Fine Arts

Fine Arts

Details

Grant Mudford, Long Beach, Gelatin Silver Print 1979

GRANT MUDFORD (1944- ) Australia

Long Beach 1979

Gelatin silver print

Signed: Long Beach 1979, LB-24/2 (in pencil on back); Grant Mudford 1980 (script in ink)

Framed size: H: 28 ¼” x W: 32 7/16”

Price: $29,000

“Since he moved to Los Angeles from Australia in the late 1970s, Grant Mudford has composed photographs that crisply examine the streamlined geometries of West Coast architecture and landscape. Mudford has zeroed in on the abstract formal relationships lurking within the designs of gas stations, strip malls and apartment buildings. The geometrical arrangements highlighted in his photographs of the masterful modernist structures of Rudolf Schindler and Craig Ellwood have disclosed a link between their midcentury architecture and the contemporaneous hard-edge abstractions of L.A. painters John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson.” – Art in America, “Grand Mudford at Rosamund Felsen, September 2003
Details

Knox Martin, “Eight”, Magna and oil on canvas 1958

KNOX MARTIN (1923-) USA

Eight 1958

Magna and oil on canvas

Signed: Knox Martin on lower left on front of canvas, Knox M on back of canvas

Marks: From: CORE, 38 Park Row, New York 38, NY, To: Martin, Knox, Eight, 1958, Magna/Oil, 30×40, 700. (paper label), Fischbach Gallery, 799 Madison Avenue, New York 21, Knox Martin, Eight, C.O.R.E., Price $700 (paper label), Mr. Ned L. Pines, 605 Park Ave., New York 21, NY (address label).

Exhibited: Fischbach Gallery, New York 1963; I. Jankowski Gallery, New York, 1975

Provenance: Personal Collection of the artist; Private Collection New York

Canvas: H: 40 1/4” x W: 26 1/4””

Framed: H: 52 3/8” x W: 38 3/8”

From 1957 to about 1964, the spirit of art in New York City was moving in directions for which Abstract Expressionism had not prepared us. By 1965, the strokes, swipes, drips, and splatters of New York painting had given way to cool, laconic representations of the most ordinary of ordinary objects. It was a transformation in artistic culture in which intellectual rewards replaced, or at least supplemented, visual ones, and the whole philosophical face of art was beginning to disclose itself in a particularly vivid way. I saw Knox Martin’s paintings as embodying this transformative moment. In them, I thought, the tension between the two rival philosophies of art could be felt. the way I saw them: they appeared at first glance to be collages, made of large, irregular, overlapping swatches of patterned cloth. Some of the swatches were striped, some appeared to be decorated with circles. It must be conceded that stripes and circles belong to the vocabulary of one kind of abstract art, while the irregular shapes, which felt as though they had been torn from bolts of material, belonged to another.

So one might properly claim that Martin was synthesizing an expressionist abstraction with a geometrical one. For me, however, Knox’s stripes and circles evoked the life of the circus: the striped tents, the loudly patterned costume of clowns. And Martin’s colors—pistachio, raspberry, banana—were festive and impudent. That is why I felt that the paintings referred to vernacular reality, as much so as Campbell Soup cans or Coca Cola bottles. The circus was a recurring theme in modernist art, and I thought it appropriate for late modernist painting to reduce the circus to patterned rags expressive of its raucous gaiety.
Details

Alyssa Monks “Push” Oil on Canvas 2006

ALYSSA MONKS (b.1977) USA

Push 2006

Oil on canvas

Signed: Alyssa Monks 2006 (on lower back of canvas)

Exhibited: DFN Gallery, New York 2006

Illustrated: American Art Collector, May 2006, p. 155

H: 30” x W: 56”

“Push” is somewhat of a response to the long tradition of bathtub paintings where a nude woman is displayed. However, the figure is me, the painter, so that the subject is also the artist, juxtaposing the objectification of women in that tradition. Also, the figure wears a black negligee and red lipstick, white makeup gently drips down the cheek, closing the door on naturalism.

At the New York Academy of Art, Alyssa Monks studied with Vincent Desiderio, Wade Schuman, Brenda Zlamany, John Jacobsmeyer, Harvey Citron, Deane Keller, Edward Schmidt, Steven Assael, Lisa Bartolozzi, Patrick Connors, Peter Cox, Jon DeMartin, Leonid Lerman, and Hong Nian Zhang. Alyssa’s sensibility of paint and color allows one to be seduced into the illusion of each image. Striving for anatomical and realistic accuracy, it is her intention to elicit a serious confrontation. The work requires attention to detail and a slow and rich execution. It is this artist’s concern to visually relate the contemporary human experience with sensitivity, empathy, and integrity.
Details

Jack Richard Smith “Spiros Antonopoulos” Oil on Copper 2004

JACK RICHARD SMITH (1950-) Taos, NM

“Spiros Antonopoulos” 2004

Blackoil, wax, lead salts on copper, burl wood and ebonized wood Dutch old master style frame

Exhibited: “Taos Portraits” by Jack Smith, Harwood Museum of Art, University of New Mexico, Taos, New Mexico, May 14th – August 15th, 2004

Illustrated: “Taos Portraits” by Jack Smith, May 14th – August 15th, 2004, exhibition catalogue (Taos, NM: Harwood Museum of Art, University of New Mexico) illustr. 16

Painting: 6” x 6”
Framed: 13 3/4” x 13 11/16”

Price: $14,500

Incorporating blackoil, wax, lead salts, and copper Smith’s small format portraits and paintings are detailed and intimate depictions of creative individuals and charged tableaux. Smith’s singular style of portraits glow with a warm inner light and present honest, straightforward images that speak of personal narratives. Smith’s interest in miniatures developed first as a matter of convenience. In 1982, while preparing for a winter of travel in Mexico, he experienced logistical problems traveling with the larger size painting materials he was using at the time. The solution seemed to be a block of watercolor paper and casein, a milk base paint of versatile possibilities and vehement drying power. Suddenly, his paintings went from three by five feet to three by five inches. The history of oil painting, principally centered around the Dutch schools and their development of a method called black oil painting, often executed in miniature, also captured his interest. Black oil, an oleoresin comprised of white beeswax, raw linseed oil and litharge of lead, suspends the pigment above the painting ground, which was traditionally wood panel, linen or copper plate. This medium seems to suspend the pigment, allowing light to penetrate and reflect from the surface and illuminate the imaged from behind, a sort of light from within. The small format is an act of compression that requires the viewer to draw in close to a more intimate proximity and will, if the painting works, hopefully approach Joseph Campbell’s description of art as an “object of fascination” to engage the viewer and stop for a moment one’s busy mind. Jack Smith was born in 1950. At age 16, he began his training at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan before moving to Ohio to attend Columbus College of Art and Design. He also studied for a brief time at the Instituto de Allende, at San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico. He now resides in New Mexico. Reflecting a profound knowledge of art history and and an alchemist’s sense of the painting craft, contemporary painter Jack Smith has forged his own place amongst the most powerful of contemporary portraitists working in America. Jack Smith recently received a prestigious Past Achievement Award from the Peter and Madeleine Martin Foundation for the Creative Arts, following an important solo exhibition titled, Jack Smith: The Taos Portraits at the Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico in 2004. The exhibition featured fifty portraits of Taos, New Mexico residents, executed between 2000 and 2003. The series was intended as a visual biography of this unique artistic community at the turn of the century. Smith’s subjects range from the famous to the infamous — including artists, writers, art patrons, Native peoples, and street peoples. Spiros Antonopoulos’s (he always dropped the s in Spiros when saying his name) past is a little sketchy. I understand that he was trained as a musician and through that came to the world of computers, which he mastered immediately given his hot tub size brain pan. He also told me once that he had “done lots of drugs and some porn movies” while in college. Before we met he used to drive by my house in Arroyo Hondo, NM when he lived above us on the ridge road called Atalaya, about fifteen miles north of Taos and would make funny faces at me through the smudged window of his ghostly, lowrider station wagon. He was wildly eccentric dresser and had a selection of sunglasses that Elton would envy, mostly a thrift store wardrobe kind of guy. As I mentioned before, he tended to remind me of a mad computer geek samurai, which I tried to capture in this portrait. I’ve heard he now lives in the East Village and has forsaken his aforementioned life for obsessive Bikram yoga…… and that’s where the trail gets cold. The Taos portrait series was executed from 1999 to 2003 and was intended as a visual biography of this peculiar valley and town of Taos, NM. The subjects range from famous artists, writers and political activists to street people and what we affectionately call “sage bunnies”, or, folks that live out in the hinterlands in a grow hole with a goat or two and come to town once a month for provisions and bathe in patchuli oil, I presume, to save water. I would have liked to have had more of these folks but lining them up proved problematic as they tend to live in a parallel universe called locally, “the land of poco tiempo”, or “little time” , a condition caused, in their case, by smoking too much cheeba. This same time thing is true of my attempts at several more Native American friends from the pueblo…… it is something I greatly admire about them, unless of course you are scheduling a portrait sitting for the fourth time and they just had to go to Walmart without warning. But then “this is Taos” as John Nichols mentions in the forward to theexhibition catalogue and it is often referred to as an “open air asylum” for a myriad of good reasons. I thought it would be interesting to look back at some future time and see the weft and warp of the tapestry of Taos at the turn of themillennium. I could easily have done three hundred, but one must stop somewhere. The show was hanging in conjunction with Wayne Theibauld’s “City/ Country” exhibition at the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico, June to September, 2004. – as told by Jack Smith, May 2006
Details

Robert Loughlin, “The Founder of the Empire”, Oil paint and pennies on plywood panel 1985

For more information on Robert Loughlin see: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/fashion/mens-style/the-legacy-of-robert-loughlin-artist-behind-the-brute.html?mwrsm=Email
Details

Giuseppe Napoli “Shamballa” Oil on board 1965

GIUSEPPE NAPOLI (1929-1967) Italian / American

“Shamballa” 1965

Oil on board

Signed: Napoli (scrafitto on front), Giuseppe Napoli 1965 “Shamballa”

(on back of board), Giuseppe Napoli (signed twice on stretcher)

H: 24” x W: 20”

A profoundly dynamic Abstract Expressionist painting by New York artist, Giuseppe Napoli. The painting is painted on board which is affixed to stretcher bars by staples.

Giuseppe Napoli was part of the New York School of the 1950’s and 60’s working out of a small studio in Greenwich Village. Napoli participated in numerous exhibitions but unfortunately his career was cut short by his suicide in 1967 the result of suffering from periods of depression.

Just as “Starry Night” is widely considered to have reflected the mental state of Van Gogh shortly before his death; this painting may also have reflected the mental state of Giuseppe Napoli who ended his own life only two years after creating this remarkable painting. The vigorous, heavy impasto, the ominous sun made impotent by the bold black ring that surrounds it and the jumbled landscape below, could be symbolic of the hope-against-hope, that eventually prevailed.
Details

Carl van Vechten, “Cab Calloway” 1940

CARL VAN VECHTEN (1880-1964) USA

Cab Calloway 1940

Signed: Cab Calloway, XIX b.28 (in ink on back); PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL VAN VECHTEN, 101 CENTRAL PARK WEST, CANNOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (ink stamp on back)

Size: H: 9 15/16” x W: 8”

Cabell “Cab” Calloway III (1907-1994) was a famous African American jazz singer and bandleader. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States’ most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s.
Details

Victor Moscoso, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Steve Miller Blues Band, The Daily Flash, Ben Van Meter, Rodger Hillyard: Peacock Ball at the Avalon Ballroom, March 10-11, 1967, 1st edition

VICTOR MOSCOSO USA

Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Steve Miller Blues Band, The Daily Flash, Ben Van Meter, Rodger Hillyard: Peacock Ball at the Avalon Ballroom March 10-11, 1967

Marked: Marked: Moscoso (in script), 1967 © FAMILY DOG PRODUCTIONS 639 Gough St. San Francisco, Calif. 94102, No. 51-1

H: 19 15/16” x W: 14 ¼”
Details

Stanley Mouse / Alton Kelley, Grateful Dead & Oxford Circle at the Avalon Ballroom September 16 -17, 1966

STANLEY MOUSE USA

ALTON KELLEY USA

Grateful Dead & Oxford Circle at the Avalon Ballroom September 16 -17, 1966

Marked: Mouse Studios 66, 26(3), (c) Family Dog Productions 1966 639 Gough St., San Francisco, Calif. 94102

H: 20″ x W: 14″

Born in Detroit, Stanley Miller became known as “Mouse” after illustrating countless notebooks with his signature rodent sketch. Miller found an outlet for his creativity in pin-striping cars and airbrushing hot rod designs on posters and T-shirts. Mouse migrated to San Francisco in 1964, where he first met the artists associated with Family Dog, the organization producing dance concerts at the Avalon Ballroom. With collaborator Alton Kelley, Mouse experimented broadly with composition, lettering and imagery: Kelley came up with the ideas and Mouse executed the designs. Mouse and Kelley helped to establish the psychedelic style of expression under the name Mouse Studios.
Details

Bonnie Maclean, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Mother Earth, Hour Glass, Holy See at the Fillmore, October 19-21, 1967, 1st edition

BONNIE MACLEAN USA

Eric Burdon & The Animals, Mother Earth, Hour Glass, Holy See at the Fillmore October 19-21, 1967

Marked: B. MacLean © Bill Graham 1967 #89

H: 21” x W: 14”

*** An example of this poster is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

By 1967, Eric Burdon took the Animals into a harder, more psychedelic sound than the one listeners recognized from the band’s earlier incarnation. Burdon would later take this style even further when he teamed up with an obscure Los Angeles band known as War. The poster was printed only once before the concert
Details

Wes Wilson, Grateful Dead, Big Mama Mae Thornton at the Fillmore, December 9-11, 1966, 1st edition

WES WILSON USA

Grateful Dead, Big Mama Mae Thornton at the Fillmore December 9-11, 1966

Marked: © 1966 Wes Wilson 41, printing by West Coast Lithograph Co. SF

H: 21 7/8” x W: 14”
Details

Wes Wilson, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Harbinger Complex at the Fillmore, April 21-23, 1967, 1st edition

WES WILSON USA

Howlin’ Wolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Harbinger Complex at the Fillmore April 21-23, 1967

Marked: Wes Wilson #60 Creative Lithograph Co. ©1967 Bill Graham

H: 23 ¾” x W: 14”
Details

Robert Fried, The Charlatans, Buddy Guy, North American Ibis Alchemical Co. at the Avalon Ballroom, September 22-24, 1967, 1st edition

ROBERT FRIED USA

The Charlatans, Buddy Guy, North American Ibis Alchemical Co. at the Avalon Ballroom September 22-24, 1967

Marked: Fried 67 (in script), © Family Dog Productions 639 Gough Street San Francisco, Calif. 94102

H: 19 15/16” x W: 14”
Details

Alan Durman “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” c. 1945

ALAN DURMAN (1905-1963) UK

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden c. 1945

Oil on aluminum panel on a wood structure, elaborately carved gilt wood frame

Painting: H: 23 1/4” x W: 30 3/16”

Framed: H: 28 3/4” x W: 35 9/16”

Alan Durman was born in Saltford, England and worked as a local muralist where his most important work is on display at the Saltford Community Hall. The largest mural of the three celebrates the community and shows the indigenous landscape as a backdrop to dancing and frolicking locals. The other two paintings show a view across Kelston village to Kelston Round Hill, a significant local landmark and in the other a verdant view featuring an ancient forest across to the River Avon. In the late 1930’s and 40’s Durman directed his talent as an illustrator and designed many posters. He created travel related posters for British Railways (BR) and the British Transport Commission (BTC) which featured stylish and active young families at sea side resorts.
Details

Christian Vogt, Nude Female from the “Red Series”, Dye Transfer photograph 1976

CHRISTIAN VOGT (b.1946) Switzerland

Nude Female from the “Red Series” 1976

Dye Transfer photograph
(continuous-tone color photographic printing process).
Matte black and gold wood frame

Signed on back

Photograph illustrated: Christian Vogt: Photographs, The Master Collection, Vol. 1, by Davis Sue (Geneva: Roto Vision, 1980)

Marked: Print no. 12/33 1976
Framed: H: 21 5/8” x W: 17 7/16”

Price: $17,500

Christian Vogt has exhibited internationally at venues including The Photographer’s Gallery, (London), the ICP (New York), the Kunsthaus (Zürich), the Yajima Gallery (Montreal), the Tel Aviv Museum (Isreal), the Rencontres Internationales (Arles), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Galerie Watari (Tokyo), the Preuss Museum (Norway), the Edwynn Houk Gallery (Chicago), the CCD Galerie (Düsseldorf) and the Kunstmuseum (Hannover) among many others.

His photography is included in numerous important collections such as the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Swiss Foundation for Photography (Winterthur), the Musée de l’Elysee (Lausanne), the Modern Museet (Stockholm), the Tel Aviv Museum (Tel Aviv) and the Polaroid Collection (Cambridge, USA). He currently resides in Basel, Switzerland.
Details

Paul Beliveau “Les humanites CCLXXXIX” Hyperrealist painting 2007

PAUL BELIVEAU (1954-) Québec, Canada

“Les humanites CCLXXXIX” 2007

Acrylic on canvas

Signed and dated: Paul Beliveau 2007 (script signature on the back of canvas)

H: 40” x W: 60”

Born in 1954, Paul Béliveau attained his Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Laval University in 1977. Recognized for his expertise in drawing, engraving and painting he has since then had more than sixty solo exhibitions across Canada and the United States. The recipient of numerous prizes in visual arts and of multiple grants from the Canada Council as well as the Ministère des Affaires Culturelles du Québec has taken part in several commitees and juries as specialist in the visual arts. “By openly integrating into the compositions an iconography from the past and proceeding through citation and retrospection, he reveals the phenomenon of metamorphosis upon which imagination itself is based. In this way he brings to light the very principles of the mechanics of creation. Imagination, which consists as it were in the transfer of a perceptible representation onto an image belonging to another reality, thus sees itself in the presented. Consequently it is not the images themselves but the unique process of creative development which accords Paul Béliveau’s works their originality.” (Dany Quine, L’oeuvre du temps)
Details

Michele Oka Doner Terrible Chair sculpture (unique) 1981

MICHELE OKA DONER (b. 1945) USA

Terrible Chair (unique) 1981

Gilded bronze

Illustrated: Michele Oka Doner, Natural Seduction, S. Ramljak, M. Lapidus, A. C. Danto (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2003), p. 85

H: 31 ½” x W: 15” x D: 17 ½”

Excerpt from “The Furniture of the Universe” by Arthur C. Danto in Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction (New York: Hudson Hill Press) 2003 p. 30

The Terrible Chair

What drew me initially to the work of Michele Oka Doner was the way it acknowledges the rhetoric of sitting and the metaphorical language of furniture and, most particularly, of the chair. Consider, for examples, the work she calls Terrible Chair which a distant affinity to Adirondack furniture as it is cast from a prototype fashioned out of branches. The Adirondack chair itself refers more directly to the forest; it is made of branches and looks as If nothing more than an axe or a hunting knife were needed to construct it. It proclaims the skill of the woodsman prevailing over the forest by seeing it in terms of opportunities for survival rather than representing threats and dangers. The Adirondack chair is a domesticated tree, a bower and as much a testament to the superior power of the seated as a chair with clawed or hoofed legs, in which we sit as master over beasts. The proper habit for it is the hunting lodge, with bearskin rugs suitably prone on the look or the long veranda of a mountain chalet.

Terrible Chair is made of thorned branches, which have a certain menacing beauty but no real use unless to fashion a mocking crown. Oka Doner is drawn to natural objects; they are her models and her motifs, the source of her metaphors. She saw a thorny branch that she found on a neighbor’s property a clear challenge: “The way the thorns were arranged was exquisite,” she recalled. But those same thorns were too threatening to invite physical approach. A thorned plant has an evolutionary advantage because it refuses to yield to human use. This was an irresistible dare to an artist bent on turning the natural into the meaningful.
Terrible Chair is a victory; it defines what it means to be an artist in Oka Doner’s conception of that role. It is equally a victory for the thorns because the utility promised by the chair they form remains unavailable to sitters: the thorned sticks are available only as art but not for use. The radical unusability of the work constitutes a draw in the match with nature, and the bronze in which it is cast forms a suitable monument to that context. Terrible Chair enshrines an objective contradiction.

Nonetheless, the components of the Terrible Chair are combined to form a chair, but because there is no seat, no one would know how to use it in a conventional way. There have been treacherous chairs that have concealed their treachery, subverted the confidence shown in the act of sitting—chairs that collapse beneath their users, The Marquis de Sade offered chairs to female sitters that rotated them through an abrupt arch onto their backs and into a position of sexual accessibility from vertical dignity to horizontal vulnerability. By contrast, no one is tempted to sit on a Terrible Chair so dignity is at least not put in threat. So what is its meaning? In its outward inhospitality, the work says, in effect, “This chair is not for sitting.” It has to have the form of a chair to deliver this message. It excludes the chair from use as if to underscore the message, it excludes the chair from use as if to deliver the truth that chairs count in the game of meanings, transmitting auras to their occupants. It acquires a fairy tale inaccessibility like the glass slipper in Cinderella into which only the tiny foot of a natural princess can slip. Terrible Chair— a name, the artist told me, her two sons helped select—promises to transform whoever claims it. But clearly we are not its intended occupants. So it stands as a reminder of the higher meanings of chair to those who may have relegated them to the drab language of utility. Through its thorny point, brandished like the spikes on medieval armor, Terrible Chair transfers itself the power that sitting in it would confer.

I think of Terrible Chair as Oka Doner signature work, transmitting the message through its sharp spins that although she makes chairs, she is no a designer but an artist. And though the chair is part of the domestic lexicon, her project is to bring meaning rather than comfort. Should her work provide comfort, it is an incidental by-product of a class that acknowledges human needs but transform their satisfaction into symbolic acts and cosmic endorsements. Gesturing toward the spiky, spiny objects that furnish her tremendous loft—transfigurations of natural forms cast in various metals that carry their own system of meanings—Oka Doner draws attention to the fact that nothing here is upholstered. She likes the hard, the skeletal, the pronged and edgy armature of carapace, the natural scaffoldings t hat give shape and structure to the vulnerabilities of living things. It is the inner architectures whose natural powers we acquires as our own when we use those forms as evocations and signs , in the manner in which peoples who live close to nature use teeth, their claws, the furs and the feathers of wild animals as talismans of great power. Her furniture consists of so many apertures through which the cosmos enters the space of domestic life, transforming a utilitarian object into something that transcends that use and transforms the user into a participants in a celestial trial. Her aim, she confides, is to ritualize ordinary life. And this is an artistic practice far more deeply connected with the meaning than making things to hang on walls or stand in corners simply for visual delectation.

MICHELE OKA DONER (b. 1945) New York, NY

Michele Oka Doner is an internationally acclaimed New York-based artist and designer whose work translates natural forms–plant fronds, berries, shells, and life observed beneath the lens of the microscope–into objects of extraordinary power and seduction rendered in bronze, precious metals and stones, concrete handmade papers, ceramic, and now, glass. Since first appearing on the national scene in 1970 as the youngest artist showcased in the defining landmark museum exhibition Objects USA. Oka Doner has built a career encompassing monumental sculptures, public art, jewelry, and functional objects that range from fireplace tools to evening bags.
Oka Doner was born in Miami Beach in 1945. Though she received her formal education and advanced degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the artist has always cited as her primary laboratory the turbulent natural treasures of Southern Florida’s oceans, tidal pools, beaches, gardens and tropical forests–boundless living resource libraries she visits on a monthly basis to gaze upon and gather samples that later inspire pieces of every size and type. Oka Doner has said that she strives with her work to “play the role of the translator and editor of life forces creating objects that go far beyond static formal beauty to encourage contemplation and wonder.” Informed by her ongoing research into scientific literature and poetry, as well as her expeditions in the natural world, Oka Doner uses the tools of physical expression to invite us along on her wanderings through the realm of the infinite.
Oka Doner is also admired for her numerous site-specific, permanent public art commissions including such projects as the golden tiled Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square Subway Station (1990) and A Walk on the Beach, a half-mile long expanse of terrazzo and bronze floor continually unfolding at Concourse A of Miami International Airport (1995 to present). Oka Doner’s sculptures and functional objects are included in many prestigous private and public collections, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, the Art of Institute of Chicago and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others. She has participated in scores of distinguished exhibitions internationally and has been recipient of numerous grants and awards, including honors from the Kress Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts. In 2004 she received the coveted Award of Excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers and Artists.
Details

Mario Ceroli / Arte Povera Cavallino Sculptural Artwork 2004

MARIO CEROLI (b. 1938) Italy

“Cavallino” 2004

Brown bottle glass in the shape of a horse with wood composition and framing

Signed: Ceroli

H: 21” x W: 21” x D: 2 3/4″

Price: $30,000

Mario Ceroli has been universally acclaimed at the age of 27, when he was awarded in 1966 wih the Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale for his wooden «Cassa Sistina» (a tribute to the Sixtine Chapel). Ceroli has realised important works for several prestigious institutions (such as the equestrian sculpture for the RAI, which has become the national broadcasting channel trademark; the central square, the Church and the theater in Porto Rotondo; a monumental sculpture in FIumicino Airport Rome…), prominent collectors (Agnelli and Barilla among the others), and he has been responsible for the conception of the stage sets of world renowned theaters such as la Fenice-Venice, La Scala-Milan, the Bolchoi-Moscow, the Arenas of Verona and the Opera of Rome in the last thirty years. Since the 1960’s Ceroli’s work has made its mark by using natural wood in particular Russian pinewood, that he assembles with a variety of materials; burnt wood, lead glass, in line with the philosophy of the Arte Povera. In the 1960’s while the artists of Pop Art were reinterpreting the daily life images, Mario Ceroli paid homage to the great classics of the history of art ( Homage to Leonardo da Vinci, Sixtine Chapel, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna) and reinterpreted his contemporaries like Giorgio De Chirico. The term Arte Povera was used for the first time in September 1967, one year after Mario Ceroli received his prize at the Venice Biennale. One can find nevertheless, the roots of the principal aspects of this movement during the group show that took place at la Tartaruga gallery in Rome in 1965 that included Ceroli, Boetti, Pascali and other artists then all renamed as poveristi.
Details

Jan de Swart, Handcarved “Peach” Sculpture, c.1970

JAN DE SWART (1908-1987) Netherlands / USA

Peach sculpture c. 1970

Hand carved and formed jelutong wood in a symbolic / erotic form of a peach

For more information see: Jan de Swart: A Day That Becomes a Lifetime, exhibition catalogue (California: Fine Arts Gallery at the San Fernando Valley State College, February 1972); Jan de Swart, Mike McGee and William G. Otton (Laguna Beach, California: Laguna Art Museum, 1986).

H: 7 ½” x D: 4”

Price: $7,500

Constantly seeking and inventing new materials Jan de Swart was a true modernist. He was influenced by artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames, and later Sam Maloof and Wendell Castle. Although he had been creating small sculptures since his arrival in California from Holland in 1929, he had not been widely recognized until being introduced to John Entenza, publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine in 1947. Soon thereafter, he was able to create larger works and began collaborating with architects such as Whitney Smith and Victor Gruen on special commissions. His work is in the permanent collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, and the Ford Foundation. He was honored with the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1965.
Details

Raymond Barger Post-War Polychrome wood Sculpture c. 1955

RAYMOND BARGER (1906-2001) USA

Sculpture c. 1955

Polychrome contoured wood of interlocking circular forms in white, blue and pink on a bronze base.

Signed: RB (artist initials), USA, Z0I

H: 8 1/2” x L: 12 ¾” x D: 8

Price: $5,800

Raymond Granville Barger was a sculptor working in metal, plastelin, and bronze among other materials. Barger was educated at Carnegie Institute of Technology and Yale University School of Fine Art. He received a Winchester Fellowship from Yale, and a special fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. Barger moved to California, where he died in 2001.
Details

Alexander Liberman / Meyer Schapiro Portfolio Untitled 1973

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.
Details

Mayo Martin Johnson / American Post-War bronze sculpture 1960

Mayo Martin Johnson (b. 1904) USA

“Summit Conference” 1960

Patinated bronze with a verdigris patina in the recessed areas and natural bronze highlights, original wooden plinth / base.

Marks: Red painted museum accession marks

For more information see: American Art, ed. Peter Hastings Falk (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985) p. 317.

H: 10 ¼” on plinth

Price: $6,000
Details

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.
Details

Alfred Meyer-Bernburg, Bacchus, Oil on board, 1924

ALFRED MEYER-BERNBURG (1872-?) Berlin & Munich, Germany

Bacchus 1924

Oil on board

Signed: Alfred Meyer-Bernburg MCNN 1924 (lower right on the canvas)

Image: H: 16” x W: 11”
Framed: H: 23 1/4” x W: 18 3/8”

Price: $39,000

Alfred Meyer-Bernburg was born in Bernburg, Germany on July 27th, 1872. He studied at the Akademie in Berlin from 1891-92 and later at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Munich from 1897-1904. Meyer-Bernburg was a member of the Münchner Künstlergruppe (MKG).
Details

Duval Eliot “Still life”, Oil on canvas, wood frame c. 1945

DUVAL ELIOT (1909-1990) USA

Still life c. 1945

Oil on canvas, wood frame

Signed: Duval Eliot (lower right)

Painting H: 30” x W: 24”

Frame H: 38” x W: 32”

Duval Eliot, nee’ Ruby Duval Bearden, was born in Arkansas, and at a young age moved with her family to California. After going to Hollywood High School, she attended The Los Angeles Trade Technical College (then known as Frank Wiggins Trade School), studying Commercial Art and Design. While there, she began her art career as a men’s fashion illustrator. Then, because of her immense interest in art, immediately enrolled in Art Center School in Los Angeles, being one of their first students. She studied landscape painting (watercolor and oil), portrait, life drawing and illustration with Barse Miller and with Joseph Henniger, life drawing. At Art Center she continued studying all facets of commercial art and simultaneously worked at the Columbia Advertising Agency designing newspaper layouts and fashion illustrations for the major Los Angeles department stores such as I. Magnin, The Broadway, I. Miller, Wetherby Kayser, and Sak’s in Beverly Hills.

Throughout the 1940’s, Duval continued to create watercolor landscapes of Southern California and the West, while illustrating for J.J. Hagarty. Commercially, her prime focus was free-lance illustration, which could be created with a young child in tow, finding interesting work at the “Western Family Magazine,” for whom she did illustrations for over ten years. She also illustrated children’s storybooks and textbooks for MacMillian and L.W. Stinger publishing houses, meanwhile creating Fashion Advertisements and billboards in full color for Phelps & Terkel for several years and billboards for Silverwoods Department Store. For this work, Duval received the Western Art Directors Award in 1946.

During the post World War II years, Duval honed her fine art techniques. She studied with such notable artists as: Barse Miller, Hardy Gramatky and Ejnar Hansen (watercolor) and also with Hansen, (landscape & portrait painting in oil). In 1948, in The Fourth Annual Los Angeles Exhibition at The Greek Theater in Griffith Park, she won 1st Prize for her watercolor entitled “End of the Trail” among her peers of 326 entrants for painting, including Francis De Erdely, Lorser Feitelson, Conrad Buff, James Couper Wright, Frode N. Dann, Joshua Meador, Dan Lutz, and Chas. Payzant. She also studied painting with Conrad Buff, J.C.Wright, Design and Abstract Painting with Leonard Edmonson, and later, painting in acrylic with 2 years of intensive color with Guy MacCoy and silk-screen Serigraphy with Mario De Perentes. Duval also became close friends with Milford Zornes.

Duval became active in “The Southern California Designer Craftsmen” (S.C.D.C.) She won many awards and exhibited extensively throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s at Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery, Pasadena Art Museum (paintings and enamels}, Gallery 333 on La Cienega. In the 1940s, she turned towards more formal subject matter including landscape and still life and honed her fine art techniques in watercolor, oil, acrylic, and printmaking.

She participated in several group exhibitions in the Los Angeles area in the late 50s and early 60s. Her work was featured in solo exhibitions at the Jack Carr Gallery in Pasadena in 1976 and the Brand Library Gallery in Glendale in 1988.

Duval was also an active member and on the boards of “The Pasadena Society of Artists”, ”The Los Angeles Art Association”, “Women Painters of the West”, as well as S.C.D.C., participating in numerous group (Design 6, 7, 8, and 9 at the Pasadena Art Museum) and one man shows in the vicinities of Pasadena, Glendale, Santa Barbara and Claremont. She was represented in Paris by two silk screen serigraphs at The Exposicion Internacionale des Federacion Femenine at The Museum des Arts Decoratifs in 1971.

Duval Eliot was also represented in The Los Angeles County Art Museum’s show “MADE IN CALIF” in 2001 with “Chavez Ravine” and “3rd St. Traffic”.
Details

Gertrude Burgess Murphy American Modern Post-War Reclining nude sculpture c. 1950

GERTRUDE BURGESS MURPHY (b. 1899) USA

Reclining nude sculpture c. 1950

Fired and glazed earthenware on a wooden base

Marks: original paper exhibition label (San Francisco Museum of Art, Rental Gallery); tape with the name of the artist

For more information on Murphy see: Who Was Who in American Art, ed. Peter Hastings Falk (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985), p. 439.

H: 5 7/8” x L: 10 5/8” x D: 5”

Price: $11,500
Details

Forrest “Frosty” Myers Orange cube 2008

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 25^th Edition), Dictionary of American Sculptors: 18^th 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.
Details

Claire McCarthy Falkenstein, Chase, Structure-graphic, unique impression of metal sculptural forms on handmade paper (artist’s proof) 1955

CLAIRE MCCARTHY FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997) Coos Bay, OR

“Chase” 1955

Structure-graphic, unique impression of metal sculptural forms on handmade paper (artist’s proof), steel frame.

Signed: “Claire Falkenstein ‘55” (on bottom right corner), “E prevue d’artiste” (on bottom left corner), #6, “Chase”, Structura grafica, Milano, Italy, Giorgo Unglio Shop (label on back)

*** A related structure-graphic from 1952-55 is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.

Framed: H: 15 11/16” x 22 9/16”

SOLD

Falkenstein was born in the first decade of the century and was still hard at work in the last. Her life was precisely coincident with the 20th century, and she was a full participant in the tumultuous events in the art world. Her work incorporated modern technology, process, assemblage, chance, light, space, and what has been called “anti-form” as creative principles. Falkenstein was a contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists but, in fact, started sooner, lasted longer, and surpassed them in formal vocabulary, in the variety of materials she used and in her highly experimental techniques. Starting her career, (working, teaching and exhibiting} in San Francisco until 1950 when she moved to Paris for a dozen years to pursue her art career, where her association with critic Michel Tapié and his group Art Autre developed into many commissions including the gates at the home of her longtime friend Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, Italy. She returned to Venice, California in 1960. In other words, like a heat-seeking missile, she found and participated in the liveliest and most challenging art centers of the time. During her career she created over four thousand sculptures, paintings, and drawings, and became known for her innovative and often controversial abstract public art. Among major commissions were the windows for St. Basil’s Catholic Church, and fountains at California Federal Savings (now destroyed) and California State University. Putting her in the immediate milieu of many of the century’s greatest artists, she studied, worked, competed, collaborated and, in several cases, became close personal friends with several, including Alexander Archipenko, Clyfford Still, David Smith, Hans Arp, Mark Tobey, Antoni Tapies and Alberto Giacometti. Many years later, she said: “…there were marvelous things, marvelous people, but I took it all in stride. I was completely engrossed in what I was doing. There were people who were accustomed to being treated with deference and I guess I didn’t – and I guess that’s why they got interested.” (Falkenstein, Oral History, UCLA) Throughout Falkenstein’s career, she created a prodigious amount and variety of work, well beyond the traditional categories of painting and sculpture. She explored printmaking, ceramics, functional art, jewelry, and public monuments — ranging from the miniature (jewelry) to the colossal (50’ fountains and 100’ stained glass windows). And in each of these areas, her accomplishment has been consistently and unmistakably of historical significance.
Details

GALERIE CARREFOUR 141 Boulevard Raspail, Paris Vérité Collection Wood block print poster, ARTS PRIMITIFS, CARREFOUR, 141 BD RASPAIL, DAN 5803 c. 1948

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.
Details

Emma Luna “Stack of terry wash cloths” sculpture

EMMA LUNA California

Stack of terry wash cloths

Emma Luna has become increasingly known for her work in ceramic sculpture and mixed media on paper. A native of the Dominican Republic, she has lived from age 14 in the United States. She has a B.S. degree in Art Education from the University of Minnesota. Before moving to California, she lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, while working as an art teacher, she obtained a B.F.A. in painting at Massachusetts College of Art and was associated with the Radcliffe College Ceramics Studio at Harvard University. There she learned the technique of raku ceramic firing. Her ceramic sculptures have been shown at SOFA New York, SOFA Chicago, and in Los Angeles.

EMMA LUNA Statement

My sculpture reproduces everyday fabric objects such as washcloths, socks, and just about anything I can get my hands on to reproduce, utilizing the illusionist possibilities inherent in clay as a medium. However, I render this illusion so that the ordinary object simultaneously produces an impression on the extraordinary. Rows of rolled hands towels, piles of terry cloths whose positions defy gravity, a chaotic pile of laundry frozen in shapes that the fabric itself could never hold, and so forth.

Mine is a voyage of intimate exploration into a subliminal form shared by both clay and fabric: the fold. At the same time, my work de-familiarizes an anonymous and routine form of ‘women’s work’ whose aesthetic possibilities no one but a woman would be likely to apprehend.

EMMA LUNA Resumé

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2006 Mixed-media on paper, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2006 “Art Journey’s Back to the Long, Long Ago and Far Away,” Mixed-media on paper, The International House, Davis, CA
2004 “Corazones,” Gallery Casa de Chavón, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
2003 Sam Houston State University Art Gallery
2003 John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2003 UC Davis Alumni Center Gallery, Davis, CA
1999 “Impressions,” Memorial Union Art Gallery, University of California, Davis, CA
1986 “Latin American Images,” Austin Arts Center, Trinity College, Hartford, CT
1985 Gallery 57, Cambridge Art Council, Cambridge, MA

Selected Group Exhibitions and Galleries
2013 “Black, White, Red – A Sculpture Show,” A New Leaf Gallery | Sculpturesite, Sonoma, CA
2013 “Clay & Glass National Juried Exhibition,” Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California (ACGA), City of Brea Art Gallery, Brea, CA
2013 National Art Competition, Pence Gallery, Davis, CA
2012 Christopher Hill Gallery, St. Helena, CA
2011-2012 Crocker Museum Shop, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
2010-2012 Erin Martin Design, St. Helena, CA
2009-2012 Davis Artists’ Cooperative Gallery, Davis, CA
2007-2012 A New Leaf Gallery | Sculpturesite, Sonoma, CA
2009-2011 F Dorian, San Francisco, CA
2010 “Sculptural Objects & Functional Art (SOFA),” Navy Pier, Chicago, IL
2010 “3rd Annual Trompe L’oeil,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2009 “Small Works,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2009 Amoca, Pomona, CA
2009 “The Uncommon Object,” Pence Gallery, Davis, CA
2008 “Women Painting Women,” Pence Gallery, Davis, CA
2007 “Biannual Juried Art Show,” Sonoma Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA
2003-2007 Annual Auction Art Show, special invitation, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
2000-2007 Mostly Glass, Englewood, NJ
2004-2006 “Sculptural Objects & Functional Art (SOFA),” New York City, NY
2001-2006 “Sculptural Objects & Functional Art (SOFA),” special invitation, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL
2005 “One Hundred Socks,” Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA
2006 “The Flatlanders,” special invitation regional show, University of California, Davis, CA
2006 Ceramics, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2006 Art Foundry Gallery Group Show, Sacramento, CA
2005 “Realism in Art Juried Art Show,” Mostly Glass, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
2005 “Sonoma County Juried Group Show,”The DiRosa Preserve, Napa, CA
2004 Amdur Gallery, Glenview, IL
2004 “Primavera ’04,” Artists-in-Residence show, Fundación Centro Cultural Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Dominican Republic
2004 “Corazones Perros,” Museo de la Cerámica Contemporánea, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
2003 Gallery Arte Tamburini, La Romana, Dominican Republic
2003 “Otoño 2003,” Artists-in-Residence show, Fundación Centro Cultural Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Dominican Republic
2002 “Crocker-Kingsley 73rd Invitational Group Exhibition,” Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
2001 “Reality Check,” juried art show, Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH
2001 Craft Museum, City of Davis First Juried Exhibition, Davis, CA
2001 “Small Ceramics Art Show,” Academy of Design, New York City, NY
2001 “Palm Springs International,” Palms Springs, CA
2001 “Ceramics 30,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2001 “Sculptural Objects & Functional Art (SOFA),” The Armory, New York City, NY
2001 “All Creatures Great and Small,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2001 “Los Angeles Art Show,” UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
2001 “Two Decades,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2001 California Conference on Clay Arts, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
2001 Invitational show, Sutter Club, Sacramento, CA
1999 “Celebrate Ceramics,” Handworks Gallery, Acton, MA
1999 Blooming Art Gallery, Sacramento, CA
1999 California Association of Ceramic Artists show, Jeff’s Objets d’Art, Davis, CA
1998 Artists-in-residence show, Altos de Chavón Gallery, La Romana, Dominican Republic
1998 Oannes Gallery, Tiverton, RI
1996 Craigin-Fife Gallery, Brookline, MA
1995 Invitational show, Concord Art Association, Concord, MA
1995 “Within Gender,” invitational show at A Conference on Latin American Literature, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ
1991 “Voces Prevalecientes,” group show of Hispanic Artists, Firehouse Multicultural Arts Center, Jamaica Plain, MA
1990 “The Space,” organized by the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation (HOPE) as a benefit for AIDS education, Boston, MA
1986 “Taming the Beast,” three-person show, Cambridge Multi-Cultural Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
1986 Dominican artist’s exhibit, Essex County College, Newark, NJ
1985 Group show of women’s paintings, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA

Selected Collections
Museo de la Cerámica Contemporánea, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH
Hawaii State Art Museum, Honolulu, HI
Arizona State University Ceramic Museum, Tempe, AZ
The White House Christmas Tree Ornament Collection, Washington, DC
Sandy Bessen, Sante Fe, NM
Edinhurt Gallery, Don Merrill, Beverly Hills, CA
Barbara Fromm, Palm Desert, CA
Bea Larsen, Cincinnati, OH

Selected Honors & Awards
2013 Third Place Winner, ACGA’s “Clay & Glass National Juried Exhibition,” La Brea, CA
2009 Honorable Mention, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art Biennial, Sonoma, CA
2007 Second Place Winner, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art Biennial, Sonoma, CA
2003-2004 Fulbright Fellowship, Parsons School of Design, Los Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Dominican Republic
2002 Invited to create an ornament for the White House Christmas tree, now part of the White House collection
2002 Woodland Art Council Teaching Award
1999 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Artist’s Grant ($10,000)
1999 Three mixed media on paper works acquired by Canadian artistic design firm D-Zign I.P.P., Inc.
1997-1998 “Two Collection,” juried selection of arts and crafts selected for WGBH/Channel 2 Auction
1994 Three monotype prints acquired by the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, as part of the museum’s print lending-library

Selected Publications and Media
2013 “Clay, glass elevated in Brea,” review of ACGA show by Richard Chang, photo of sculpture “Las Toallitas de mi Abuela,” The Orange County Register, February 2. 2006 “Emerging,” book cover and article by Rita de Maeseneer, Encuentro con la Narrativa Dominicana Contemporanea, p. 230-233, Iberoamericana, Vervuert, Belgium.
2006 “Memory’s Allure,” review by Suzanne Munich, Davis Enterprise Newspaper.
2006 Wheel-throwing demonstrations for KCRA TV news, April and June.
2005 “Working Gender,” Cultural Representation of Women and Labor, Brujula University of California, Davis, Volume 4 Number 1, December.
2004 “Emma Luna’s Hearts,” article by Stephen Kaplan, Ceramics Monthly Upfront, December.
2004 “‘Corazones’ de Emma Luna,” El Caribe, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
2004 “Dominican Sojourn,” article and interview by Aldrich Tan, The Davis Enterprise.
2003 “Taking Artistic Wing,” article by Marilyn Moyle, The Davis Enterprise January 30.
2002 “Illusionism without Illusions,” article by Neil Larsen and Susan Kaiser, Ceramics Art and Perception, Issue 50.
2002 Article and interview by Janine Tully, guest lecture and presentation to the Hawaii Craftsman Raku Ho’laule’a conference , Honolulu Star Bulletin, May 26.
2001 Featured on “Modern Masters” television show, Home and Garden Cable Network, May 20
2001 “Celebrating Clay,” front page photo and article by Paul Dorn, The Davis Enterprise Weekend, May 3.
1999 “‘Celebrate Ceramics’ Draws a Crowd,” photo and article by Libbie Payne, The Boston Globe, October 10.
1999 Preview of “Impressions,” Memorial Union Art Gallery, article by Steven Jenkins, Artweek, Issue 7/8.
1999 “Multi-talented Artist Displays Work at MU,” feature article by Beth Rose Middleton, The California Aggie, UC Davis, August 2.
1999 Faculty Show, Davis Art Center, reviewed by Kimi Julian, Sacramento News and Review, January 14; By Melissa Leavitt, The California Aggie, January 14; By Marilyn Moyle, The Davis Enterprise, January 28.
1998 Group Sculpture show, Oannes Gallery, Tiverton, RI, reviewed in Art New England Magazine.
1998 “Notas Culturales,” taped interview with Luz Vicioso, Channel 19, La Romana, Dominican Republic, August 24.
1998 “Caña TV,” live interview for the Luisa María Ortiz Show, La Romana, Dominican Republic, Aug. 15.
1998 “Las Huellas del Caribe en Altos de Chavón,” article by José Bautista, El Siglo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, July 23.
1996 Artist’s Profile in Ceramics Monthly Magazine, June-August.
1995 “The Arts and Craft of Emma Luna,” feature article by art critic Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, March 1.
1990 “Centro,” interview by the Boston NBC affiliate’s Spanish language public affairs program.

Academic History and Professional Experience
Private Art Instruction, home studio (present)
1998-2013 Research Specialist, Printmaking Lab, University of California, Davis, CA
2009 Guest speaker and presenter at ceramics workshop at the Crocker Museum of Fine Art
2005-2006 Freelance Art Teacher, Merryhill School, Davis, CA
2006 Guest speaker and presenter on KVIE Television Guest Artist Series, Sacramento< CA
2006 Guest speaker and presenter at the California Association of Ceramic Art Conference, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
1999-2003 Freelance Art Teacher, Davis Art Center, Davis< CA
2003 Invited to lecture and conduct a three-day ceramic sculpture workshop at Sam Houston State University Art Gallery, Houston, TX
2002 Presentation and lecture at the Honolulu Academy of Art
2002 Clay demonstration at the University of Hawaii Windward
2001 Guest speaker and presenter at the California Association of Ceramic Art Conference, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
1985-1998 Art Teacher (Full-time), Boston Unified School Department, Boston, MA
1998 Visiting Artist, University of California Davis Craft Center, Davis, CA
1998 Artist-in-Residence (ceramics and sculpture), Parson’s School of Design, Los Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Dominican Republic, June-August
1997 Workshop on saggar-firing and terra sigillata techniques, Radcliffe College ceramics studio

Education
1986 Massachusetts College of Art, BFA, Painting
1983 University of Minnesota, BS, Art Education
Details

Michele Oka Doner Tree Bark server (unique) 1998

MICHELE OKA DONER (b. 1945) USA

Tree Bark server (unique) 1998

Solid cast silver in a naturalistic form of a piece of tree bark with an inherent hole.

***The weight is in excess of 250 troy ounces of silver

Exhibited: Inside Design Now: National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, 2003.

Illustrated: Michele Oka Doner, Natural Seduction, S. Ramljak, M. Lapidus, A. C. Danto (New York: Hudson hills Press, 2003) pp. 170-171; Inside Design Now: National Design Triennial, Donald Albrecht, Ellen Lupton, et al. (New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2003), p. 146.

H: 3 1/2″ x L: 16″ x D: 7″

Michele Oka Doner is an internationally acclaimed New York-based artist and designer whose work translates natural forms–plant fronds, berries, shells, and life observed beneath the lens of the microscope–into objects of extraordinary power and seduction rendered in bronze, precious metals and stones, concrete handmade papers, ceramic, and now, glass. Since first appearing on the national scene in 1970 as the youngest artist showcased in the defining landmark museum exhibition Objects USA. Oka Doner has built a career encompassing monumental sculptures, public art, jewelry, and functional objects that range from fireplace tools to evening bags. Oka Doner was born in Miami Beach in 1945. Though she received her formal education and advanced degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the artist has always cited as her primary laboratory the turbulent natural treasures of Southern Florida's oceans, tidal pools, beaches, gardens and tropical forests–boundless living resource libraries she visits on a monthly basis to gaze upon and gather samples that later inspire pieces of every size and type. Oka Doner has said that she strives with her work to “play the role of the translator and editor of life forces creating objects that go far beyond static formal beauty to encourage contemplation and wonder.” Informed by her ongoing research into scientific literature and poetry, as well as her expeditions in the natural world, Oka Doner uses the tools of physical expression to invite us along on her wanderings through the realm of the infinite. Oka Doner is also admired for her numerous site-specific, permanent public art commissions including such projects as the golden tiled Radiant Site at New York's Herald Square Subway Station (1990) and A Walk on the Beach, a half-mile long expanse of terrazzo and bronze floor continually unfolding at Concourse A of Miami International Airport (1995 to present). Oka Doner's sculptures and functional objects are included in many prestigous private and public collections, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, the Art of Institute of Chicago and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others. She has participated in scores of distinguished exhibitions internationally and has been recipient of numerous grants and awards, including honors from the Kress Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts. In 2004 she received the coveted Award of Excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers and Artists.
Details

American Art Deco, Neon, OK Chevrolet Used Truck Sign c.1940’s

AMERICAN NEON DESIGN

OK Chevrolet Used Truck Sign c.1940’s

Blue, yellow and red baked enamel on metal with an orange neon tube spelling out “OK” encircled with a round blue neon border, original paper tag.

Marks: Registration Mark (in the enamel) Original paper tag, This is an OK Used Truck, Authorized Chevrolet Dealer, Chevrolet Motor Division, General Motors Corporation

Diameter: 31” x Depth: 6”

Price: $10,500
Details

Italian Futurist 1950’s “Auntie Mame” Handwrought Pewter Pitcher c.1950

1950’s ITALIAN DESIGN

Futurist pitcher c. 1950

Handwrought and hand hammered pewter in an overall footed ovoid form with a traingle form spout body and an elongated arching contoured handle

Marked: PELTRO with lion, MADE ITALIA

H: 15″ x W: 9″ x D: 4″

Price: $6,000

The 1958 classic film, Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell, features this sculptural pitcher on the coffee table in the surrealist interior of Mame Dennis’ penthouse on Beekman Place #3, New York City.
Details

Joyce Francis “Banana Land Flowers” Bright Orange Box 2008

JOYCE FRANCIS New York, NY

“Banana Land Flowers” box 2008

Cast and carved bright orange Lucite acrylic deeply incised and carved with three dimensional images of a monkey, a butterfly, a dragonfly and exotic flowers and foliage.

The top cover dimension is 1 3/4″ thick and the four sides of the box are 1 1/4″ thick.

Marks: Joyce Francis 08

H: 6″ x W: 4 3/4″ x D: 4 3/4″

Price: $3,750

Joyce Francis is a native Manhattanite artist who specializes in sculptured acrylic jewelry, purses, sculpture, tables and coveted collection of exciting, passionately carved decorative boxes. All pieces have been painstakingly hand carved, hand dyed, illuminated and sometimes hand painted as well. There are no embedded objects. Her purses are part of the permanent collections of the New York Metropolitan Costume Institute (New York), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Fashion Institute of Technology (New York) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland).

Her work is in the collections of a number of stars and celebrities, including Hillary Swank, Phoebe Cates Kline, Emma Thompson, Cicely Tyson and Meryl Streep. Examples of her boxes and lamps are also owned by Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Steve Martin and Tom Hanks.
Details

Guy de Rougemont Puzzle Sculpture c. 1970

GUY DE ROUGEMONT (b. 1935) Paris, France

“Puzzle” sculpture c. 1970

Lacquered PVC in a rounded movable puzzle form with interlocking pieces.

H: 24 1/2″ x L: 26″ x D: 11″ (closed)

H: 24 1/2″ x W: 26″ x D: 11″

Price: $24,000

Guy de Rougemont is a French painter and sculptor and is famous for his use of vibrant geometric motifs. His works are a perfect blend of pop art and minimalism. In 1990, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (Museum of Decorative Arts) presented an important retrospective about this major contemporary French artist, member of the prestigious French Académie des Beaux-Arts. ROUGEMONT, Espaces publics et Arts décoratifs, 1965-1990, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, 5/22/1990 – 08/19/1990
Details

Duggie Fields, “Girl with Shoulder Bag”, Oil on linen 1970

DUGGIE FIELDS (1945-) London, UK

“Girl with Shoulder Bag” 1970

Oil on linen, custom wood and green lacquer Shadow box frame

Marks: “Girl with Shoulder Bag”, Winter 1970 (Dougie Field)

Canvas: H: 72” x W: 36”
Framed: H: 74 1/2″ x W: 38 1/2″

Duggie Fields was born in 1945 and brought up in the village of Tidworth. He spent his youth in the countryside, moving to the outer suburbs of London in his adolescence. He studied architecture, briefly, at Regent Street Polytechnic before going to Chelsea School of Art in 1964 where he stayed for four years, before leaving with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States. As a student his work moved from Minimal, Conceptual and Constructivist phases to a more hard-edge post-Pop figuration. By the middle of the 1970s his work included many elements that were later defined as Post-Modernism. In 1983 in Tokyo, sponsored by the Shiseido Corporation, a gallery was created specially for his show, and the artist and his work were simultaneously featured in a television, magazine, billlboard and subway advertising campaign throughout the country. He started working with digital media in the late 1990’s describing his work in progress as Maximalist. Selected One-Man Exhibitions 1971 Hamet Gallery, London 1972 Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford; 1975 Kinsman-Morrison Gallery, London 1979 Kyle Gallery, London; 1980 lkon Gallery, Birmingham; Midland Group, Nottingham; New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh; Roundhouse Gallery, London 1982 Spacex Gallery, Exeter; B2 Gallery London 1983 Shiseido Exhibition, Tokyo 1987 Albermarle Gallery, London 1991 Rempire Gallery, New York 2000 Random Retrospective, Virtual Gallery, DuggieFields Selected Group Exhibitions 1976 New London in New York, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York 1979 The Figurative Show, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London; Masks, The Ebury Gallery, London; Culture Shock, The Midland Group, Nottingham; Art and Artifice, B2 Gallery, London 1983 Taste, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1984 The Male Nude, Homeworks Gallery, London 1985 Image-Codes, Art about Fashion, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; VisualAid, Royal Academy, London l986 The Embellishment of the Statue of Liberty, Cooper Hewitt Museum/Barney’s New York 1987 Twenty Artists Twenty Techniques, Albemarle Gallery, London 1989 Fashion and Surrealism, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1988 Het Mannelisknaakt, Gallery Bruns, Amsterdsm, St. Judes Gallery, London 1990 Universal Language, Rempire Gallery, New York 1993 Tranche d’Art Contemporain Anglais, Tutesaal, Luxemburg 1998 Exquisite Corpse, Jibby Beane, London 1999 Art 1999, Jibby Beane, London; Flesh, Blains Fine Art, London Nerve, I.C.A. London 2000 Art 2000, Jibby Beane, London Up &Co., New York
Details

Hank Pitcher, “Life Guard Tower”, Oil on canvas c. 2002

HANK PITCHER (b. 1949) U.S.A.

“Life Guard Tower” c. 2002

Oil on canvas

Signed (on back)

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: 15 7/8” x W: 19 7/8”

Framed: H: 21 3/8” x W: 25 3/8”

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.
Details

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 14^th, 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 20^th 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.
Details

Robert Breer “Untitled” Oil on canvas 1950

ROBERT BREER (1926-2011) USA

Untitled 1950

Oil on canvas, white-gold leaf and lacquer frame

Marks: Untitled, 1950, Robert Breer, 26×32, No. 29 in a circle (paper label)

Provenance: Robert Breer, Private Collection, Chicago

Canvas: H: 25 3/4” x W: 32”

Framed: H: 32 1/4” x W: 39″

“Breer acknowledges his respect for this purist, “cubist” cinema, which uses geometric shapes moving in time and space”

Robert Breer’s career as an artist and animator spans 50 years and his creative explorations have made him an international figure. He began his artistic pursuits as a painter while living in Paris from 1949-59. Using an old Bolex 16mm camera, his first films, such as “Form Phases”, were simple stop-motion studies based on his abstract paintings.

Breer has always been fascinated by the mechanics of film. Perhaps it was his father’s fascination with 3-D work that inspired Breer to tinker with early mechanical cinematic devices. His father was an engineer and designer of the legendary Chrysler Airflow automobile in 1934 and built a 3-D camera to film all the family vacations. After studying engineering at Stanford, Breer changed his focus toward handcrafted arts and began experimenting with flip books. These animations, done on ordinary 4″ by 6″ file cards have become the standard for all of Breer’s work in fim.

Like many of his generation, Breer did early work influenced by the various European modern art movements of the early 20th century, ranging from the abstract forms of the Russian Constructivists and the structuralist formulas of the Bauhaus, to the nonsensical universe of the Dadaists. As a result of his association with the Denise René Gallery, which specialized in geometric art, he saw the abstract films of such pioneers as Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttmann and Fernand Léger. Breer acknowledges his respect for this purist, “cubist” cinema, which uses geometric shapes moving in time and space.

In 1955, he helped organize and exhibited in a show in Paris entitled “Le Mouvement” (The Movement), which paved the way for new cinema aesthetics. During this period, Breer also met the poet Allen Ginsberg and introduced him to his film “Recreation” (1956), which made use of frame-by-frame experiments in a non-narrative structure. Although Breer resisted being labeled a beatnik, the film does capture some aspects of beat poetry and music.

When Breer returned to the United States in the late 1950s, the American avant-garde was thriving and films by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka and Maria Menken were creating a new visionary movement. Breer found kindred spirits within the New York experimental scene. As Pop Art emerged as a phenomenon in the 1960s, Breer befriended Claes Oldenburg and others. He worked on the TV show, “David Brinkley’s Journal”, filming pieces on art shows in Europe; at the same time, he made his debut documentary on the sculptor Jean Tinguely in 1961.
Details

Jeffrey Hartman “Motobecane” Oil on canvas 1978

JEFFREY HARTMAN USA

“Motobecane” 1978

Oil on canvas

Signed: “Jeffrey Hartman ‘78”, “© 78 HARTMAN” (on the back)

Framed H: 26 1/2” x W: 18 1/2”

Price: $18,000

Belgian art dealer Isy Brachot coined the French word Hyperréalisme, meaning Hyperrealism, as the title of a major exhibition and catalogue at his gallery in Brussels in 1973. The exhibition was dominated by such American Photorealists as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Robert Bechtle and Richard McLean; but it included such influential European artists as Gnoli, Richter, Klapheck and Delcol. Since then, Hyperealisme has been used by European artists and dealers to apply to painters influenced by the Photorealists. However, Hyperrealism is contrasted with the literal approach found in traditional photorealist paintings of the late 20th century. Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that often, unlike Photorealism, is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Strict Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, omitting or abstracting certain finite detail to maintain a consistent over-all pictorial design. They often omitted human emotion, political value, and narrative elements. Since it evolved from Pop Art, the photorealistic style of painting was uniquely tight, precise, and sharply mechanical with an emphasis on mundane, everyday imagery. Hyperrealism, although photographic in essence, often entails a softer, much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living, tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyperrealism paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a reality not seen in the original photo. That is not to say they’re surreal, as the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects, and shadows appear clearer and more distinct than the reference photo or even the actual subject itself.
Details

Donald Deskey, Barrels, Gelatin silver print, c.1925-30

DONALD DESKEY (1894-1989) USA

Barrels c.1925-30

Silver gelatin print, ebonized textured wood frame

Provenance: The Estate of Donald Deskey

H: 9 7/8” x W: 7 15/16”
Framed: H: 22” x W: 18”

Price: $4,200

Donald Deskey was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established a design consulting firm in New York City, and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with Phillip Vollmer) which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.

He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930's, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940's he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. He is regarded the American pioneer of industrial design, and contemporary American graphic design.
Details

Allen Porter, Filmstrips, Photogram vintage gelatin silver print 1947

ALLEN PORTER (b.1926) USA

Filmstrips 1947

Photogram vintage gelatin silver print

Size: (unframed): H: 11” x W: 14”
Size: (frame): H: 20” x W: 23”

After attending art programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Porter enrolled at the ID upon his return from military service in WWII. His course of study included graphic design and photography. His photograms were produced while working with famed ID photography instructors Frank Levstik and Ferenc Berko. Shortly after leaving the ID in 1949, Porter established a design office in Los Angeles during the height of the California modern design movement. He incorporated his innovative light work into design projects for important clients like Gruen Lighting and Carroll Sagar & Associates.
Details

Lewis Hine, What It Costs The Child/Industry/Society, Silver gelatin print c. 1913-14

LEWIS HINE (1874-1940) USA

What It Costs The Child/Industry/Society c. 1913/14

Silver gelatin print

Signed in script on back

Framed size: H: 14 1/8” x W: 16 3/16”

Price: $20,000

***The same image is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Lewis Wickes Hine, photographer, sociologist and humanist, is best known for his insightful portraits of immigrants at Ellis Island and his unflinching views of housing and labor conditions in the United States. Studying and eventually teaching at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Hine infused his humanist concerns into a style of documentary photography that set the standard for delivering a social message through his medium.

The Artist's Joke surveys the rich and diverse uses of satire by avant-garde and contemporary artists. The texts collected in this new reader from London's Whitechapel Gallery examine what Andre Breton called the “lightning bolt” of the unsettlingly comic, as seen in the anarchic wordplay of Duchamp, Picasso, the Dadaists, and Surrealists; Pop's fetish for kitsch and the comic strip; Bruce Nauman's sinister clowns and twisted puns; Richard Prince's joke paintings; art ambushed by feminist wit, from the Dadaism of Hannah Hoch in the 1920s to the politicized conceptualism of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger in the 1980s; the serenely uncanny in Mike Kelley's installations and the risibly grotesque in Paul McCarthy's; and the strangely comic scenarios of artists as various as Maurizio Cattelan, Andrea Fraser, Raymond Pettibon, and David Shrigley. Artists' writings are accompanied and contextualized by the work of critics and thinkers including Freud, Bergson, Helene Cixous, Slavoj Zizek, Lewis Wickes Hine, Jorg Heiser, Jo Anna Isaak, and Ralph Rugoff.
Details

Nathan Lerner, Dowels Light Box Study, Silver gelatin print c. 1937

NATHAN LERNER (1913-1997) Chicago, USA

Dowels Light Box Study c.1937

Silver gelatin print

Signed on back

Illustrated: New Bauhaus, 50 Jahre: Bauhausnachfolge in Chicago (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv and Argon Verlag GmbH: 1987), p. 177

H: 18 5/8” x 22 ½” (framed)

Nathan Lerner’s long career was inextricably bound up in the history of visual culture in Chicago. Born in 1913 to immigrants from Ukraine, he began studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of 16, taking up the camera to perfect his compositional skills. At 22 he began doing a kind of photojournalism, developing his well-known series on ”Maxwell Street,” an immigrant neighborhood hit hard by the Depression, and also photographing the southern Illinois mining area. In 1936 when the New Bauhaus was established in Chicago by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Lerner became one of its first scholarship students and turned increasingly to photographic experimentation. He began making semi-abstract, strongly Constructivist images involving luminous projections, solarization, photograms and other methods, and his interest in manipulating light led him to invent the first ”light box.” In 1939 he became the assistant of Gyorgy Kepes, head of the school’s light workshop; together, they wrote ”The Creative Use of Light” (1941). With Charles Niedringhaus in 1942 he developed a machine for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school’s furniture. After working as a civilian light expert for the Navy in New York during World War II, Lerner returned to the school, now called the Institute of Design, and was named education director after Moholy-Nagy’s death in 1946. He left in 1949, opening a design office that became nationally known for its furniture, building systems and glass and plastic containers (including bottles for Revlon and Neutrogena and the Honeybear honey container). In 1968 Lerner married Kiyoko Asia, a classical pianist from Japan, and over the next two decades made numerous trips to Japan, where he took his first color photographs, as well as Mexico. He had his first solo exhibition of photography in 1973 and thereafter exhibited regularly in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Japan. His work is included in photography and design collections around the world. (Roberta Smith, New York Times, February 15, 1997).
Details

Andre Kertesz, Paris, Gelatin silver print 1927

ANDRÈ KÈRTESZ (1894-1985) Hungary

Paris 1927

Silver gelatin print

Signed: Paris 1927, A.Kertesz, Page 150 (in pencil on back); ANDRÈ KÈRTESZ (stamped on back).

Framed size: H: 16 5/8” x W: 17 13/16”

Throughout most of his career, Kertész was depicted as the “unknown soldier” who worked behind the scenes of photography, yet was rarely cited for his work, even into his death in the 1980s. His work itself is often described as predominantly utilizing light and even Kertész himself said that “I write with light”. He was never considered to “comment” on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life. With his art’s intimate feeling and nostalgic tone, Kertész’s images alluded to a sense of timelessness that was inevitably only recognized after his death. Unlike other photographers, Kertész’s work gave an insight into his life, showing a chronological order of where he spent his time; for example, many of his French photographs were from cafés where he spent the majority of his time waiting for artistic inspiration. Although Kertész rarely received bad reviews, it was the lack of them that lead to the photographer feeling distant from recognition. Now however, he is often considered to be the father of photojournalism. Even other photographs cite Kertész and his photographs as being inspirational; Henri Cartier-Bresson once said of him in the early 1930s, “We all owe him a great deal”.
Details

György Kepes, Abstraction, Gelatin silver print 1942

GYÖRGY KEPES (1906-2001) Hungary/USA

Abstraction 1942

Silver gelatin print

Signed: Gyorgy Kepes 1942 (in ink on back)

Framed size: H: 18 13/16” x W: 16”

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.
Details

Thomas F. Barrow, Register Synthesis, Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint, 1978

THOMAS F. BARROW (b. 1938) Kansas City, MO

Register Synthesis Photogram 1978

Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint

Signed: Register Synthesis – 1978 – Thomas F. Barrow (in ink on back)

Exhibited: J.J. Brookings & Co. (San Jose, CA): Thomas F. Barrow: Inventories and Transformations, A Twenty Year Retrospective, Nov. 6 – Dec. 16, 1986. This exhibit occurred simultaneously with the following two museum shows: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 6, 1986 – Jan 11, 1987) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb. 26 – May 10, 1987).

Related photograph illustrated: Aperture: The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography, no. 87 (New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1987), cover image.

Framed size: H: 19 5/8” x W: 23 7/16”

Thomas Barrow, American was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois and received his M.A. in 1967. At the George Eastman House, Barrow was the Assistant Director from 1971 to 1972 and served as the Associate Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum from 1973 to 1976. Barrow started teaching photography in 1976 in the Art Department of the University of New Mexico and by 1985 he became the Acting Director of the University Art Museum. His Midwestern academic pedigree includes studying with Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago and with filmmaker Jack Ellis at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Barrow has received two NEA Photographers Fellowships in 1973 and 1978.

Barrow has produced a series of silver-gelatin photograms and then applied spray paint to the prints. These combine the feeling of a split-toned black and white print and at the same time appear as color-print photograms. He has produced a series of photograms entitled Disjunctive Forms. His images appear as surreal assemblages of various found and created objects superimposed with stencil text. Barrow works in the “academic” tradition—his pictures are deliberately and consistently experimental, highly intellectualized, scholarly in their concerns, and chock-full of references to the work of other artists.
Details

Thomas F. Barrow, Ready Made, Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint, 1978

THOMAS F. BARROW (b. 1938) Kansas City, MO

Ready Made Photogram 1978

Gelatin silver print photogram with applied spray paint

Signed: Ready Made – 1978 – Thomas F. Barrow (in ink on back)

Exhibited: J.J. Brookings & Co. (San Jose, CA): Thomas F. Barrow: Inventories and Transformations, A Twenty Year Retrospective, Nov. 6 – Dec. 16, 1986. This exhibit occurred simultaneously with the following two museum shows: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Nov. 6 – Jan 11, 1987) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb. 26 – May 10, 1987).
Related photograph illustrated: Aperture: The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography, no. 87 (New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1987), cover image.

Framed size: H: 19 5/8” x W: 23 7/16”
Details

Donald Deskey, Papier-Abfälle, Gelatin silver print, c.1925-30

DONALD DESKEY (1894-1989) USA

Papier-Abfälle c.1925-30

Provenance: The Estate of Donald Deskey

H: 9 7/8” x W: 7 15/16”
Framed: H: 22” x W: 18”

Donald Deskey was a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota. He studied architecture at the University of California, but did not follow that profession, becoming instead an artist and a pioneer in the field of Industrial design. In Paris he attended the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which influenced his approach to design. He established a design consulting firm in New York City, and later the firm of Deskey-Vollmer (in partnership with Phillip Vollmer) which specialized in furniture and textile design. His designs in this era progressed from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne.

He first gained note as a designer when he created window displays for the Franklin Simon Department Store in Manhattan in 1926. In the 1930's, he won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall. In the 1940's he started the graphic design firm Donald Deskey Associates and made some of the most recognizable icons of the day. He designed the Crest toothpaste packaging, as well as the Tide bullseye. His company is still in operation in Cincinnati. A collection of his work is held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. He is regarded the American pioneer of industrial design, and contemporary American graphic design.
Details

Grant Mudford, Containers, Gelatin silver print, 1979

GRANT MUDFORD (1944- ) Australia

Containers 1979

Gelatin silver print

Signed and dated on back

Framed size: H: 26 ½” x W: 30 ¾”

“Since he moved to Los Angeles from Australia in the late 1970s, Grant Mudford has composed photographs that crisply examine the streamlined geometries of West Coast architecture and landscape. Mudford has zeroed in on the abstract formal relationships lurking within the designs of gas stations, strip malls and apartment buildings. The geometrical arrangements highlighted in his photographs of the masterful modernist structures of Rudolf Schindler and Craig Ellwood have disclosed a link between their midcentury architecture and the contemporaneous hard-edge abstractions of L.A. painters John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson.” – Art in America, “Grand Mudford at Rosamund Felsen, September 2003

TELEPHONE: 212 593 4528 EMAIL: gallery@historicaldesign.com 35 EAST 76th STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10021