Product Description
Pierre Boucher, Propeller, Gelatin silver print, 1935

PIERRE BOUCHER (1908-2000) France
Propeller 1935
Signed: WB – 7252; Photo Pierre Boucher (ink stamp); DBoucher (ink signature)
Provenance: Gene Prakapas Gallery, New York, 1978.
H: 7 1/16” x W: 9 ¼” (unframed)
H: 14 11/16” x 16 11/16” (framed)
Pierre Boucher came to photography as a result of the Nouvelle Vision and he explored photography as an experiment on all levels, photograms, collages, solarization and superimposition. He had a natural curiosity and a cultivated and sporty demeanor that led him to produce work as diverse as surrealist nudes and well-constructed advertisements. Whether it be in documentary photography or industrial photography, Pierre Boucher always awakens an empathy and a feeling of closeness with his subjects in the spectator.
Pierre Boucher got his start in advertising, taking his inspiration from the graphic techniques of the modernists in the field and contributing to the transformation of the advertising photo into a work of art. He used photomontage to make his work more striking and effective, making unnerving and astonishing.
Boucher’s nudes, on the other hand, use no technical prowess whatsoever. After the war the movement for freedom of the body led him to reconsider social models. Pierre Boucher revisited the female and male nude from several angles. Around 1931, he did his first nude photos under the umbrella of the “ New Objectivity ” : the image was boxed, the frame strict, the bodies freed from their faces. From 1933 onwards his nudes became surrealist inspired by the work of Man Ray. He then moved on to neo-classical nudes. In studio or in natural light his Apollonian nude aimed above all for beauty and harmony.
Pierre Boucher, Propeller, Gelatin silver print, 1935
EDMUND F. WARD (b. 1892 – 1991) USA
“The Swimming Hole” c. 1930
Oil on canvas
Marks: signed Edm. F. Ward (lower right); partial labels verso:Westchester Arts and Crafts Guild; 4 Edmund F. Ward
For more information on the artist see: Who Was Who in American Art,Peter Hastings Falk, ed. (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985), p. 658.
Canvas H: 18” x W: 24”
Framed H: 27 9/16” x W: 33 9/16”
Price: $14,000
Ward studied at the Arts Student’s League with Edward Dufner, George Bridgeman, and Thomas Fogarty. He was an illustrator for several national magazines and books. In 1925, Ward exhibited an award winning work at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is perhaps best known for his WPA mural in the Federal Building, White Plains, New York.
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.
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.
Peter Canty received his BA in art from the Chouniard Art Institute, Los Angeles (now California Institute of the Arts) and an MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1969. Heavily influenced by the Post-Impressionist masters Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne, in his own he words he describes his interest in landscapes, believing they are, “the best vehicle for motion, force, and color dynamics.” Although his work reference realistic subjects, Canty’s imagery is drawn strictly from his own imagination.