Related Products

• 

  Details

  Rose Cabat/American Studio Ceramics Rare “Feelie” Porcelain Vessel, c. 1980-85

  ROSE CABAT (1914-2015) USA

  Rare and important large scale “Feelie” c. 1980-85

  Thin walled porcelain vessel with a silky satiny matte drip glaze

  Signed: incised CABAT on bottom

  For more information on Rose Cabat see: Rose Erni Cabat Retrospective 1936-1986 (Tuscon, AZ: Tuscon Museum of Art, 1986)

  H: 3 5/8″

  Price: $1,650

  Rose Cabat was an American studio ceramicist living in Tucson. Considered one of the most important ceramic artists of the Mid-century Modernist movement, Cabat is best known for her innovative glazes on small porcelain pots called “feelies” which she developed in the 1960s. Her organic forms often resemble the shape of onions and figs, and her glazes range from organic to jewel tones. Cabat was born in 1914 in the Bronx, New York, began to work in ceramics in the late 1930′s, and moved to Arizona in 1942, where she continued to make innovative ceramics.

  Feelies:
  Feelies are described as onion, fig, cucumber, and saucer-shaped ceramic vases terminating in an upward closed neck. Bruce Block, an avid collector, has described them as sensual and tactile with a very specific unforgettable texture, spiritual seeming to contain a type of energy. Rose Cabat had developed a silky satiny glaze, and it wasn’t until around 1960 that she had hit upon the first of the appropriate form, svelte and sleek to match the glaze. She exclaimed, “Now this one’s a feelie.”, coining the term. Upon developing the new glazes, she felt that she needed new forms to apply the glazes to, different from what she made before, “craft fair” style coiled heads and wind bells. She is quoted as saying, “The old things did not look good … I wanted simpler shapes that went with the glazes.”They are typically globular in shape, tightening down to a minuscule neck glazed to a satin surface. The tactile experience is most important. The nature of the neck is such that it is closed, so narrow that it cannot hold anything. Cabat would reply when asked why the necks of her feelies are so narrow, “A vase can hold weeds or flowers, but can’t it just be a spot of beauty?”

• 

  Details

  Salvatore Meli Important large scale Italian Sculpture / Ewer 1952

  SALVATORE MELI (b. 1929)  Italy

  Important Sculpture / Ewer   1952

  Glazed terra cotta, brown and dark green with white scraffito decoration, original stepped and angular wood base.

  Signed: Meli 1952 Roma

  For more info on Meli see: Design 1935-1965, What Modern was, ed. Martin Eidelberg (New York: Harry Abrams, 1991) p. 237.

  Salvatore Meli belongs to that initial group of artists, including Guido Gambone and Lucio Fontana among others, who elevated Italian ceramics to a fine art during the post-war period.  Meli conceived this vessel, first on paper, then by laboriously constructing the body in clay, coil by coil, to achieve the richly textured and dynamic form; the incised and painted decoration is in concert with the organic shape.  The massive scale of this work defies function as a ewer but was created as a sculptural object.  The original wooden base recalls Italian futurist sculpture forms of the early twentieth century.

  H (with base):  23 1/2” x W:  13” x D:  9.5”
  H (without base):  19 1/8”

  Price: $27,500

• 

  Details

  Mission basket, Southern California, early 20th Century

• 

  Details

  David Simpson “Little Ibicenco” – California Hard-Edge Abstract painting 1979

  DAVID SIMPSON (1928-) California, US

  “Little Ibicenco” – California Hard-Edge Abstract painting 1979

  Acrylic on canvas

  Marks: David Simpson (script signature) on back of canvas, 1979, #14/79 “Little Ibicenco”, two arrows

  H: 29″ x W: 28 3/4″

  David Simpson has explored varieties of abstraction since the early 1950s, enjoying acknowledgement and success in the art world. In 1963 he was chosen by New York’s Museum of Modern Art curator, Dorothy Miller, to appear in what turned out to be the last in her legendary series of group shows of contemporary American art. In 1964 he appeared in Clement Greenberg’s famous exhibition Post Painterly Abstraction at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At that time Simpson painted landscape-derived abstractions and, in the 70s, he practiced a reductive but relational mode of abstraction. But with his discovery of a new acrylic medium in 1987, he was able to embrace finally and successfully the monochrome’s radicality.

  Simpson uses an acrylic paint with interference properties. The paint is composed of titanium dioxide electronically coated with mica particles. Simpson tends to mix complementaries, but admits that orange and blue also work together well. He also mixes black acrylic with the interference pigments, finding that a little bit of black helps the colour jump out. Interference pigments cause optical effects that are comparable to iridescence. When you look at the painting from one angle, you receive one set of colour sensations. When you shift your position, you get another. As you move back and forth in front of the canvas – and the paintings make you want to do so – the experience changes. The change of light also dramatically affects the optical experience, and the play of light across the canvas surface is subtly kinetic.

  ***David Simpson was associated with the California Hard-Edge Movement.

  Hard Edge Abstraction:
  It encompasses rich solid colors, neatness of surface, and arranged forms all over the canvas. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting. Hard edge is also a simply descriptive term, as applicable to past works as to future artistic production. The term refers to the abrupt transition across “hard edges” from one color area to another color area. Color within “color areas” is generally consistent, that is, homogenous. Hard-edged painting can be both figurative or nonrepresentational.

  Important solo exhibitions include: Studio la Città, Verona (2008); Light Wells +, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe (2007-08); Sonta Roesch Gallery, Houston (2007); Light Wells, Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2007); Iridescent Interference, Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston (2005); Surrealist Landscape and other Departures, Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2005); Cheryl Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2004); James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe (2003); Artotek, Köln (2002); Renate Schröder Galerie, Köln (2002); Renate Schröder Galerie, Köln (2001); Studio la Città, Verona (2001); Modernism Gallery, San Francisco (2001); University Art Museum, San Francisco (2000); Renate Schröder Galerie, Köln (2000); Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2000).

  Important group shows include: Galerie Lausberg, Dusseldorf (2007); West Coast Abstraction, Modernism Gallery, San Francisco (2007);  Fundamental Abstraction, Haines Gallery, San Francisco (2007); The Panza Collection – An experience in light colour, Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, with catalogue (2007); Inneres Leuchten-Farbe als Malerei, Kunstverein Lingen Kunsthalle, Lingen (2005); Recent Paintings, Galleria G7, Bologna (2005); Je ne Regrette Rien, Studio la Città, Verona (2005); The Forman Collection, Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo (2005); Modernism Gallery, San Francisco (2004); San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2004); Albright Knox Art Gallery, N.Y. (2003); La percezione dello spazio , Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona (2002); Le stanze dell’arte , MART, Rovereto (curated by Gabriella Belli) (2002); Artisti americani ed europei dalla collezione Panza , Palazzo Ducale, Sassuolo (2001); Nebeneinander III (Painting Today – Overseas and Here ), Galerie Renate Schröder, Köln, with catalogue (2001); La collezione Panza di Biumo: artisti degli anni ’80 – ’90 , Museo del Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio, with catalogue (1997).