Product Description
Hank Pitcher “Mr. Zogs board at Coal Oil Point” Oil on canvas, laid on board 2006

HANK PITCHER (b. 1949) U.S.A.
“Mr. Zogs board at Coal Oil Point” 2006
Oil on canvas, laid on board
Signed: Mr. Zogs board at Coal Oil Point (with chalk on back),
Hank pitcher 2006, Mr. Zogs Board at Coal Oil Point
For more information see: Hank Pitcher Surf, exhibit. cat. (Santa Barbara: Sullivan Goss Gallery, 2003); Surfboard Wax – A History, Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2005).
Canvas: H: 84” x W: 36”
Framed: H: 87” x W: 39”
Pitcher’s surfboard paintings are the symbol of California beach culture…strong, definite, positive and euphoric statements about life in California. The surfboard’s power as totem is seen in its power to convey identity: surfer, Californian, Hank Pitcher. All are identifiable from this symbolic representation. Hank Pitcher is the voice of California culture. At the beach, in the surf, approaching the foothills, in the mountains, on the spit of Point Conception, in the crags of Big Sur, at a beach campfire in Santa Barbara, Pitcher paints the icons of California’s culture.
Hank Pitcher’s paintings are grounded in a particular sense of place. He was born in Pasadena, California on July 20, 1949, but his family moved to Isla Vista, near Santa Barbara, when he was two years old. When they came to Isla Vista it was an outpost on the beach, and Goleta was a farm town where kids rode their horses down the avenue to buy candy at the store. He was a football star at San Marcos High School and was recruited by big-name universities. Instead of football, he chose to attend the College of Creative Studies, an alternative program within the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he now teaches painting. He splits his time between painting and surfing, pursuing each with the commitment and energy of a linebacker.
Hank Pitcher “Mr. Zogs board at Coal Oil Point” Oil on canvas, laid on board 2006
HUBERT SCHMALIX (1952-) Austria
Mount Washington 2005/06
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated on back: Schmalix 05 06
Provenance: Hubert Schmalix Vienna
For related works by Hubert Schmalix see: Hubert Schmalix, Lóránd Hegyi exhibition catalog (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) November 19, 1994 – January 1995.
H: 69” x W: 51”
Hubert Schmalix was born in Graz, Austria, on December 17, 1952 and studied at the Vienna Art Academy from 1971 to 1976. By 1979 Schmalix was showing work at the forward-looking exhibition ‘Europa 79 – Kunst der 80er Jahre’ in Stuttgart. In 1983 the London Tate Gallery invited Schmalix to present work at ‘New Art’, an important survey of contemporary art. Schmalix has become well-known world-wide as an exponent of ‘New Art’, working with a retrospective glance at both classical art history and modern art. Schmalix focuses on the world of things and the human figure. Although the expressive gesture was the dominant feature of his 1980s work, it yielded early in the 1990s to stringent tectonic composition. In 1984 Hubert Schmalix went to the Philippines and on to the US, moving to Los Angeles in 1987. In 1986-87 Schmalix taught at the Academy for the Decorative and Applied Arts in Vienna and from 1997 he has been a professor at the Vienna Art Academy. Schmalix is a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1993 his work was featured at the Venice Biennale and in 1998 he was awarded the Fine Art Prize of the City of Vienna. Schmalix has done several large fresco cycles in Salzburg and his work has been shown extensively at numerous international solo and group shows and most recently at Art Basel 2006.
GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA
Abstraction 1942
Silver gelatin print
Signed: 9 (in a circle, on back); Gyorgy Kepes 1942 (in ink on back)
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1947 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974.
Framed size: H: 29 3/16” x W: 25 ¼”
TIM LIDDY
“Who Can Beat Nixon” (1970) Presidential Sweepstakes 2006
Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back
Signed in script: Tim Liddy “circa 1970” 2006, red circular ring
Provenance: William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis, MO)
H: 11 ¾” x W: 9” x D: 2”
With his recent paintings, Liddy has both reasserted the construct of hyperrealist painting and developed a thoroughly unique advancement of that mode by extending the cultural reality of the indexed original. Based on the illustrated box lids of vintage board games, Liddy has recontextualized a subject, which evokes the underlying rules of life. Painted on copper or steel in the precise dimensions of the original, the metal is then manipulated to demonstrate the exact rips and tears from years of usage and includes trompe-l’oeil renditions of the scotch tape that might be holding the cardboard box together, the assorted stains, or the various graffiti of time. Liddy leaves no possibility of ambivalence, these works speak to a concurrent understanding of their original object identity and to themselves as works of art engaged in historical and psychological dialogue.