Tri-State Area - Abstract Prints

Joel Shapiro Poster (Hand Signed), 1990 Offset Lithograph poster Boldly signed and inscribed in black marker on the front 20 × 27 1/2 inches Unframed Hand signed and inscribed by Jo...

Robert Indiana HEAL, 2015 Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board Signed, dated and numbered 5/25 on the front This is one of the last works the artist personally signed before he pas...

Artist: K.B. (Kyu-Baik) Hwang Title: Maturity Year: circa 1970 Medium: Mezzotint, signed, numbered, and titled in pencil Edition: AP Paper Size: 30 x 22 inches

WALKING IN COLORS is an original limited edition lithograph by the Dutch artist Karel Appel printed using hand lithography techniques on archival printmaking paper, 100% acid free. W...

Color silkscreen with enamel inks and tar-like texture on Rising 2-ply museum board Portfolio of 8: $16,000

Alfred Jensen Duality Triumphant I (Mid Century Modern Geometric Abstraction), 1963 Color Silkscreen on wove paper Pencil signed, dated, named and number 19/52 by Alfred Jensen on th...

Color silkscreen with enamel inks and tar-like texture on Rising 2-ply museum board Portfolio of 8: $16,000

ABOUT THIS PIECE: “Liquid Mirrors” is an ongoing project— started in late 2012— where I use mylar to photograph the reflections of my subjects. I am mimicking the medium of oil paint...

Joan Miro is known for his abstract, expressive, and child-like Modern style. Original lithograph published in Miro Lithographe II Catalogue Raisonne. Nicely framed. Lithographs II ...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: "This particular series is a an homage to photographs taken with film. They are the result of an aberration of light passing through a locked shutter and the camera...

Ivan Chermayeff Lincoln Center Film Festival Poster (Hand Signed by Ivan Chermayeff), 1999 Offset Lithograph Poster (Hand Signed) - Framed Boldly ...

Fernand Léger, French (1881 -1955) - Sculptures Polychromes at Galerie Louis Carres, Year: 1953, Medium: Lithograph Poster, Size: 25.25 x 18.75 in. (64.14 x 47.63 cm), Printer: C...

Mark Tobey, American (1890 - 1976) - Impromptu, Year: circa 1970, Medium: Poster, Size: 28.25 x 19.75 in. (71.76 x 50.17 cm)

Joyce Kozloff Pictures and Borders III, 1977 Color lithograph on wove paper Signed, titled, dated and annotated "Solo Impression" in graphite pencil on the back Editions Solo-Impression of 50 30 × 22 inches Unframed Pictures and Borders III Color lithograph on wove paper Pencil signed, titled and annotated "Solo Impression" on the back; a Printers Proof, aside from the regular edition of 50 Published by Judith Solodkin, founder of SOLO Impression, Inc Unframed Provenance: Provenance: De-accessioned from the corporate collection of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan JOYCE KOZLOFF BIOGRAPHY Joyce Kozloff was born in Somerville, New Jersey in 1942. She received a BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA in 1964 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1967. Kozloff was a major figure in both the Pattern and Decoration and the Feminist art movements of the 1970s. In 1979, she began to focus on public art, increasing the scale of her installations and expanding the accessibility of her art to reach a wider audience. Kozloff has since executed a number of major commissions in public spaces, including Dreaming: The Passage of Time for the United States Consulate, Art in Embassies Program in Istanbul, Turkey; The Movies: Fantasies and Spectacles for the Los Angeles Metro’s Seventh and Flower Station, CA; Caribbean Festival Arts for P.S. 218, New York, NY; New England Decorative Arts for the Harvard Square Subway Station, Cambridge, MA; and Bay Area Victorian, Bay Area Deco, Bay Area Funk for the International Terminal, San Francisco Airport, CA. Since the early 1990s, Kozloff has utilized mapping as a device for consolidating her enduring interests in history, culture, and the decorative and popular arts. She initially concentrated on cities known to her, onto which patterns and images reflecting their colonial pasts were then overlaid. Subsequent series examined bodies of water and the inaccuracies of early maps from the so-called “Age of Discovery.” In 1999-2000, Kozloff was awarded the Jules Guerin Fellowship / Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Italy. During her yearlong residency abroad Kozloff conceived and completed Targets, a nine-foot walk-in globe in twenty-four sections, each of which is painted with an aerial map of a place that has been bombed by the U.S. in the years since World War II. A 2001 residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy provided the genesis for Boy's Art, a series of twenty-four collaged drawings based on maps, diagrams, and illustrations of historic battles...

This is a signature color-field composition with multiple thin colored stripes created by Gene Davis. Gene Davis (American, 1920-1985) Screenprint Black Watch I, II and III, 1974 ...

Artist: Julian Stanczak (1928-2017) Title: Trespass Year: 1979 Edition: 106/175, plus proofs Medium: Silkscreen on Somerset paper Size: 26.75 x 22.5 inches Condition: Good Inscriptio...

Bending either forward or backward, the female acrobat in this Pablo Picasso print is rendered with fluidity and smooth motion. Cast against a grey background, the white limbs of the acrobat are striking as they wave in the air. A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Femme Acrobate...

Robert Indiana ERR (Sheehan 29), 1963 Photoengraving and Etching on off-white Rives BFK paper Hand signed, dated and annotated on lower front with artist's blind stamp from Coenties ...

Artist: Kikuo Saito, Japanese (1939 - 2016) Title: Beggar's Ladder Year: 1980 Medium: Silkscreen, Signed and Numbered in Pencil Edition: 160 Size: 42 in. x 29.5 in. (106.68 cm x 74.9...

Kenneth Noland Limited Edition Canvas Tote, 1977 Mixed Media: Silkscreen on Canvas with handles and leather tag. Numbered with ink stamp 15 × 15 inches Edition 268/500 Plate signed and dated Kenneth Noland and stamp numbered from the edition of 500 Very good vintage condition with handling and creasing (see photos) This was not commercially marketed but was designed as a prototype with each one stamp numbered. Not too many are around, and very rarely found in such good condition. This work is sold unframed as shown in the first image, but for inspiration only, see a photograph of how one collector framed a different edition of this work - and it looks like a print or painting! (see last image) A true vintage collectors item.

Artist: Jack Brusca, American (1939 - 1993) Title: Star Year: 1979 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 200, AP 30 Image Size: 24 x 24 inches Size: 27 in. x 26...

Untitled - Blue Circle Amadeo Gabino, Spanish (1922–2004) Date: circa 1970 Collage Multiple Size: 23.5 in. x 23.5 in. (59.69 cm x 59.69 cm)

Coral 27 is an original hand drawn lithograph by the NY woman artist, Joan Melnick. Inspired by the fragile beauty of reefs with their exotic forms and vibrant colors, Coral 27 is an...

This poster was produced in 1973 to promote a Richard Hamilton exhibition at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, USA. The poster reproduces The cri...

A dynamic and textured screenprint by American Abstract Expressionist, Larry Poons. This series of prints resemble canvases that have been splashed violently with paint. This piece i...

Gary Hume Pinks 2002 Silkscreen 17 3/8 x 14 inches; 44 x 36 cm Edition of 45 Signed, titled, dated and numbered in graphite (lower recto) Frame available upon request Available fr...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: This piece is part of the Candy Skies Collection. Utilizing digital collage and advanced editing techniques, Jessica configures the tones of her photographs to represent a true emotional experience. The candy colored palette was inspired by her Salt Water Taffy collection and further influenced her to name each image after a candy flavor to compliment its colorful hues. These images allow the viewer to see the everyday world from a playful new perspective. ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Jessica C. Nugent is a photographer from California known for her contemporary images of nature. She uses her graphic design background to create an emotional connection with the natural world through the use of color. Jessica’s art has recently been featured with Artsy, Domino Magazine, Pottery Barn Teen...

Gerhard Richter Untitled Abstract Picture, 2002 Offset lithograph on GardaMatt Art 250 GSM paper Not signed, edition of 3433 12 1/2 × 16 3.5 inches Unframed Printed on GardaMatt Art 250 GSM paper, this beautiful and colorful piece was part of a portfolio of loose plate reproductions for Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes works. Released during his exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art (Abstract Pictures) and the Museum of Modern Art (Gerhard Richter, 40 Years of Painting). It depicts Richters Oil on Aluminum abstract picture) More about Gerhard Richter: Gerhard Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, Germany. Throughout his career, Richter has negotiated the frontier between photography and painting, captivated by the way in which these two seemingly opposing practices speak to and challenge one another. From exuberant canvases rendered with a squeegee and acerbic color charts to paintings of photographic detail and close-ups of a single brushstroke, Richter moves effortlessly between the two mediums, reveling in the complexity of their relationship, while never asserting one above the other. Richter’s life traces the defining moments of twentieth-century history and his work reverberates with the trauma of National Socialism and the Holocaust. In the wake of the Second World War, Richter trained in a Socialist Realist style sanctioned by East Germany’s Communist government. When he defected to West Germany in 1961, a month before the Berlin Wall was erected, Richter left his entire artistic oeuvre up to that point behind. From 1961 to 1964—alongside Blinky Palermo and Sigmar Polke—Richter studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he began to explore the material, conceptual, and historical implications of painting without ideological restraint. Richter’s earliest paintings in Düsseldorf, stimulated by a fascination with current affairs and popular culture, responded to images from magazines and newspaper cuttings. Through the 1960s, Richter continued to address found and media images of subjects such as military jets, portraits, and aerial photographs. Notably, he reimagined family pictures he had smuggled from East Germany that included his smiling uncle Rudi, dressed in a Nazi uniform...

Max Epstein, Canadian (1932 - 2002) - African Violets, Year: 1980, Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 295, Image Size: 24 x 13 inches, Size: 29 in. x 1...

From the portfolio “Formulation: Articulation” created by Josef Albers in 1972. This monumental series consists of 127 original screenprints that are a definitive survey of the artis...

Artist: Joan Miro, Spanish (1893 - 1983) Title: Tapis de Tarragona (M. 874) Year: 1972 Medium: Lithograph with embossed signature Edition: 1000 Size: 12 in. x 17 in. (30.48 cm x 43.1...

Temporal Perception 142A (Triptych) (Abstract photography) Archival C-Print — Unframed. Edition: 1/12 Available in 2 weeks turnaround. Sold as a triptych. Each element size is: 45 x...

Richard Serra Early Work (Hand signed and dated by Richard Serra), 2013 Hardback monograph with no dust jacket as issued (Hand signed and dated 2014 by Richard Serra) Hand signed and dated 2014 by Richard Serra on the title page 12 × 10 × 1 3/5 inches Provenance The artist signed the work for the present owner at a special 2014 event with Hal Foster...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Color is the foundation of my work. My circles start as a mood or idea that eventually evolves into a colored circle. I am curious how different colours interact wh...

José Luis Cuevas, Mexican (1934 - 2017) - Hechizera Antiqua, Year: 1969, Medium: Lithograph on Arches, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: X, Image Size: 21.5 x 21.5 inches, ...

Jacques Lipchitz, Lithuanian (1891 - 1973) - Tree of Life 1, Year: 1972, Medium: Lithograph on Magnani Paper, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 250, Size: 26 in. x 18 in. (...

Jim Dine Untitled from the Castelli Sonnabend Collection, 1973 Screenprint on rag paper in original portfolio sleeve Hand signed and numbered 158/300 by Jim Dine on the front. Printe...

"Untitled: 4 Figures"Edition 132/200, Abstract Figurative Lithograph on Paper, 28.13 x 20.75, Late 20th Century Colors: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple, P...

James Siena Untitled geometric abstraction (The Christmas Print), 2006 3-Color etching on paper with deckled edges Signed, dated and numbered 8/54 in graphite pencil on the front Fra...

Susan Gorelick ( American, 1924-2000) "Growth 1" A/P, Abstract Etching signed, titled and numbered in Pencil 15.25 x 11.50, Late 20th Century Colors: Gold, Black Shirley Gorelick (1924–2000) was an American artist who evolved a distinctive realist technique that allowed her to create penetrating psychological portraiture, often on a large scale. She described her early work as a contemporary reinterpretation of the figure “within the framework of a personal humanism” and her later work as “psychological portraiture.” She earned her B.A. at Brooklyn College (1944), where she studied under Serge Chermayeff, and her M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University (1947). She briefly studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown and Betty Holliday in Port Washington. Her early work was influenced by Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, but she became uncomfortable with the distortion of the human figure in modern art. Gorelick emerged as a strong figurative artist with her first solo show, held at the Angeleski Gallery in 1961, where she exhibited an array of truncated nudes in the prevailing abstract expressionist idiom. Several years later, using the visual language of twentieth-century realism, Gorelick reinterpreted Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre, Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and the Three Graces. Most notably, Three Graces IV and Three Graces V feature the repeated forms of a nude, middle-aged African-American model. As Gorelick’s work evolved in the 1970s, the direct associations with her artistic forebears lessened, although she continued to be inspired by them. Blending the theme of the Three Graces and the Tahitian nudes of Paul Gauguin, Gorelick created Westchester Gauguin (Three Sisters), a series of paintings that portray suburban adolescents amid an overgrowth of pachysandra. She further recast the Three Graces in Willy, Billy Joe, and Leroy (1973), a compelling portrait of three African-American men in the artist’s studio. Inspired by Paul Cézanne’s Card Players, Gorelick also painted Chess Game (1972), in which she depicted a group of men playing chess...

ROBERT INDIANA Hope Wall, 2010 Silkscreen on wove paper 24 × 25 inches Edition IV/IV (aside from the regular edition of 33) Hand signed, numbered IV/IV and dated on lower front Unframed Robert Indiana created Hope Wall, or Wall of Hope in support of future president Barack Obama in 2008, and the print was published in 2010. This is an extremely rare Artist's Proof - one of only four in the world. It is pencil signed, dated and numbered IV of IV on the recto. The regular edition is only 33. Extremely scarce. This print has appeared on the market fewer than a handful of times over the past decade. “I’d like to cover the world with hope,” said Robert Indiana, the artist whose iconic “LOVE” series became a global symbol of unity during the turmoil of the 1960s. In 2008, Indiana felt the world was ready for a new message, and designed “HOPE” for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “I wanted to help name and empower the next generation and I felt that HOPE encompassed the needs of our time,” he said. With its forward-leaning O, “HOPE” symbolizes perseverance, and pushing ahead toward a brighter future. To coincide with the artist’s 86th birthday, the first annual “International Hope Day” launched on September 13, 2014 and included the public display of Indiana’s “HOPE” sculptures...

Mary Bauermeister Rainbow, 1973 Lithograph and silkscreen on creamy white paper Hand signed, dated and numbered 56/250 by the artist on the front 19 x 25.5 inches Unframed This work is on the permanent collection of various institutions like: Rice University, Samuel Dorksy Museum of Art, Rutgers Zimmerli Museum and Wheaton College Massachusetts. While studying the fringe sciences the 1970s, Bauermeister created Rainbow (1973), a lithograph and silkscreen. She uses a creamy white background as the base. Two intersecting diagonal bands of color transcend across the page, and black cursive lettering dances over the surface serving as a mind map of interweaving ideas. Through the central band, Bauermeister shifts through the color spectrum; she begins with red and finishes with violet. Inspired by music, she uses strokes of color that are rhythmically smeared across the lithograph. The surface lettering, a kind of visual poetry, explores her interest in human emotion and science. The viewer can see Bauermeister’s thoughts as they flow into one another through the use of words such as bliss, love, and healing. Bauermeister also includes a repetition of words such as cancer, sickness, and cure. The word cancer emerges from a cell-like shape. A careful study of the words shows that they may seem dark in nature; however, she juxtaposes these words against the cheerful title and colors. Perhaps the rainbow symbolizes a new hope, an inspiration for an optimistic future. -Courtesy to the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art About Mary Bauermeister: A multidisciplinary artist known for her intricate and enigmatic assemblages, Mary Bauermeister (1934-2023) continues to defy categorization with layered works in a range of media. A precursory figure of the Fluxus movement—her studio was the meeting point for a number of defining artists of the avant-garde—her work plays an integral role in the discussion of art, both European and American, that emerged from the 1960s. Her reliefs and sculptures, which have incorporated drawing, text, found objects, natural materials and fabric, reference a plethora of concepts: from natural phenomena and astronomy to mathematics and language, as well as her own “spiritual-metaphysical experiences.” Maturing amidst the currents of Minimalism and Pop Art, Bauermeister’s art has resisted labels due to the singular expression of her interests and concerns, among them the simultaneous transience and permanence of the natural world with experimentations in transparency and magnification, multiplication and variation, structure and order, chance and ephemerality, introversion and extroversion. Her three-dimensional receptacles of thoughts, ideas, and notes contain visual, conceptual, and philosophical paradoxes that challenge perceptions and that offer literal and metaphorical windows into which one can glimpse the inner workings of the artist’s mind. - Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld...

Keith Haring Talk To Us! poster c. 1994 (The Aids Hotline): Designed & illustrated by Keith Haring one year after Haring's own diagnosis with the disease, this poster was issued by ...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: With lively colors and jubilant forms, Alyson Fox's work is as playful as her approach to work and life. With a contagious energy, Fox's work brightens space as muc...

Alain Kirili To Cecil Taylor, Sculptor, 1995 Lithograph Pencil signed, dated and numbered 91/100 on the lower front Frame Included This work is floated and framed Measurements: Frame: 10 x 10 x 1 inch Print: 6 x 6 inches About Alain Kirili: Born in Paris, France, 1946 Died in New York City, 2021 ALAIN KIRILI was a French-American sculptor born in Paris, France 1946, died in New York City 2021. He has had solo museum exhibitions with the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris; the Musée Rodin, Paris; and the Brooklyn Museum. Kirili has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA P.S. 1, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Jardin du Palais-Royal, Paris. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou; The Jewish Museum, New York; and the Nasher Sculpture Center among others. Courtesy of Susan Inglett Galery ABOUT CECIL TAYLOR Cecil Taylor (b. 1929) is a towering, sometimes divisive figure within twentieth-century music. In the early 1960s, with fellow maverick artists Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and others, he revolutionized jazz by extending bebop into a radical terrain dubbed the "New Thing" or "free jazz"—the latter a term with political as well as aesthetic connotations given the social changes underway at the time in America. For Taylor, freedom meant a deep synthesis of the modern composers such as Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky that he encountered during his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music with the nuanced and original piano innovations of Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Bud Powell...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: A study of gesture in a digital context. Nicole Yates is inspired by the landscape and architecture in her everyday life. She deducts, simplifies, and abstracts the...

FLYING HEAD OVER OCEAN is an original limited edition lithograph by the Dutch artist Karel Appel printed using hand lithography techniques on Arches paper, 100% acid free. FLYING HEA...

Artist: Alan Parker, Canadian Title: Lowest House Year: 1992 Medium: Etching with Aquatint, signed and numbered in pencil Image Size: 12.5 x 17.5 inches Size: 22 x 29.5 in. (55.88 ...

Ajay Malghan is an American artist and son of immigrant parents from India. His mother was usually found combining cultures at home, and his father, a Materials Scientist and Engineer often brought him to the lab. The daily experimentations happening around him, both personal and scientific, would later inform his work. While his parents wanted him to follow more straightforward career paths, he was the first in his family to eschew their expectations and pursue art and music instead. Malghan went on to receive an MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design - Hong Kong. Here he experimented in a darkroom, bleaching film, adding watercolor to glass plates, thinly cross-sectioning fruits and vegetables until they formed abstractions, beginning his exploration into the repurposing of materials. In his twenties, Malghan was diagnosed with Leukemia, the treatment of which resulted in avascular necrosis, a bone disease that eventually required numerous surgeries and three hip replacements. His experience through illness and recovery not only led him to photography, but also informs his manipulation of raw, often overlooked materials in order to reorient our understanding of beauty, pleasure, and purpose. Malghan has been exhibited across the country and has lectured in Hong Kong, India, the University of Texas, the University of Notre Dame - Maryland, and UMLAUF Sculpture & Design Museum. He most recently has been commissioned by The Walters Art Museum, and his work is in the private collections of Johns Hopkins University, the University of Texas, and Georgetown University...

LYING IN COLORS is an original limited edition lithograph by the Dutch artist Karel Appel printed using hand lithography techniques on Somerset paper, 100% acid free. LYING IN COLORS...

GRAY AND BLACK ABSTRACT by the American painter and printmaker Will Barnet is an original hand drawn lithograph, printed using hand lithography on archival printmaking paper 100% aci...

Tracey Emin The Stain, 2007 Mini booklet; stitched binding; digitally printed, accompanied by pencil signed envelope 4 1/2 × 3 3/5 inches Edition of 100 (unnumbered) pencil signed by...

Zygmund Jankowski is known for his modernist compositions and effective use of “the white of the paper.” 'Come Fly with Me' perfectly illustrates that skill; It is signed, titled, and dated in pencil. Jankowski was born in South Bend, Indiana. After serving in the US Navy Jankowski attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, where studied with Victor DeWilde, Otis Oldfield, and George Post. Returning to the mid-west he taught at Indiana University, South Western Michigan College, Hilton Leech School of Art, the Bremen Art Center, the Niles Art Center, the South Bend Art Association, and the Rockport Art Association. Beginning in 1964 he summered in Rocky Neck, MA, and opened a summertime gallery. In the 1970s he made a permanent move to Gloucester where he held workshops at his studio. In the 1990s he moved to Lanesville. Among those institutions with work by Jankowski is the Cape Ann Museum. In their biography of the artist they acknowledge his role of inspiring a generation of Cape Ann artists...

Artist: Pierre Clerk, Canadian (1928 - ) Title: Morocco Series #10 Year: 1980 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 300, AP 45 Image Size: 21 x 36 inches Paper...

Artist: Clarence Holbrook Carter, American (1904 - 2000) Title: Abstract Tulip Year: 1979 Medium: Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 200 Paper Size: 35 x 26 inches (...

Ben Schonzeit Yankee Flame, from the portfolio: America: the Third Century, 1975 Collotype on wove paper Pencil signed and numbered 50/200 on the front Publisher: APC Editions, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, Inc Printer: Triton Press 27 × 19 3/10 inches Unframed Note: this is the original hand signed and numbered collotype; not to be confused with the separate (unsigned) poster edition. This hand-signed, numbered and dated collotype in colors by photorealist pioneer artist Ben Schonzeit was created in 1975 for the portfolio America: the Third Century, commissioned by Mobil Oil Corporation in which 13 American artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and others created works celebrating America's bicentennial. Yankee Flame combines the iconic images of George Washington, Coca-Cola and the Statue of Liberty into a collaged interpretation of contemporary American life and the meaning of freedom. "Yankee Flame" is in excellent condition and never framed. It was acquired as part of the America: The Third Century full portfolio. Ben Schonzeit (b. 1942, Brooklyn, New York) is one of the original Photorealist painters and is considered to have pioneered the airbrush technique. His works often depict still life arrangements that are intentionally out of focus. He received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union in 1964 and has since had over 50 solo exhibitions both in the United States and abroad. His paintings are held in numerous museum collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1973 Nancy Hoffman introduced me to Ben Schonzeit in the backroom of her gallery on West Broadway. She had been open less than a year, and Ben was one of the artists in her original stable. His large Crab Blue It had arrived from his studio a few days earlier and was leaning against the wall. I thought at the time it was one of the most impressive, virtuosic Photorealist works I had seen. That first encounter was more than a quarter of a century ago and I have always considered it to be one of the quintessential, tour de force paintings of American Photorealism. In the early seventies one could stand on West Broadway on any pleasant, sunny weekday and see less than a dozen people on the street between the Nancy Hoffman Gallery and OK Harris Works of Art. Almost all of the SoHo galleries, such as Leo Castelli, Paula Cooper, Ward-Nasse, and Ivan Karp’s Hundred Acres, could be visited in an afternoon. At night the streets were almost deserted. With the exception of Andy Warhol, there were no art world superstars. More importantly, none of the artists expected to achieve celebrity status. That was a phenomenon of the eighties and nineties. There were a only a handful of restaurants and watering holes, such Elephant and Castle, Fanelli’s, the Spring Street Bar and Prince Street Bar. Fanelli’s closed on weekends, which was a holdover from their sweatshop clientele during lunch and ragtag group of artists in the evenings. In those early days of SoHo, the drafty, raw sweatshop spaces with their large windows, rough floors, and service elevators provided large, inexpensive living quarters and studios for many artists. Unlike today, there were no boutiques. The area was not chic and with the exception of Lowell Nesbett’s showplace, the lofts were not glamorous. Schonzeit was in the same living and working space the he now occupies when I first visited him, but SoHo was a very different time and place. When the National Endowment of the Arts recommended me to curate America 1976, which turned into one of the major visual arts projects for the Bicentennial, Ben Schonzeit was on the first list of participants I made up for the U.S. Department of the Interior. His large diptych, Continental Divide, was one of the most memorable works produced for the exhibit. I stopped by his studio four or five times while it was in progress and have visited him many times over the years. We have maintained a very cordial working relationship and friendship over the past three decades. I saw The Music Room exhibit in 1978 and realized at the time that the vigorously rendered mural sized canvases and mirror and related works represented a major catharsis in his painting. In many ways, it and the other paintings and drawings based on the same image represented a sharp, decisive break with the tenets of Photorealism, or at least the photo-replicative aspects that had been so widely heralded in America and abroad in the mid-seventies. Over the years we have continued to work together. He has been in almost all of the major exhibitions I have curated here and abroad and in almost all of the books I have written. I am familiar with his studio habits, his quiet, internalized restlessness that manifests itself in the hundreds of small, unknown drawings and watercolors, doodles on napkins during lunch, and imaginary landscapes. I also know that he would rather do a painting than think or talk about it. Over the years I have followed the shifts in his studio procedure from the monumental airbrushed fruit and vegetable paintings to the most recent bouquets of flowers and decorative paintings. Our discussions of these matters tends to lapse into a verbal shorthand at this point. The following essay is based on both my longstanding familiarity and admiration for his work and involvement with contemporary realism and figurative painting. A booklet of color xeroxes with notes made up by Schonzeit was extremely helpful. In addition to several interviews, much of the information unfolded through a lengthy series of Emails. Due to our different working habits these were composed and sent out very late at night and answered by Ben the following morning. They dealt with the specifics of many of the paintings, generalities, his background and childhood in Brooklyn, and occasional bits of art world gossip. And there were odd discoveries. Prior to discussing his witty, tongue in cheek painting of Buffalo Bill, I did not know or had long forgotten that William Cody...

Wearing a crown of white flowers, the woman in the white dress has clear blue eyes and pink lips. A classic example of Pablo Picasso's work, the woman's face is disjointed and fragme...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: White Wood Frame, Floated 28x20 inches “Liquid Mirrors” is an ongoing project— started in late 2012— where I use mylar to photograph t...

Jim Dine Olympian Gestures (Hand Signed by Jim Dine), 1984 Limited Edition lithograph and offset lithograph poster Hand signed on the front 38 1/5 × 25 inches The limited edition, h...

Billy Al Bengston Cockatoo AAA Dracula, 1968 Lithograph , Zinc and Aluminum, in Silver-Violet, Yellow, Two Grays and Orange on uncalendered Rives paper Frame included signed faintly ...