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Item Ships From: New York
Test Pattern 2 (Grey Study)
By Tom McGlynn
Located in London, GB
Ink, gouache and acrylic on Fabriano paper - Unframed. Test Pattern series sets up a generic template as a poetic prompt to consider how behavioural responses to color and form stim...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Acrylic, Gouache

Half & Half Again - Original Work on Folded Paper - Abstract Minimalist
By Jean Wolff
Located in New York, NY
Half & Half Again is an original work on folded paper by artist Jean Wolff. 30" x 22' 2013 Signed on back (verso) in pencil with name and date Optional framing JEAN WOLFF is a Ne...
Category

2010s Minimalist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper

Never Ending Story
Located in New York, NY
Philip Wittmann work is based on signs. Signs are for him an intermediary between abstraction and writing. He started painting 32 years ago, at the age...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Paper, Archival Ink, Acrylic, Archival Paper

Unique Cloud Drawing, hand signed, dated and inscribed to Caroline, in monograph
By KAWS
Located in New York, NY
KAWS Unique Cloud Drawing, inscribed to Caroline Original drawing done in silver marker. Hand signed, inscribed and dated. Held in hardback monograph 11 × 8 3/4 inches Boldly hand s...
Category

2010s Street Art New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Permanent Marker, Offset

An Interior Language IV
Located in New York, NY
About the Series: Gilliam began the series Life Lines in 2017 after recently coming into possession of MRI scans of her brain. The scans, which she spent hours pouring over, both fas...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Etching, Aquatint, Photographic Paper, Photogram

Handwritten Letter to the Artist's Parents (unique hand signed postcard franked)
By Carl Andre
Located in New York, NY
Carl Andre Handwritten Letter to the Artist's Parents, 1974 Letter handwritten with black marker on postmarked, stamped postcard (hand signed by Carl Andre) Boldly signed @ - the art...
Category

1970s Minimalist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Permanent Marker, Offset, Postcard, Lithograph

Einstein's Ring
Located in New York, NY
Jody Rasch’s work is drawn from various science practices, including astronomy, biology, and sub-atomic physics. In his subject matter and technique, Rasch builds on historical conce...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Handmade Paper

Nancy Cohen "Topography of the Body" Paper Pulp and Handmade Paper
By Nancy Cohen
Located in New York, NY
Line is the operative formal element in the work shown here, but there are many other lines in play. Pieces walk a line between drawings that might be tapestries or sculptures or pa...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Handmade Paper

The World in a Tomato, abstract oil pastel vegetable still life, 2019
By Daisy Craddock
Located in New York, NY
Daisy Craddock's The World in a Tomato is an abstracted red and green still life of an heirloom tomato, rendered in oil pastel. Drawn from life, Craddo...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Oil Pastel

Fractured Light, Abstract Expressionist Watercolor by Danielle Epstein
By Danielle Epstein
Located in Long Island City, NY
Danielle Epstein - Fractured Light, Year: 1987, Medium: Watercolor and pastel on paper, signed and titled verso, Size: 40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.28 cm)
Category

1980s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel, Watercolor

Delta (Abstract Drawing)
By Margaret Neil
Located in London, GB
Diptych. Paper size: 96.5 x 127 cm/38 x 50"" Image size: 91.5 x 122 cm/ 36 x 48"" Neill is inspired by the fluid geometric qualities of curve and line, in particular how the natura...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal, Paper

UNIQUE one-of-a-kind Signed Drawings on Everything is Shit Except You Love print
Located in New York, NY
Stephen Powers Everything is Shit Except You Love (How We Met is Our Story), with unique drawings, 2017 Original graphite drawings on screen print in four colors on 335 gsm Coventry ...
Category

2010s Street Art New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media, Pencil, Graphite, Screen

USA (Girl Scouts, Age 50 Version); Stamp art w Colored Pencil Drawing
By Andrea Moreau
Located in Hudson, NY
USA (Girl Scouts, Age 50 Version) Stamp art w Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Moreau made in 2025 colored pencil and postage stamp on paper 30 x 22 inches 33 x 25 inches framed Thi...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media, Color Pencil

Astros Bravos V, Abstract Watercolor by Eduardo Arranz-Bravo
By Eduardo Arranz-Bravo
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Eduardo Arranz-Bravo, Spanish (1941 - ) Title: Astros Bravos V Year: circa 1990 Medium: Watercolor on paper, signed Size: 9.5 x 8 inches Frame:...
Category

1990s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Robert Petersen After A Rain #2 unique abstract signed collage, Castelli Gallery
Located in New York, NY
Robert Petersen After A Rain #2, 1987 Collage on Paper: Pencil, Oil, Acrylic and Cloth Hand signed, dated and titled on lower front with Castelli Graphics label on the back Frame Inc...
Category

1980s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Textile, Oil, Acrylic, Graphite

"With Millions of Arms, Eyes, and Bodies" mixed media
By Meg Hitchcock
Located in New York, NY
Meg Hitchcock With Millions of Arms, Eyes, and Bodies, 2023 Text from the Bhagavad Gita, acrylic and graphite on paper 22 5/8 x 18 in. frame size: 27 x 22.25 in. (Hit001)
Category

2010s Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Acrylic, Color Pencil, Graphite

Synchromist Abstraction watercolor by Jay Van Everen
Located in Hudson, NY
Jay Van Everen was a pioneering early American abstractionist known for his affiliation with the Synchromists. His abstract color studies would take him to the forefront of the Ameri...
Category

1920s Modern New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor

Untitled (Linear Composition in Black Purple and Orange)
By Joan Snyder
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Joan Snyder's early 1970s period is known as the best of her career, now an iconic period of time for feminist abstract painting of the era. This fully finished work on paper reads l...
Category

1970s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Gouache, Archival Paper, Graphite

U 45 - white abstract geometric minimalist 3D composition with folded paper
Located in New York, NY
Anna Kruhelska is a visual artist and architect working across fields of art and design. She creates abstract, three-dimensional paper wall reliefs that startle in their intricacy an...
Category

2010s Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Archival Paper

Josette Urso "Scuba" Water Color on Paper, Framed
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Prize Blade 1, abstract male nude, expressionist brushwork, dark, monochromatic
By Tom Bennett
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Monotype Dramatic imagery from Tom Bennett’s series of monotypes, blending surrealistic mindscapes with stark realism About Tom Bennett: With quick brushstrokes, Tom Bennett creates representational images of human figures and animals, emphasizing movement in a manner reminiscent of Lucien Freud, Edgar Degas and the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Elongated and blurry, the horse racing up a hill (Canter Fritz, 2002) and the sinister cat landing a leap (Chien Blanc, 1998) elicit a sense of foreboding enhanced by Bennett’s somber palette; his female figures too reflect a grim sense of humor with their distorted nude bodies. The face of Untitled Figure (1997), for example, is obscured by layers of dark paint. Classically trained as a painter, he initially worked in oil on canvas but discovered that monotype printing enabled him to “literally push the image around,” creating an essential element of motion. To overcome the limited scale of monotypes, however, he switched to painting on slick-surfaced plastic. Tom Bennett’s practice is rooted in the classical tradition where painting and drawing from life is highly regarded. Bennett’s work is heavily influenced by Francis Bacon, Frank Auberbauch and foremost his father, Harry Bennett, who was also an artist. Tom’s time living abroad in Spain and traveling through Eastern Europe and Africa provided the artistic freedom to explore many of the techniques and subject matter that continue to define his practice. Bennett was born and raised in Connecticut. His mediums include monotypes, oil on paper, canvas or styrene board. In a technique that Tom started over 4 years ago, several of his monotypes have been painted over with oil paint using a palette knife, brush, or his fingers to re-purpose the underlying image. These works are a testament to Bennett’s ability to quickly and concisely compose an image with expressive brush strokes, foreshortened figures and expertly rendered light. Tom’s work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions worldwide. Bennett lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently represented by Tabla Rasa...
Category

2010s Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Monotype, Archival Ink, Archival Paper

Unique SIGNED Abstract Expressionist drawing major WPA artist, Estate issued COA
By William Baziotes
Located in New York, NY
WILLIAM BAZIOTES Untitled Abstract Expressionist Mid Century Modern ink drawing with Estate COA, ca. 1955 Ink Drawing on Paper Signed lower right recto. Accompanied by letter of aut...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink

Josette Urso "Sea Chain" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Color Circle and Star, Marker on fabric print Hand signed (ed of only 20) Framed
By Polly Apfelbaum
Located in New York, NY
Polly Apfelbaum Color Circle and Star, 2004 Fabric Marker and Fabric Dye on Velvet Cotton Signed and dated in ink by the artist on the front with artist's inkstamp. Frame Included Si...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Fabric, Dye, Ink, Mixed Media, Permanent Marker

Morris Graves, Abandon Nest, 1950, drawing
By Morris Graves
Located in New York, NY
This is a complicated drawing, even for Morris Graves (1910-2001), known as the Mystical Painter of Nature. Graves tried to be sensitive to the slightest tremor or breeze that a sma...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor

Josette Urso "Nest" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Josette Urso "Nest" Water Color on Paper
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Colophon 14, Contemporary Abstract Painting
By Willy Bo Richardson
Located in New York, NY
Watercolor and gouache on paper Signed, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Willy Bo Richardson received an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute in...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

Untitled - Abstract 5, Abstract Expressionist Watercolor by Max Epstein
By Max Epstein
Located in Long Island City, NY
Max Epstein, Canadian (1932 - 2002) - Untitled - Abstract 5, Year: 1973, Medium: Watercolor on Paper, Signed and dated l.r., Size: 30 in. x 22 in. (76.2 cm x 55.88 cm), Frame Size...
Category

1970s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Josette Urso "Lake and Sky" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Josette Urso Lake and Sky, 2022 watercolor on paper 6 x 6 in.
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Wounded Beast
Located in New York, NY
Colored marker on heavy paper
Category

2010s New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Permanent Marker

Monday Series 17
Located in New York, NY
Friederike Oeser, a contemporary abstract painter, lives and works in Munich, Germany. For Oeser there is no hierarchy of visual value. It all has import—whether it be a trickle of w...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Oil Pastel

Prison 14, Unique, signed, Graphite pencil and ink drawing on paper, Framed
By Peter Halley
Located in New York, NY
Peter Halley Prison 14, 1995 Graphite pencil and ink drawing on paper. Hand signed. Titled. Dated. Framed. Hand signed on lower right front corner Unique Frame included Unique earli...
Category

1990s Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Graphite

"CDMX #5" Contemporary Figurative Painting by Brad Fisher, Watercolor on Paper
By Brad Fisher
Located in New York, NY
Represented by Tuleste Factory CDMX #5 Watercolor on paper 12 x 9 in Shipping is not included. See our shipping policies. Please contact us for shipping quotes and customization ...
Category

2010s New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Geometric Abstraction (unique, signed graphite drawing gifted to fellow artist)
By Peter Halley
Located in New York, NY
Peter Halley Untitled Geometric Abstraction, ca. 1990 Graphite and Ink Signed in graphite pencil by Peter Halley; lower right front Frame included: floated and framed in wood frame U...
Category

1990s Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Graphite

Lost Pets VII : Abstract artwork on paper
By Iliyan Ivanov
Located in New York, NY
Abstract artwork on paper by a Bulgarian/American artist Iliyan Ivanov. Ivanov continues to treat color in a multilayered approach, introducing a wid...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Acrylic

Into the Sunset
By Andrei Petrov
Located in New York, NY
Andrei Petrov is an American artist of Russian origins. He is best known for his abstract oil paintings where calibrated stratifications of intense shades of colors are scraped to ex...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Oil

"Your Own Heart" unique signed, colleague of Warhol, Haring, Basquiat & Scharf
By Ronnie Cutrone
Located in New York, NY
Ronnie Cutrone Your Own Heart, 1987 Watercolor and Silkscreen on Paper Signed, dated and numbered from the edition of 7, with each work being unique. 40 × 30 inches Fantastic vintage...
Category

1980s Street Art New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media, Watercolor, Permanent Marker, Screen

Drain Vortex, Surrealist Mixed Media Drawing by Thom Cooney-Crawford
By Thom Cooney-Crawford
Located in Long Island City, NY
Thom Cooney-Crawford, American (1944 - ) - Drain Vortex, Year: 2000, Medium: Acrylic, Collage and Gold Leaf on Paper, signed and dated in pencil lower right, Size: 30 x 41.25 in. ...
Category

Early 2000s Surrealist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Gold Leaf

Jamie Nares, Original flower monotype (unique, hand signed) Framed, de-accession
By James Nares
Located in New York, NY
James Nares Untitled flower monotype, 1988 Monotype on hand made paper Pencil signed and dated by James Nares on the lower right front Frame included: floated in the original wood fr...
Category

1980s Contemporary New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Handmade Paper, Monotype

Abstract Work on Paper by Clay Johnson, Untitled (#725)
By Clay Johnson
Located in White Plains, NY
'Untitled (#725)' 2023 by American artist, Clay Johnson. Acrylic on Arches paper, 20 x 16 in. This colorful abstract painting features bands of colors in orange, red, pink, white, an...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Archival Paper

Abstract Work on Paper by Clay Johnson, Untitled (#721)
By Clay Johnson
Located in White Plains, NY
'Untitled (#721)' 2023 by American artist, Clay Johnson. Acrylic on Arches paper, 20 x 16 in. This colorful abstract painting features bands of colors in red, yellow beige, white, an...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Archival Paper

Exhibition Poster, Conceptual Poster with Pen Drawing by Genichiro Inokuma
By Genichiro Inokuma
Located in Long Island City, NY
Genichiro Inokuma, Japanese (1902 - 1993) - Exhibition Poster, Year: 1968, Medium: Poster, with pen drawing, signed and dated in the plate, Size: ...
Category

1960s Conceptual New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pen, Offset

Abstract vs. Figurative Portrait - Watercolor by Cuban Artist Alain Pino
By Alain Pino
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Abstract vs. Figurative Neutral Original Watercolor by Cuban Artist Alain Pino Pino’s new works continue his exploration on the intersection between identity and industrial design. ...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Archival Paper

Spring (Abstract Expressionism painting)
By Gina Werfel
Located in London, GB
Acrylic and mixed media on paper - Unframed Werfel employs expressive, lyrical gestures that create bursts of movement and energy. Her color choices create a range of tones from the...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Mixed Media, Acrylic

Fragment (Abstract Expressionism painting)
By Gina Werfel
Located in London, GB
Acrylic and mixed media on paper - Unframed Werfel employs expressive, lyrical gestures that create bursts of movement and energy. Her color choices create a range of tones from the...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Mixed Media, Acrylic

Lost Pets XV : Abstract artwork on paper
By Iliyan Ivanov
Located in New York, NY
Abstract artwork on paper by a Bulgarian/American artist Iliyan Ivanov. Ivanov continues to treat color in a multilayered approach, introducing a wid...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Acrylic

Study for Old Canal, Red and Blue (Rockaway, Morris Canal)
By Oscar Florianus Bluemner
Located in New York, NY
Oscar Bluemner was a German and an American, a trained architect who read voraciously in art theory, color theory, and philosophy, a writer of art criticism both in German and English, and, above all, a practicing artist. Bluemner was an intense man, who sought to express and share, through drawing and painting, universal emotional experience. Undergirded by theory, Bluemner chose color and line for his vehicles; but color especially became the focus of his passion. He was neither abstract artist nor realist, but employed the “expressional use of real phenomena” to pursue his ends. (Oscar Bluemner, from unpublished typescript on “Modern Art” for Camera Work, in Bluemner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, as cited and quoted in Jeffrey R. Hayes, Oscar Bluemner [1991], p. 60. The Bluemner papers in the Archives [hereafter abbreviated as AAA] are the primary source for Bluemner scholars. Jeffrey Hayes read them thoroughly and translated key passages for his doctoral dissertation, Oscar Bluemner: Life, Art, and Theory [University of Maryland, 1982; UMI reprint, 1982], which remains the most comprehensive source on Bluemner. In 1991, Hayes published a monographic study of Bluemner digested from his dissertation and, in 2005, contributed a brief essay to the gallery show at Barbara Mathes, op. cit.. The most recent, accessible, and comprehensive view of Bluemner is the richly illustrated, Barbara Haskell, Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color, exhib. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2005.]) Bluemner was born in the industrial city of Prenzlau, Prussia, the son and grandson of builders and artisans. He followed the family predilection and studied architecture, receiving a traditional and thorough German training. He was a prize-winning student and appeared to be on his way to a successful career when he decided, in 1892, to emigrate to America, drawn perhaps by the prospect of immediate architectural opportunities at the Chicago World’s Fair, but, more importantly, seeking a freedom of expression and an expansiveness that he believed he would find in the New World. The course of Bluemner’s American career proved uneven. He did indeed work as an architect in Chicago, but left there distressed at the formulaic quality of what he was paid to do. Plagued by periods of unemployment, he lived variously in Chicago, New York, and Boston. At one especially low point, he pawned his coat and drafting tools and lived in a Bowery flophouse, selling calendars on the streets of New York and begging for stale bread. In Boston, he almost decided to return home to Germany, but was deterred partly because he could not afford the fare for passage. He changed plans and direction again, heading for Chicago, where he married Lina Schumm, a second-generation German-American from Wisconsin. Their first child, Paul Robert, was born in 1897. In 1899, Bluemner became an American citizen. They moved to New York City where, until 1912, Bluemner worked as an architect and draftsman to support his family, which also included a daughter, Ella Vera, born in 1903. All the while, Oscar Bluemner was attracted to the freer possibilities of art. He spent weekends roaming Manhattan’s rural margins, visiting the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey, sketching landscapes in hundreds of small conté crayon drawings. Unlike so many city-based artists, Bluemner did not venture out in search of pristine countryside or unspoiled nature. As he wrote in 1932, in an unsuccessful application for a Guggenheim Fellowship, “I prefer the intimate landscape of our common surroundings, where town and country mingle. For we are in the habit to carry into them our feelings of pain and pleasure, our moods” (as quoted by Joyce E. Brodsky in “Oscar Bluemner in Black and White,” p. 4, in Bulletin 1977, I, no. 5, The William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, Connecticut). By 1911, Bluemner had found a powerful muse in a series of old industrial towns, mostly in New Jersey, strung along the route of the Morris Canal. While he educated himself at museums and art galleries, Bluemner entered numerous architectural competitions. In 1903, in partnership with Michael Garven, he designed a new courthouse for Bronx County. Garven, who had ties to Tammany Hall, attempted to exclude Bluemner from financial or artistic credit, but Bluemner promptly sued, and, finally, in 1911, after numerous appeals, won a $7,000 judgment. Barbara Haskell’s recent catalogue reveals more details of Bluemner’s architectural career than have previously been known. Bluemner the architect was also married with a wife and two children. He took what work he could get and had little pride in what he produced, a galling situation for a passionate idealist, and the undoubted explanation for why he later destroyed the bulk of his records for these years. Beginning in 1907, Bluemner maintained a diary, his “Own Principles of Painting,” where he refined his ideas and incorporated insights from his extensive reading in philosophy and criticism both in English and German to create a theoretical basis for his art. Sometime between 1908 and 1910, Bluemner’s life as an artist was transformed by his encounter with the German-educated Alfred Stieglitz, proprietor of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue. The two men were kindred Teutonic souls. Bluemner met Stieglitz at about the time that Stieglitz was shifting his serious attention away from photography and toward contemporary art in a modernist idiom. Stieglitz encouraged and presided over Bluemner’s transition from architect to painter. During the same period elements of Bluemner’s study of art began to coalesce into a personal vision. A Van Gogh show in 1908 convinced Bluemner that color could be liberated from the constraints of naturalism. In 1911, Bluemner visited a Cézanne watercolor show at Stieglitz’s gallery and saw, in Cézanne’s formal experiments, a path for uniting Van Gogh’s expressionist use of color with a reality-based but non-objective language of form. A definitive change of course in Bluemner’s professional life came in 1912. Ironically, it was the proceeds from his successful suit to gain credit for his architectural work that enabled Bluemner to commit to painting as a profession. Dividing the judgment money to provide for the adequate support of his wife and two children, he took what remained and financed a trip to Europe. Bluemner traveled across the Continent and England, seeing as much art as possible along the way, and always working at a feverish pace. He took some of his already-completed work with him on his European trip, and arranged his first-ever solo exhibitions in Berlin, Leipzig, and Elberfeld, Germany. After Bluemner returned from his study trip, he was a painter, and would henceforth return to drafting only as a last-ditch expedient to support his family when his art failed to generate sufficient income. Bluemner became part of the circle of Stieglitz artists at “291,” a group which included Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Arthur Dove. He returned to New York in time to show five paintings at the 1913 Armory Show and began, as well, to publish critical and theoretical essays in Stieglitz’s journal, Camera Work. In its pages he cogently defended the Armory Show against the onslaught of conservative attacks. In 1915, under Stieglitz’s auspices, Bluemner had his first American one-man show at “291.” Bluemner’s work offers an interesting contrast with that of another Stieglitz architect-turned-artist, John Marin, who also had New Jersey connections. The years after 1914 were increasingly uncomfortable. Bluemner remained, all of his life, proud of his German cultural legacy, contributing regularly to German language journals and newspapers in this country. The anti-German sentiment, indeed mania, before and during World War I, made life difficult for the artist and his family. It is impossible to escape the political agenda in Charles Caffin’s critique of Bluemner’s 1915 show. Caffin found in Bluemner’s precise and earnest explorations of form, “drilled, regimented, coerced . . . formations . . . utterly alien to the American idea of democracy” (New York American, reprinted in Camera Work, no. 48 [Oct. 1916], as quoted in Hayes, 1991, p. 71). In 1916, seeking a change of scene, more freedom to paint, and lower expenses, Bluemner moved his family to New Jersey, familiar terrain from his earlier sketching and painting. During the ten years they lived in New Jersey, the Bluemner family moved around the state, usually, but not always, one step ahead of the rent collector. In 1917, Stieglitz closed “291” and did not reestablish a Manhattan gallery until 1925. In the interim, Bluemner developed relationships with other dealers and with patrons. Throughout his career he drew support and encouragement from art cognoscenti who recognized his talent and the high quality of his work. Unfortunately, that did not pay the bills. Chronic shortfalls were aggravated by Bluemner’s inability to sustain supportive relationships. He was a difficult man, eternally bitter at the gap between the ideal and the real. Hard on himself and hard on those around him, he ultimately always found a reason to bite the hand that fed him. Bluemner never achieved financial stability. He left New Jersey in 1926, after the death of his beloved wife, and settled in South Braintree, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, where he continued to paint until his own death in 1938. As late as 1934 and again in 1936, he worked for New Deal art programs designed to support struggling artists. Bluemner held popular taste and mass culture in contempt, and there was certainly no room in his quasi-religious approach to art for accommodation to any perceived commercial advantage. His German background was also problematic, not only for its political disadvantages, but because, in a world where art is understood in terms of national styles, Bluemner was sui generis, and, to this day, lacks a comfortable context. In 1933, Bluemner adopted Florianus (definitively revising his birth names, Friedrich Julius Oskar) as his middle name and incorporated it into his signature, to present “a Latin version of his own surname that he believed reinforced his career-long effort to translate ordinary perceptions into the more timeless and universal languages of art” (Hayes 1982, p. 189 n. 1). In 1939, critic Paul Rosenfeld, a friend and member of the Stieglitz circle, responding to the difficulty in categorizing Bluemner, perceptively located him among “the ranks of the pre-Nazi German moderns” (Hayes 1991, p. 41). Bluemner was powerfully influenced in his career by the intellectual heritage of two towering figures of nineteenth-century German culture, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. A keen student of color theory, Bluemner gave pride of place to the formulations of Goethe, who equated specific colors with emotional properties. In a November 19, 1915, interview in the German-language newspaper, New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (Abendblatt), he stated: I comprehend the visible world . . . abstract the primary-artistic . . . and after these elements of realty are extracted and analyzed, I reconstruct a new free creation that still resembles the original, but also . . . becomes an objectification of the abstract idea of beauty. The first—and most conspicuous mark of this creation is . . . colors which accord with the character of things, the locality . . . [and which] like the colors of Cranach, van der Weyden, or Durer, are of absolute purity, breadth, and luminosity. . . . I proceed from the psychological use of color by the Old Masters . . . [in which] we immediately recognize colors as carriers of “sorrow and joy” in Goethe’s sense, or as signs of human relationship. . . . Upon this color symbolism rests the beauty as well as the expressiveness, of earlier sacred paintings. Above all, I recognize myself as a contributor to the new German theory of light and color, which expands Goethe’s law of color through modern scientific means (as quoted in Hayes 1991, p. 71). Hayes has traced the global extent of Bluemner’s intellectual indebtedness to Hegel (1991, pp. 36–37). More specifically, Bluemner made visual, in his art, the Hegelian world view, in the thesis and antithesis of the straight line and the curve, the red and the green, the vertical and the horizontal, the agitation and the calm. Bluemner respected all of these elements equally, painting and drawing the tension and dynamic of the dialectic and seeking ultimate reconciliation in a final visual synthesis. Bluemner was a keen student of art, past and present, looking, dissecting, and digesting all that he saw. He found precedents for his non-naturalist use of brilliant-hued color not only in the work Van Gogh and Cezanne, but also in Gauguin, the Nabis, and the Symbolists, as well as among his contemporaries, the young Germans of Der Blaue Reiter. Bluemner was accustomed to working to the absolute standard of precision required of the architectural draftsman, who adjusts a design many times until its reality incorporates both practical imperatives and aesthetic intentions. Hayes describes Bluemner’s working method, explaining how the artist produced multiple images playing on the same theme—in sketch form, in charcoal, and in watercolor, leading to the oil works that express the ultimate completion of his process (Hayes, 1982, pp. 156–61, including relevant footnotes). Because of Bluemner’s working method, driven not only by visual considerations but also by theoretical constructs, his watercolor and charcoal studies have a unique integrity. They are not, as is sometimes the case with other artists, rough preparatory sketches. They stand on their own, unfinished only in the sense of not finally achieving Bluemner’s carefully considered purpose. The present charcoal drawing is one of a series of images that take as their starting point the Morris Canal as it passed through Rockaway, New Jersey. The Morris Canal industrial towns that Bluemner chose as the points of departure for his early artistic explorations in oil included Paterson with its silk mills (which recalled the mills in the artist’s childhood home in Elberfeld), the port city of Hoboken, Newark, and, more curiously, a series of iron ore mining and refining towns, in the north central part of the state that pre-dated the Canal, harkening back to the era of the Revolutionary War. The Rockaway theme was among the original group of oil paintings that Bluemner painted in six productive months from July through December 1911 and took with him to Europe in 1912. In his painting journal, Bluemner called this work Morris Canal at Rockaway N.J. (AAA, reel 339, frames 150 and 667, Hayes, 1982, pp. 116–17), and exhibited it at the Galerie Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin in 1912 as Rockaway N. J. Alter Kanal. After his return, Bluemner scraped down and reworked these canvases. The Rockaway picture survives today, revised between 1914 and 1922, as Old Canal, Red and Blue (Rockaway River) in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D. C. (color illus. in Haskell, fig. 48, p. 65). For Bluemner, the charcoal expression of his artistic vision was a critical step in composition. It represented his own adaptation of Arthur Wesley’s Dow’s (1857–1922) description of a Japanese...
Category

20th Century American Modern New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Untitled
By Charles Houghton Howard
Located in New York, NY
Charles Houghton Howard was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the third of five children in a cultured and educated family with roots going back to the Massachusetts Bay colony. His father, John Galen Howard, was an architect who had trained at M.I.T. and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and apprenticed in Boston with Henry Hobson Richardson. In New York, the elder Howard worked for McKim, Mead and White before establishing a successful private practice. Mary Robertson Bradbury Howard, Charles’s mother, had studied art before her marriage. John Galen Howard moved his household to California in 1902 to assume the position of supervising architect of the new University of California campus at Berkeley and to serve as Professor of Architecture and the first Dean of the School of Architecture (established in 1903). The four Howard boys grew up to be artists and all married artists, leaving a combined family legacy of art making in the San Francisco Bay area that endures to this day, most notably in design, murals, and reliefs at the Coit Tower and in buildings on the Berkeley campus. Charles Howard graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1921 as a journalism major and pursued graduate studies in English at Harvard and Columbia Universities before embarking on a two-year trip to Europe. Howard went to Europe as a would-be writer. But a near-religious experience, seeing a picture by Giorgione in a remote town outside of Venice, proved a life-altering epiphany. In his own words, “I cut the tour at once and hurried immediately back to Paris, to begin painting. I have been painting whenever I could ever since” (Charles Howard, “What Concerns Me,” Magazine of Art 39 [February 1946], p. 63). Giorgione’s achievement, in utilizing a structured and rational visual language of art to convey high emotion on canvas, instantly convinced Howard that painting, and not literature, offered the best vehicle to express what he wanted to say. Howard returned to the United States in 1925, confirmed in his intent to become an artist. Howard settled in New York and supported himself as a painter in the decorating workshop of Louis Bouché and Rudolph Guertler, where he specialized in mural painting. Devoting spare time to his own work, he lived in Greenwich Village and immersed himself in the downtown avant-garde cultural milieu. The late 1920s and early 1930s were the years of Howard’s art apprenticeship. He never pursued formal art instruction, but his keen eye, depth of feeling, and intense commitment to the process of art making, allowed him to assimilate elements of painting intuitively from the wide variety of art that interested him. He found inspiration in the modernist movements of the day, both for their adherence to abstract formal qualities and for the cosmopolitan, international nature of the movements themselves. Influenced deeply by Surrealism, Howard was part of a group of American and European Surrealists clustered around Julien Levy. Levy opened his eponymously-named gallery in 1931, and rose to fame in January 1932, when he organized and hosted Surrealisme, the first ever exhibition of Surrealism in America, which included one work by Howard. Levy remained the preeminent force in advocating for Surrealism in America until he closed his gallery in 1949. Howard’s association with Levy in the early 1930s confirms the artist’s place among the avant-garde community in New York at that time. In 1933, Howard left New York for London. It is likely that among the factors that led to the move were Howard’s desire to be a part of an international art community, as well as his marriage to English artist, Madge Knight...
Category

20th Century American Modern New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Gouache, Graphite

Josette Urso "Blue Sand" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Walter Darby Bannard, Ammersee #2 signed painting by renowned Color Field artist
By Walter Darby Bannard
Located in New York, NY
Walter Darby Bannard Ammersee #2, 1975 Watercolor and acrylic painting on paper Signed, titled and dated lower recto This is a unique work Frame included: elegantly floated and frame...
Category

1970s Color-Field New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Mixed Media, Acrylic, Watercolor, Graphite

Josette Urso "Sea Stars" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Josette Urso "Sea Stars" Water Color on Paper
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Abstracted Nude Figure Drawing, Signed Shapiro
Located in New York, NY
Untitled, c. 20th Century Acrylic on paper 20 x 16 1/4 in. Matte: 24 x 20 in. Signed center: Shapiro
Category

20th Century Abstract Geometric New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Laid Paper

Explosive Issue - Abstract Small Watercolor Painting
By Andrei Petrov
Located in New York, NY
Andrei Petrov's Explosive Issue is a 13 x 10.5 inches watercolor painting. The main colors are green and gray with accents of orange. Petrov works by applying layers of paint and the...
Category

2010s Contemporary New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor, Paper

Josette Urso "After the Rain" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Josette Urso "Climb" Water Color on Paper
By Josette Urso
Located in New York, NY
Of her recent works, Urso states, "I make exploratory paintings, working in response to my immediate environment. My approach involves moment-to-moment extrapolation governed by intu...
Category

2010s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Robert Goodnough, Seated Girl, original hand signed charcoal drawing
By Robert Goodnough, 1917-2010
Located in New York, NY
ROBERT GOODNOUGH Seated Girl, 1961 Charcoal Drawing on Paper 23 3/4 × 18 inches Hand signed in charcoal on the front Unframed Unique This is an exquisite, rare poignant early Robert ...
Category

1960s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Charcoal

Geometric Abstraction, signed and inscribed to designer Robert Vogele, Framed
By Ron Gorchov
Located in New York, NY
Ron Gorchov Untitled, inscribed to Robert Vogele, 1978 Watercolor and etching on paper with 2 deckled edges. Hand signed in pencil and inscribed on lower front. Inscription reads as ...
Category

1970s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Mixed Media, Watercolor, Etching

Imagination Meets Reality 2
Located in New York, NY
Friederike Oeser, a contemporary abstract painter, lives and works in Munich, Germany. For Oeser there is no hierarchy of visual value. It all has import—whether it be a trickle of w...
Category

Early 2000s Abstract New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Oil Pastel

Untitled
By John Harrison Levee
Located in New York, NY
John Levee, an American abstract expressionist, served as a pilot in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Following the war, he harnessed the educational opportunit...
Category

1950s New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Gouache

Untitled IV, Abstract Expressionist Graphite and Ink on Paper by Frank Roth
By Frank Roth
Located in Long Island City, NY
Frank Roth, American (1936 - ) - Untitled IV, Year: 1960, Medium: Graphite and Ink on Paper, signed, dated and dedicated in pen, Image Size: 8 x 9.5 inches, Size: 11.25 x 11 in. (28...
Category

1960s Abstract Expressionist New York - Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite, Ink

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