Product Description
Victor Arnautoff “The Felt Hat” Oil on Canvas c. 1930
VICTOR ARNAUTOFF (1896-1979) USA
The Felt Hat c. 1930
Oil on canvas, white gold frame
Signed: V. Arnautoff, lower right
Exhibited: Art Center San Francisco, 1931 (see image of the review in the San Francisco Examiner, July 12th, 1931)
For more information see: The New Deal for Artists, Richard D. McKinzie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), Coit Tower, San Francisco : Its History and Art
Painting: H: 26” x W: 21”
Framed: H: 32 ½” x 27 ½”
Price: $60,000
Victor Arnautoff created paintings and watercolors, focusing on portraits, still lifes and rural landscapes in his early years, and moved to more socially conscious themes later in his career. Arnautoff was a native of Russia, to which he returned during the 1960s after thirty years in the United States. He came to San Francisco from Russia via China, bringing his wife and children with him, and studied at the California School of Fine Arts studying with Ralph Stackpole and Edgar Walter before going to Mexico. There he worked as an assistant to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. During the 1930s, Arnautoff worked as project director and one of the artists selected to create the famed Coit Tower murals, he played a key role in determining the political and social content of the frescoes painted in the San Francisco landmark. His own contribution, City Life, appears to be a lively, non-political melding of downtown San Francisco scenes; however, closer study reveals two leftist newspapers on the newsstand, while the city’s most mainstream daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, is strangely missing. Arnautoff also painted frescoes in the Military Chapel at San Francisco’s Presidio, in the Anne Bremer Library of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in high schools and other buildings in the Bay Area. He was a professor of art at Stanford University from 1939 until his retirement in 1963.
Victor Arnautoff “The Felt Hat” Oil on Canvas c. 1930
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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
S O G A T A New York, NY
“Costume for a String Quartette” 1930
Watercolor and pencil on paper
Signed: COSTUME FOR A STRING QUARTETTE. SOGATA. LONDON: 1930. ESPECIALLY FOR CARL VAN V. with script signature (in pencil on lower left and beneath image)
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: 14″ x W: 10 1/2″
Frame H: 20 1/2” x W: 17 1/4”
*This SOGATA New York Watercolor and pencil on paper has been gifted to The Wolfsonian – FIU, Miami Beach, FL.
Carl van Vechten (1880-1964), to whom this artwork is dedicated, was an influential novelist, critic, and photographer in New York during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. His role in the Harlem Renaissance is well-documented. Van Vechten also introduced Miguel Covarrubias, a caricaturist and contemporary of Sogata, to prominent Manhattan artistic and society circles.
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