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  Robert Schellin, “Sunflowers”, Oil on Board 1935

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  Victor Arnautoff, The Felt Hat, Oil on Canvas c. 1930

  VICTOR ARNAUTOFF (1896-1979) USA

  The Felt Hat c. 1930

  Oil on canvas, white gold frame

  Signed: V. Arnautoff, lower right

  Exhibited: Art Center San Francisco, 1931 (see image of the review in the San Francisco Examiner, July 12th, 1931)

  For more information see: The New Deal for Artists, Richard D. McKinzie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), Coit Tower, San Francisco : Its History and Art

  Painting: H: 26” x W: 21”
  Framed: H: 32 ½” x 27 ½”

  Price: $60,000

  Victor Arnautoff created paintings and watercolors, focusing on portraits, still lifes and rural landscapes in his early years, and moved to more socially conscious themes later in his career. Arnautoff was a native of Russia, to which he returned during the 1960s after thirty years in the United States. He came to San Francisco from Russia via China, bringing his wife and children with him, and studied at the California School of Fine Arts studying with Ralph Stackpole and Edgar Walter before going to Mexico. There he worked as an assistant to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. During the 1930s, Arnautoff worked as project director and one of the artists selected to create the famed Coit Tower murals, he played a key role in determining the political and social content of the frescoes painted in the San Francisco landmark. His own contribution, City Life, appears to be a lively, non-political melding of downtown San Francisco scenes; however, closer study reveals two leftist newspapers on the newsstand, while the city’s most mainstream daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, is strangely missing. Arnautoff also painted frescoes in the Military Chapel at San Francisco’s Presidio, in the Anne Bremer Library of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in high schools and other buildings in the Bay Area. He was a professor of art at Stanford University from 1939 until his retirement in 1963.

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  Zygmund Sazevich “Portrait of Victor Arnautoff” Oil on canvas 1925

  ZYGMUND SAZEVICH (1899-1968)

  Portrait of Victor Arnautoff 1925

  Oil on canvas

  Signed: Z. Sazevich 1925 (lower right)

  Framed: H: 34 5/16” x W: 29 9/16”

  Price: $65,000

  Zygmund Sazevich was born in Russia in 1899, and studied briefly at the University in Kazan in 1917, before traveling to Manchuria where he lived and worked as an actor and stage scenery painter. He emigrated to the U.S. via Japan in the early 1920s and entered the School of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, supporting himself by working as a house painter and helping stage plays for a local Russian theater company.
Sazevich met Russian artist Eugene Ivanoff, and together they shared living quarters and studied at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Sazevich was awarded two scholarships, one in painting and one in sculpture.
 During the 1920’s Sazevich exhibited with the San Francisco Art Association, and in 1929 won first prize at their annual exhibit, followed by several sculpture commissions. That same year Sazevich and Ivanoff traveled to live and work in Paris. 
Back in San Francisco in 1931, his work was included in a show of garden sculptures at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, along with works by Adaline Kent, Ruth Cravath, and others. By 1935 he was working as a W.P.A. muralist. Sazevich and his wife Zena, a decorator, purchased a home in the City, which they filled with Sazevich’s sculptures, woodcarvings, and hand-made furniture.
In 1939 Sazevich exhibited at San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition. His cast terrazzo sculpture Mississippi won the 1940 purchase prize at the annual San Francisco Art Association exhibition, and he had a one-man show at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1941.
During World War II, Sazevich worked in a shipyard creating wood patterns, and in later years he designed and made hand-blocked Christmas cards that were in great demand. His clients included celebrities such as Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, and Red Skelton.
From the late 1940s until the 1960s, Sazevich taught art classes, both at the California School of Fine Arts and at Mills College in Oakland. 
He continued to exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Art through the 1950s, and in 1953 was featured in the museum’s Four Sculptors of the West show. Sazevich also had two solo shows at Mills College in 1950 and 1954, and a show at Raymond & Raymond in San Francisco in 1951.
Zygmund Sazevich passed away in San Francisco in 1968. In 1982 his work was included in The Oakland Museum’s seminal exhibition 100 Years of California Sculpture.

   Though his works are rare today, Zygmund Sazevich was a prolific, versatile and highly-regarded San Francisco Bay Area artist and instructor whose passion for his medium was evident not only in his sculptures and carvings, but also in his drawings and paintings. Sazevich believed that the two-dimensional rendering of the subject was integral to the process of sculpture, along with the necessity for the artist to have a feeling for the material with which he worked. His convictions were reflected in the great variety of woods, metals, and stone he used to create his sculptures, as well as in his paintings.

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  Andre Vincent Becquerel Arabian Horse bronze sculpture c. 1930

  ANDRE VINCENT BECQUEREL (1893-1981) France

  Arabian Horse sculpture c. 1930

  Bronze with overall rich green/brown patina with intricate sculpting and details, black Belgian marble plinth base

  Signed: A. Becquerel (inscribed in the bronze)

  H: 12” x W: 21” x D: 6”

  Price: $27,500

  Andre Vincent Becquerel was born in St. Andre-Farivilliers. He studied at the l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris under Hector Lemaire and Prosper Lecourtier. He specialized in fine animal sculpture and regularly exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Francais from 1914 to 1922.  Becquerel worked for the Editeur Parisiens Edmond Etling  in Paris and created a monumental sculpture in patinated plaster for the “Pavillon international” at the Exposition Internationale in Paris in 1937.