Signed: Xanti Schawinsky 1943 (script signature and date in ink on back of photo)
Photograph: H: 7 7/8” x W: 8”
Frame: H: 16 9/16” x W: 16 9/16”
Price: $24,000
Xanti Schawinsky is usually known either for the activities of his early career, as a young ‘enfant terrible’ of Bauhaus theatre, or for the work he produced at its close as a respected and mature abstract artist. However these two perspectives ignore his tremendous versatility, and the important role he had to play in bringing Modernist ideas to different parts of the inter-war world. Schawinsky was born in Switzerland, the son of a Polish Jew. His creative nature was obvious from an early age, and in his teens he studied art and music in Zurich, before travelling to Berlin and Cologne to learn about design and architecture. In 1924 he enrolled at the Bauhaus, and became involved in the school’s vibrant theatrical scene, also focusing on photography and painting. From the mid 1920s Schawinsky undertook wide range of professional commissions, working as a stage designer, a municipal studio director and a freelance designer. He also returned to the Bauhaus to teach. In 1933 Germany’s growing intolerance forced him to move to Milan, where he spent several years producing commercial graphic design, principally for the typewriter company Olivetti. An invitation to join the progressive Black Mountain College brought him to the USA in 1936. He spent two years at Black Mountain introducing Bauhaus ideas to his American students, before moving to New York to take up freelance design and pursue painting – an activity which absorbed almost all of his attention in his final years. As innovative in commercial art as he was in his unpaid pieces, Schawinsky’s work demonstrated the huge creative power of the inter-war meeting of art and industry.
Aram Gesar has been published internationally and has exhibited his photographic work in New York, San Francisco, Zurich and Geneva since 1977. As a producer, art director and photographer, Gesar created advertising campaigns for major corporations in the U.S. and Europe focusing on the fields of travel, banking, financial services, aerospace and motion pictures. He also created and produced documentaries on travel, aviation and yachting for national cable networks and the home video markets and television commercials and corporate programs for various U.S. and European corporations.
Gesar is currently one of the leading international experts on travel and air transport, and the founder and CEO of The Pyramid Media Group, which includes several magazines, newsletters, web sites, books, eBooks and other publications integrating a spectrum of business, travel and aviation content.
Signed: Leontyne Price as Bes, Porgy & Bess, XVII KK 20, May 19, 53 (in ink on back); PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL VAN VECHTEN, 101 CENTRAL PARK WEST, CANNOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (ink stamp on back)
Edmund F. Ward “The Swimming Hole” Oil on canvas c. 1930
EDMUND F. WARD (b. 1892 – 1991) USA
“The Swimming Hole” c. 1930
Oil on canvas
Marks: signed Edm. F. Ward (lower right); partial labels verso:Westchester Arts and Crafts Guild; 4 Edmund F. Ward
For more information on the artist see: Who Was Who in American Art,Peter Hastings Falk, ed. (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985), p. 658.
Canvas H: 18” x W: 24”
Framed H: 27 9/16” x W: 33 9/16”
Price: $14,000
Ward studied at the Arts Student’s League with Edward Dufner, George Bridgeman, and Thomas Fogarty. He was an illustrator for several national magazines and books. In 1925, Ward exhibited an award winning work at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is perhaps best known for his WPA mural in the Federal Building, White Plains, New York.
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