Product Description
Richard Harold Redvers Taylor, “Modernist building staircase”, Gouache on paper c. 1949

RICHARD HAROLD REDVERS TAYLOR (1900-1975) United Kingdom
Modernist building staircase c. 1949
Gouache on paper, metal and wood frame
Signed: RHRT (lower left)
Marks: Gimpel Fils exhibition label (on back)
Exhibited: “An Exhibition in the Kettle’s Yard Loan Gallery: Sculpture & Painter,
14 February – 10 March, 1972” Gimpel Fils, London
Framed: H: 41 7/16” x W: 30 5/16”
Richard Harold Redvers Taylor (1900-1975) was born in Brighton on March 14th, 1900 and educated at Brighton College and Heatherleys School of Fine Art, Chelsea. His father, Harold Taylor, was a headmaster. Redvers Taylor retired from the Army (where he specialized in topographical surveying in Africa) in 1937 but was recalled for war service. In 1946 he began a new career as a professional painter. Between 1948 and 1958 Taylor was given a series of six one-man shows by Lefevre and Gimple Fils in London. In the 1960’s he turned to sculpture, and in 1972 an exhibition of his sculpture and paintings was held at the Kettle’s Yard Loan Gallery in Cambridge. His work is held in the permanent collection at the Beith Uri V Rami Museum in Israel. Louise Taylor (née Hayden), his wife, was an American and the adopted daughter and heiress of Alice B. Toklas, the companion of Gertrude Stein. Louise Taylor died on 21 July 1977.
Purism, otherwise known as l’esprit nouveau was directly inspired by a spare, functionalist aesthetic and is closely associated with the work of Le Corbusier and his circle in Paris in the second quarter of the 20th Century. In America this purist style was known as Precisionism, which explored similar imaginary during the late 1920’s and 30’s with artists like Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth and Ralston Crawford at the forefront of this movement. In England, the Vorticist movement (1912-1915) was founded by Wyndham Lewis and others and was the precursor to the Purist movement in Great Britain in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Redvers Taylor created geometrical landscapes while reducing volumes to colored planes and outlines to ridges. His artwork combines depth and perspective with flattened cubist fields of color. Architecture of industrial buildings was his favorite subject, whereas people and nature were usually absent from his compositions.
Richard Harold Redvers Taylor, “Modernist building staircase”, Gouache on paper c. 1949
FORREST (FROSTY) MYERS (1941- ) USA
Orange cube 2008
Orange anodized and contoured aluminum wire manipulated into a cube form
Signed: Orange Cube, 08, Forrest Myers (on plaque)
For more information see: Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 2003-2004 25th Edition), Dictionary of American Sculptors: 18th Century to the Present, Glen Opitz (Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo, 1984).
Dimension: 10 1/2″ cube
Price: $15,000
A sculptor and art teacher born in Long Beach, California, Forrest Myers settled in Brooklyn, New York. Myers studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. His teaching venues include the San Francisco Art Institute, School of Visual Arts in New York, Kent State University, and the Parsons School of Design. His studio is in Brooklyn.
In the early 1980s, Forrest Myers was applying Buckminster Fuller's principles of tensegrity and repeated tetrahedrons into his designs for furniture. This exploration culminated in the use of aluminum wire that becomes structural when bent and pressed into a dense tangle.
GALERIE CARREFOUR 141Boulevard Raspail, Paris
Vérité Collection Wood block print poster “ARTS PRIMITIFS, CARREFOUR, 141 BD RASPAIL, DAN 5803″ c. 1948
Float mounted in a finely contoured oak frame.
Inscribed to: A Monsieur E Mme Breton, Vérité Image dimension:
H: 19 1/2″ x W: 12 3/4″
Framed dimension: H: 26 3/4″ x W: 19 3/4”
Price: $9,000
The Vérité Collection of primitive arts started after World War 1 in 1920. Pierre Vérité, a young artist started buying primitive art before anyone else. Vérité opened a small store selling exclusively tribal art in 1931 in conjunction with the Paris Colonial Exposition. Pierre Vérité regarded “primitive arts” as art, and it is the raw power of these primitive pieces that changed the history of 20th-century European culture. In 1936, he opened the Galerie Carrefour on the Boulevard Raspail, which was a hangout for artists and collectors such as Pablo Picasso, Helena Rubenstein, Nancy Cunard and Andre Breton. Tribal art was one of the key influences on Pablo Picasso and he often dropped into Pierre Vérité’s Galerie Carrefour in Paris to buy masks and carvings from Africa and Oceania. Henri Matisse was also a regular visitor, as were other artists such as Fernand Léger and Maurice de Vlaminck, while Vérité used to browse Parisian flea markets with André Breton, Surrealism’s chief theorist. In the decades that followed the opening of the gallery, the Vérité family’s client list grew to include Hollywood stars and leading museum curators, as well as some of the greatest names in 20th-century art. Vérité very quickly became the most important art dealer for primitive arts. In the 1948, Pierre’s son Claude became increasingly involved in the gallery. He went on African expeditions, collecting objects and information, and took photographs to document his travels, while his wife Jeannine was running the gallery operations. With Claude and Jeannine joining the gallery, Galerie Carrefour showed at all “Art Primitifs” exhibitions in Europe and the United States. The gallery established itself as the most important player in tribal arts in the world and exhibited until the 1990’s.
S O G A T A New York, NY
“Harlem: Concert” 1931
Watercolor and pencil on paper
Signed: SOGATA · HARLEM 1931 (in pencil, lower left corner of image); HARLEM: CONCERT. (in pencil beneath image on left)
For contextual history and similar art see: Rhapsodies in black : art of the Harlem Renaissance, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Harlem Renaissance Artists. Jordan, Denise (Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2003).
Paper H: 14 7/8″ x W: 10 7/8″
Image H: 11″ x W: 7 1/2″
Frame H: 19 1/4” x W: 16”
*This SOGATA New York Watercolor and pencil on paper has been gifted to The Wolfsonian – FIU, Miami Beach, FL.
ALEXANDER LIBERMAN (1912-1999) USA
MEYER SCHAPIRO PORTFOLIO 1974
Untitled 1973
Silkscreen, patinated bronze frame
Signed: A. Liberman 1973, Artist’s proof, 2RC (embossed on paper)
Canvas: H: 33” x W: 25 1/2”
Frame: H: 42 1/2” x W 33 1/2”
Portfolio of 12 works, Edition of 100
Price: $
Alexander Liberman’s family left the Soviet Union for London as exiles in 1921. Liberman studied there briefly before moving to Paris where he undertook philosophy and mathematics at the Sorbonne and architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. In the 1930s Liberman designed stage sets, and worked on the staff of Vu, the first magazine illustrated with photographs. Although Liberman quickly earned the title of managing director, he left the magazine in 1936, and devoted himself to painting and writing. In 1941, he left Paris for New York. Again, he became involved in publishing after gaining employment at Vogue magazine. Twenty years later, in 1962, he became Editorial Director of all Condé Nast Publications, a position he held until he retired in 1994. During his time at Vogue, Liberman introduced 20th-century art to readers by using it as a backdrop for fashion shoots, as well as by profiling living artists in the magazine. As a painter, Liberman exhibited geometric circle paintings in galleries and museums around New York in the 1950s. Liberman also had an interest in sculpture, and began welding steel into public works in the late 1950s. These monochrome geometric sculptures are featured in over 40 cities worldwide.