela 1968 Premio Henrique Otero Vizcarrondo - XXIV Salón Oficial Anual de Arte Venezolano Museo de Bellas Artes, 1973 Premio Emilio Boggio...
    Category

    1980s Neo-Expressionist Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Large Richard Merkin Painting Harlem Jazz Club, New Yorker Magazine Cover Artist
    By Richard Merkin
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Richard Marshall Merkin (American, 1938-2009) Gladys and Half-Pint Hand signed 'Merkin' (center right), Titled, inscribed, dated, and initialed 'GLADYS BENTLEY AND FRANKIE 'HALF-PINT' JAXON 1997/R.M.' verso. Oil on canvas 37 1/2 x 72 in. (95.3 x 182.9 cm) framed 39 1/4 x 74 x 2 in. Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tailcoat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones. Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927). Richard Merkin, Sometimes described as Rhode Island’s most famous New York artist, Richard Merkin has led a dual life for nearly 40 years - teaching at RISD while enjoying a celebrated painting career based in New York City. He has exhibited in countless gallery and museum shows in the US and abroad and is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the RISD museum and many others. In addition to contributing drawings and paintings to The New Yorker (along with, Art Spiegelman, Saul Steinberg, Harper’s, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and several books on Erotica and Baseball, he is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a former style columnist for GQ. Merkin’s honors include a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Museums and Selected Collections : The American Federation of Arts, New York, NY Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA First city Bank, Chicago, Ill Fisk University Art Gallery, Nashville, TN Hallmark Collections, Kansas City, MO Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Maimi-Dade Junior College, Miami, FL Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Minnesota Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, RI McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN Pennsylvania Acadamy of the Arts, Philadelphia PA Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, Ma Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Sara Robey Foundation, New York, NY Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC State University of Brockport, Brockport, NY Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Selected Publications : 1986-Present Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair ..1988-Present, New Yorker... 1988-Present, style column, GQ...1997, Text and Illustration for The Tijuana Bibles, published by Simon & Shuster, 1995, Illustrated book, Leagues Apart: the Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues published by Morrow. 1967 Cover of the Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Album (Mr. Merkin appears in the back row, right of center) RISD: MFA in Painting, 1963; Professor, Department of Painting special skill: Merging his role as flaneur (connoisseur of city life) with his role as painter and social historian, Merkin retrieves lost cultural artifacts – a Turkish cigarette, a gangster, a bowler and generally “things most people don’t know about” – and reconstitutes their Jazz Age virtues on canvas in cubist, comic-laced landscapes of tropical color. (ala Robert Crumb and Ben Katchor) breaking in: Perpetually on the fly from his middle-class Brooklyn background, Merkin found the perfect escape in the mid ‘60s in George Frazier, a dapper Boston columnist who inspired the emerging New York painter’s overnight reinvention of himself. The elements of structure, stability and surprise he admired in this well-dressed dandy – a cool linen suit, a splash of suspender, a polka dot scarf and pearl-handled walking stick – soon surfaced in paintings peopled by impeccable underdogs of café society along with his personal pop heroes: William Burroughs, Bobby Short and Krazy Kat...
    Category

    1990s American Modern Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Oil

You May Also Like
  • "Blue Bionic II" Painting 39" x 22"inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Blue Bionic II" Painting 39" x 22"inch by Ahmed Gaafary Nabokov’s Signs Ahmed Gaafary takes Vladimir Nabokov’s phenomenal short story “On Signs and Symbols” as an instigator to ser...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil Pastel, Canvas, Acrylic

  • "Bionic Figure I" Acrylic & Oil pastel Painting 47" x 37" inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Bionic Figure I" Acrylic & Oil pastel Painting 47" x 37" inch by Ahmed Gaafary Born In Cairo 1987 Where He Currently Lives And Works. He Received His Bachelor’s Degree In Information Systems In 2008 From The Higher Institute Of Advanced Studies And Followed The Evening Classes (Painting Department)Of Fine Arts Faculty, Helwan University From 2005 To 2007. After His Graduation as an Information System Engineer, He Gave Up His Engineer Practices And Decided To Be An Independent Visual Artist. He Participated In Many Solo And Collaborative Exhibitions,Among Which; Nabokov Signs Exhibition In Etejah Gallery, Palace Of Arts In Cairo Opera House In 2016, Kamal Khalifa Gallery At The Gezira Art Center In 2012. Beit El Umma Gallery At Saad Zaghloul Center In 2012, Engy Aflaton Gallery In Cairo Atelier at 2010, Ahmed Nagy Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2009, Tahya Halim Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2008, Salon Of Youth Exhibition In Palace Of Arts From 2008 To 2015, The Mediterranean Symposium In 2010. He Also Participated In The Following Workshops In Cairo In 2008 At The Cairo Opera House, The Fine Arts Sector Cultural Workshop And In The Mahmoud Mukhtar...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

  • "Land and Lake" Painting 47" x 51" inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Land and Lake" Painting 47" x 51" inch by Ahmed Gaafary Nabokov’s Signs Ahmed Gaafary takes Vladimir Nabokov’s phenomenal short story “On Signs and Symbols” as an instigator to series of large and medium scale paintings. The fictitious characters in Nabokov’s narrative who act mysteriously around the banal pseudo conflict that faces an urban family –that could be any of us—is transcribed and encrypted by Gaafary on canvas, where lines define accurately shapes and forms that are in themselves flexible and not geometrical. Areas of almost solid colors represent in a diversity of tones and hues the psychological changes that happen to Nabokov’s protagonists in a very well defined space and time. Gaafary’s signs and symbols on another layer resembles mystic ciphers and codes, much reminiscent of Jean Baudrillard’s post-structuralist essays about the subject, in particular his texts addressing mediation, mass communication and the logic of contemporary symbolic exchange inspired and influenced by anthropologist Marcel Mauss and the Canadian philosopher of communication Marshall McLuhan’s work about the nature of social relations determined by the forms of communication that any given society adopts. Ahmed Gaafary navigates his viewers through realms of personal symbols and signs of a personal narrative. Born In Cairo 1987 Where He Currently Lives And Works. He Received His Bachelor’s Degree In Information Systems In 2008 From The Higher Institute Of Advanced Studies And Followed The Evening Classes (Painting Department)Of Fine Arts Faculty, Helwan University From 2005 To 2007. After His Graduation as an Information System Engineer, He Gave Up His Engineer Practices And Decided To Be An Independent Visual Artist. He Participated In Many Solo And Collaborative Exhibitions,Among Which; Nabokov Signs Exhibition In Etejah Gallery, Palace Of Arts In Cairo Opera House In 2016, Kamal Khalifa Gallery At The Gezira Art Center In 2012. Beit El Umma Gallery At Saad Zaghloul Center In 2012, Engy Aflaton Gallery In Cairo Atelier at 2010, Ahmed Nagy Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2009, Tahya Halim Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2008, Salon Of Youth Exhibition In Palace Of Arts From 2008 To 2015, The Mediterranean Symposium In 2010. He Also Participated In The Following Workshops In Cairo In 2008 At The Cairo Opera House, The Fine Arts Sector Cultural Workshop And In The Mahmoud Mukhtar...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

  • "Homeland" Painting 31" x 47" inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Homeland" Painting 31" x 47" inch by Ahmed Gaafary Nabokov’s Signs Ahmed Gaafary takes Vladimir Nabokov’s phenomenal short story “On Signs and Symbols” as an instigator to series o...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

  • "Bionic Figure II" Acrylic & Oil pastel Painting 47" x 37" inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Bionic Figure II" Acrylic & Oil pastel Painting 47" x 37" inch by Ahmed Gaafary Born In Cairo 1987 Where He Currently Lives And Works. He Received His Bachelor’s Degree In Information Systems In 2008 From The Higher Institute Of Advanced Studies And Followed The Evening Classes (Painting Department)Of Fine Arts Faculty, Helwan University From 2005 To 2007. After His Graduation as an Information System Engineer, He Gave Up His Engineer Practices And Decided To Be An Independent Visual Artist. He Participated In Many Solo And Collaborative Exhibitions,Among Which; Nabokov Signs Exhibition In Etejah Gallery, Palace Of Arts In Cairo Opera House In 2016, Kamal Khalifa Gallery At The Gezira Art Center In 2012. Beit El Umma Gallery At Saad Zaghloul Center In 2012, Engy Aflaton Gallery In Cairo Atelier at 2010, Ahmed Nagy Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2009, Tahya Halim Gallery In Cairo Atelier In 2008, Salon Of Youth Exhibition In Palace Of Arts From 2008 To 2015, The Mediterranean Symposium In 2010. He Also Participated In The Following Workshops In Cairo In 2008 At The Cairo Opera House, The Fine Arts Sector Cultural Workshop And In The Mahmoud Mukhtar...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

  • "Encoded Language II" Painting 31" x 47" inch by Ahmed Gaafary
    By Ahmed Gaafary
    Located in Culver City, CA
    "Encoded Language II" Painting 31" x 47" inch by Ahmed Gaafary Nabokov’s Signs Ahmed Gaafary takes Vladimir Nabokov’s phenomenal short story “On Signs and Symbols” as an instigator ...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil Pastel, Acrylic

Recently Viewed

View All