Art

This abstract painting of a lake was rendered in minimalist form by Pat Service. Renowned as one of Canada’s finest landscape artists, the decades-long career of Pat Service has wit...

After Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) By Charles Sorlier (French, 1921-1990) "Bataille de Fleurs (Carnaval of Flowers)" (from Nice and the Côte d’Azur), 1967 Reference: CS 33 Color Lithograph Image Size: 24 7/16 in x 18 in (62 cm x 45.8 cm) Sheet Size: 29 9/16 in x 20 11/16 in (75 x 52.5 cm) Framed Size: approx. 34 x 27 inches Edition: Numbered 1 of 150 in pencil in the lower left margin and printed on Arches wove paper (aside from an edition of 75 signed and numbered in Roman numerals and 10 artist's proofs). Signature: This work is hand signed by Marc Chagall (Vitebsk, 1887 - Saint-Paul, 1985) in pencil in the lower right margin. Marc Chagall was a man of keen intelligence, a shrewd observer of the contemporary scene, with a great sympathy for human suffering. He was born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia; his original name was Moishe Shagal (Segal), but when he became a foremost member of the Ecole de Paris, he adopted French citizenship and the French spelling of his name. Vitebsk was a good-sized Russian town of over 60,000, not a shtetl. His father supported a wife and eight children as a worker in a herring-pickling plant. Sheltered by the Jewish commandment against graven images, the young Chagall never saw so much as a drawing until, one day, he watched a schoolmate copying a magazine illustration. He was ridiculed for his astonishment, but he began copying and improvising from magazines. Both Chagall's parents reluctantly agreed to let him study with Yehuda Pen, a Jewish artist in Vitebsk. Later, in 1906, they allowed their son to study in St. Petersburg, where he was exposed to Russian Iconography and folk art. At that time, Jews could leave the Pale only for business and employment and were required to carry a permit. Chagall, who was in St. Petersburg without a permit, was imprisoned briefly. His first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, was a product of a rich cultivated and intellectual group of Jews in Vitebsk. Chagall was made commissar for the arts for the area, charged with directing its cultural life and establishing an art school. Russian folklore, peasant life and landscapes persisted in his work all his life. In 1910 a rich patron, a lawyer named Vinaver, staked him to a crucial trip to Paris, where young artists were revolutionizing art. He also sent him a handsome allowance of 125 francs (in those days about $24) each month. Chagall rejected cubism, fauvism and futurism, but remained in Paris. He found a studio near Montparnasse in a famous twelve-sided wooden structure divided into wedge-shaped rooms. Chaim Soutine, a fellow Russian Jew...

Created by Jean Michel Basquiat for his exhibition at Yvon Lambert, Paris in 1988. Super vibrant colors with many interesting details of images and words combined in Basquiat's styli...

Late 20th century oil on paper by the French artist Armand Avril. Signed and dated bottom right. The painting is an interesting thematic work by Avril inspired by the iconic adverti...

Awesome black and white full-length capture of David Bowie and Cher posed on stage. David Bowie was an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music indu...

DAVID SHRIGLEY - Black Cats Everywhere Date of creation: 2021 Medium: 12 colour screenprint on Somerset satin paper Edition: 125 Size: 75 x 56 cm Condition: Brand new, in mint cond...

Woodcut in colors on vélin pur chiffon de Rives paper. Paper size: 13 x 10.375 inches. Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Catalogue raisonné reference: Michl...

Albert ZAVARO (1925-) Post Impressionism : Still Life with Fruit, c. 1965 Oil on canvas Signed lower center On canvas 60 x 73 cm (c. 24 x 29 in) PROVENANCE: Galerie Framond, Paris,...

Linger in Warmth is a minimalist abstract painting composed of undulating, flame-like shapes in a vivid tangerine orange, set against a flat, soft pink background. The composition pl...

Joseph Beuys Stripes from the House of the Shaman (Hand Signed), 1980 Silkscreen with offset lettering on wove paper; hand signed by Joseph Beuys Boldly signed on the front in graphi...

Sunset over the Highland Loch by F. E. Jamieson (British 1895-1950) signed oil on canvas, framed framed: 26 x 36 inches canvas: 20 x 30 inches provenance: private collection, UK cond...

Portrait of a Woman in Traditional Headpiece French/ Swiss, dated 1855 signed oil on canvas, framed dated 1855 framed: 34 x 27 inches canvas: 32 x 25 inches Provenance: private coll...

Original Antique Western Nevada Desert Oil Landscape by Phoebe K. Higgins A mid-century desert oil landscape of Western Nevada by Phoebe K. Higgins (American, 1895 - c 1960), circa ...

Title: French Gouache Painting of Native American Mustang Hunt in Nevada by Emile GALLOIS (1882-1965, French) Signed: Yes Medium: Original gouache painting on thick unframed paper, S...

This image features a colorful arrangement of pink, red and purple flowers by American artist, Gary Bukovnik. Bukovnik is an internationally acclaimed painter and printmaker who prim...

Guy C. Wiggins Silvery Days, Madison Square Park, 1962 Signed lower left; signed, titled "Silvery Days" and dated on the reverse Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Guy Carleton Wiggins is...

Otto Lindberg (1880–1955) – Twilight Reflections, Söderhamn Archipelago Serene Twilight in Söderhamn’s Archipelago This monumental oil on canvas (measuring 65 x 120 cm) presents a s...

At Escat Gallery we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of trust and professionalism for our collectors. Every artwork in our collection comes with a Certificate of Au...

Trawler boat off the Norfolk Coast - Vintage Oil Painting by British Artist Art measures 12 x 16 inches Frame measures. 13 x 17 inches A striking maritime scene rendered with bo...

Albert ZAVARO (1925-) Fauvist Still Life with Fruits and Flowers, 1967 Oil on canvas Signed lower right corner On canvas 60 x 73 cm (c. 24 x 29 in) PROVENANCE: Galerie Framond, Par...

Due to the large size of this piece, it will be shipped in a tube. We can assist you in finding a framer in your area who can mount the artwork once it arrives at its destination. If...

Awesome black and white action shot of Sammy Davis Jr. in mid-jump. Sammy Davis Jr. was an American singer, dancer, actor, vaudevillian, and comedian sometimes called "the greatest ...

This is an exclusive handprinted limited edition cyanotype. "Azure Clouds" is an cyanotype of the semi-abstract patterns of clouds in the sky, showing shades of blue. Details: + Tit...

English painter (19th century) - King Charles Cavalier Spaniel dog. 50 x 65 cm without frame, 61 x 77 cm with frame. Antique oil painting on canvas, in a gilded wooden frame. Cond...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Alice in Wonderland MEDIUM: Etching SIGNED: Hand Signed PUBLISHER: Transworld Art EDITION NUMBER: A IX/XL PAPER: Japon Paper MEASUREMENTS: 29.75"...

Inspired by dance and weightlessness, Granville Beals' industrial metal sculptures are primarily about relationships. His original artworks capture the essence of Abstract Expression...

This evocative evening view of Visby by Axel Lindman captures Visby in the warm, fading light of the setting sun. Rendered with atmospheric sensitivity, the silhouette of Visby’s med...

'1. Castnia eudesmia 2. Castnia huebneri 3. Synemon catocaloides 4. Neocastnia nicevelli' Late 19th century colour lithograph of butterflies.

Terry O’Neill CBE is one of the world’s most collected photographers, with work hanging in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. From presidents to pop stars, he ...

This gorgeous female figure is balanced on a wooden pedestal with a stray hand on her torso. Her muscular figure is enhanced by the sepia tones and the play of light on the subject....

Oil painting on canvas combines abstract shapes and representational elements. It features a palette of blue, green, red, and yellow tones that intertwine in a mosaic of fragments ov...

At Escat Gallery we are committed to maintaining the highest standards of trust and professionalism for our collectors. Every artwork in our collection comes with a Certificate of Au...

Monte Carlo Casino Tony Minartz (French, 1873 - 1994) watercolour on artist paper painting : 16.5 x 12.75 inches Provenance: private collection in the South of France, Condition: ...

1978 Photolithograph. No condition issues 41 x 28 cm 16 1/8 x 11 in Special edition portfolio in card folder and Newton stamped bag. Individually signed in pencil lower right rect...

Constance-Marie Charpentier (1767–1849) Academy Drawing of a Man Black and white chalk on paper 56 x 43 cm Provenance: Private collection Constance-Marie Charpentier, a student of ...

Monogrammed lower right, 'DM' for David Monies (Danish, 1812-1894) and dated 1849. Provenance: By descent in the family of the sitter, Peter Andreas Löser (1834–1857). Framed in a su...

Beautiful Post-Impressionist landscape painted in Bloomsbury Group era period and style. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches; 22 x 28 inches framed. Unsigned. Some areas of paint loss as...

A fine post-impressionist coastal sunset oil painting by American artist Hayley Lever Australian American artist Hayley Lever (1876-1958). Lever was born in Adelaide, Australia and s...

"Lemons" is a realistic oil painting on panel, depicting 2 ripe lemons and their branches resting on a rustic blue table. A single blossom contrasts white against deep and vibrant gr...

Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Signed in the plate, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Picasso, Vingt-Neuf Portraits Imaginaires, 1969. Published by Éditions Cerc...

In this serene nocturnal scene, two sailboats drift quietly under the glow of a full moon. The largest boat’s dark sails are silhouetted against a deep blue sky, while the moon hangs...

Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: from the album, Les Cavaliers d'Ombre; Sous le Manteau de Feu, 1956. Pub...

Sit Pretty Maud Earl (British, American, 1863-1943) Oil on Canvas Laid to Board Signed Lower Right 19 x 25 inches 25.25 x 31.25 inches with frame Alice Maud Earl was born in Maryleb...

Antique American Bronze sculpture of Diana The Huntress with a Doe, by Edward Francis McCartan (1879-1947), New York circa 1920. The Bronze depicting the Roman Goddess Diana, holding...

Lithograph on vélin d’Arches paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, La Féerie et Le Royaume, Lithographies Originales de Marc Chagall, 1972...

Sol LeWitt Limited Edition Geometric Abstraction Silk Scarf, ca. 1987 Limited Edition Silkscreen on 100% Italian silk scarf/shawl Signed on the fabric with artist's printed signature...

David HOCKNEY The Diver (Olympische Spiele München 1972) Edition published by Edition Olympia 1972 GmbH, Munich Original from the time, no re-print or re-edition Comes with a Certif...

Paulette Van Roekens Old Whaling Wharf, Newport, Rhode Island, 1921 Signed and dated lower left Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches Painter Paulette van Roekens was born in France and attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her talent was recognized early on, and in 1916, she was awarded the John Sartain Fellowship at the Philadelphia School of Design. Her early paintings often were of still lifes, using flowers...

This contemporary abstract painting was inspired by nature. A gifted abstract artist with an impressive portfolio, Sandra Goldie’s first series of oil paintings evoke the serenity f...

color lithograph, linocut, and screenprint with hand-coloring collage on T.H. Saunders and hand-cut Somerset paper Edition 48 of 60 signed, dated, and numbered in pencil (sheet) 52....

Artist/ School: Barbara Doyle, British b. 1917 Barbara Doyle (British b.1917, born in Halifax Yorkshire, lived most of her life on the South Coast of England. She was an extremely a...

Artist/ School: British School, late 19th century Title: Sunset over a Highland Loch. Most likely Scottish but possibly Irish. Medium: oil painting ...

Andy Warhol Mona Lisa Bearbrick Vinyl Figures: Set of two (400% & 100%): A unique, timeless collectible trademarked & licensed by the Estate of Andy Warhol. The partnered collectible...

Victor Vasarely (Hungarian/French, 1906-1997), "Yllam", Screenprint in Colors, circa 1950, numbered edition "190/200" lower left, signed in pencil lower right, silver-tone frame. Ima...

Still Life with Ox Skull was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1942 during his World War II or War Period. This period was marked by somber and darker themes, reflecting the impact of the ...

Keith Haring (after) Champions / The Contemporary Art Center of Cleveland Poster, 1984 (Hand signed by Keith Haring), 1988 Offset lithograph (Hand sig...

Jacob Kramer 1892 - 1962, was a Ukrainian born painter. Kramer was born in the former Russian Empire now known as Ukraine, his parents were artistically trained his father was a pain...

Fig. 9 BASE MORADO, 2025 by Rodrigo Spinel From The Dibujar el Tiempo Series Indian ink on 350g Strathmore Bristol paper Frame size: 73.4 H x 58.1 W x 3 D cm. Image size: 61 H x 45....

Winter Moon Rising by Frank Schott 60 x 48 inches / 152cm x 122cm signed edition of 7 40 x 32 inches / 102cm x 81cm signed edition of 25 archival quality fine art pigment print li...

"The Canal" by Geneviève Zondervan (French 1922-2013) oil painting on canvas, framed stamped verso framed: 8.37 x 11.25 inches Very fine 20th century oil painting on canvas by th...

Joshua Shaw (Billingborough 1776-1860 New Jersey) An open landscape with cattle watering signed and dated 'J. Shaw. 1810' lower right Oil on canvas Canvas Size 36 x 51 in Framed Siz...

BRECCIA FRAGMENT PLINTH Italy, 18th Century Breccia medicea 55 x d 25 cm 21 3/4 x d 9 3/4 in

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...

Piazza Navona allagata solito farsi nelle Feste di Agosto Etching, 1752 Signed in the plate lower right (see photo) From: Della Magnificenze di Roma Antica e Moderna ( The Magnificen...

11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis photographed May 21, 1970. Signed by Jack Mitchell on the verso. Comes dire...

Romantic Sunset Landsca English School, early 1800's period oil on wood panel, framed in antique gilt frame framed: 27 x 31.5 inches panel: 16 x 21.5 inches provenance: private colle...

Sunset in the Scottish Highlands by Arthur Stanford, signed and dated 1900's oil painting on canvas, framed canvas: 15 x 20 inches framed: 23.5 x 28.5 inches condition: very good and...

Mountain Landscape Painting of the English Lake District by British Artist, Philip Stanton. This is a high quality original, oil on canvas, in great condition and ready to hang! Art measures 30 x 20 inches Frame measures 38 x 28 inches (Presented in an ornate gold frame, commensurate with age) This exquisite oil painting captures the breathtaking beauty of a serene lake nestled among majestic mountains, reminiscent of the iconic landscapes found in England’s Lake District...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on canvas. Signed lower right, titled and inventoried verso. 43.25 x 47.25 in. 44.75 x 48.5 in. (framed...

Signed lower right, 'Bickerstaff' for George Sanders Bickerstaff (American, 1893-1954) and painted circa 1950. This California landscape painter was born in Arizona and studied at t...

Mixed media with acrylic painting and color lithography on paper. Hand-signed in acrylic paint on front by Peter Max. A unique variation. Artwork size: 16 x 12 inches. Frame size...

Oil Painting of a Cottage on the Rugged Cliffs & Coastline of Northern Ireland Art measures 22 x 16 inches Frame measures 34 x 28 inches Presented in a large gold frame with cre...

A beautiful 19th century French impressionist oil on canvas depicting a tranquil river landscape with lone traveller by Alexandre Charles Joseph Gittard. Excellent quality and atmo...