Recent Acquisitions at Altamira Fine Art

RECENT ACQUISITIONS ALTAMIRA FINE ART

172 Center Street | Jackson, Wyoming | (307) 739.4700 | connect@altamiraart.com 7038 E. Main Street | Scottsdale, Arizona | (480) 949.1256 | az@altamiraart.com www.altamiraart.com

Emerging Storm Oil on Linen 48 x 48 inches (EM 031)

ED MELL Ed Mell was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1942. After graduating from Phoenix Junior College with an Associate of Arts degree, he enrolled in The Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles to pursue his interest in illustration.

In 1967, Mell took a job as junior art director for a prominent New York advertising firm. Soon after, he and his friend Skip Andrews established their own illustration firm, Sagebrush Studios, which became an immediate success, with major corporate clients such as Cheerios and RCA. However, when Mell was given an opportunity in 1970 to return to Arizona to teach summer classes in silk screening and drawing on a Hopi Reservation, he welcomed the chance to move back to his home state.

Upon returning to Arizona, he began sketching landscapes. Colored pencils slowly turned into paints and by 1978 he had made the transition from commercial artist to landscape painter.

Mell brings an architectural eye to the desert, emphasizing graphic elements and stripping away details that do not serve his vision. From landscapes to storms, longhorn cattle to desert flowers, he presents the American Southwest in bold colors and lines, energizing the vistas with his singular style.

Mell has won many awards for his work, and his art has been exhibited in numerous museum shows, including the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Mesa Southwest Museum, and the Rockwell-Corning Museum of Modern Art. Corporate and private collectors have acquired his paintings and sculptures, and his life as an artist has been chronicled in major art publications. His biography, Beyond the Visible Terrain: The Art of Ed Mell, was published in l996. In 2012, Mell was named artist of the year at the Arizona Governor’s Arts Awards. He designed the Arizona Centennial Postage Stamp, depicting Sedona’s Cathedral Rock.

Storm Cliff Oil on Linen 60 x 60 inches (EM 028)

Golden Cloud Bank Oil on Linen 22 x 22 inches (EM 032)

Jackson Sundown (A Nephew of Chief Joseph/ World Champion Bronc Rider, 1916) Acrylic on Canvas 30 x 24 Inches (JN 408)

JOHN NIETO John Nieto is widely regarded as one of America’s most accomplished, dynamic and exciting contemporary artists. His work concentrates on themes that transcend mere representation. His liberal use of intense primary colors, applied in bold strokes, creates both dimension and character on the canvas. His etchings and drawings exemplify classic linear techniques resulting in images of great detail and depth. All of Nieto’s art projects a sensitivity and respect for his subject. His work personifies his unique vision of the subjects he paints on canvases alive with vibrant, electric hues. Nieto’s work reflects his Hispanic and American Indian ancestry. New Mexican roots can be traced back over 300 years. His unfettered use of brilliant colors has been likened to the 1920’s French Fauvist movement, which impressed him greatly during a visit to Paris. The Fauves gave him “permission” to use the colors he already felt intuitively.

Nieto’s distinctive style, combination of subject matter, expressionist technique, and use of strong color is instantly recognizable and collectors throughout the United States and abroad prize his work. He has produced bronze sculptures, etchings, lithographs and silk- screen prints, in addition to drawings in pastel crayons and charcoal. The past several years, however, have been devoted almost exclusively to painting. After participating in an exhibit at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., John met with President Reagan in the Oval Office and presented him with the painting “Delegate to the White House.” The painting hung for the duration of the President’s term in office and now has been included in the presidential library.

In 1981, John participated by invitation in the “Salon d’Autumn” at the Grand Palais, Paris, France, and in 1989 he mounted a one-man show at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Each summer he has an annual exhibition in Santa Fe, NM, at Ventana Fine Art, and Altamira Fine Art Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY. John received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Achievement in the Arts in 1994, and has served on the Advisory Boards for both the Wheelwright Museum and the Native American Preparatory School. He is represented in the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, and calls New Mexico his ancestral home.

Picasso Rooster - Matisse Background Acrylic on Canvas 24 x 20 Inches (JN 416)

American Icon Acrylic on Canvas 30 x 40 Inches (JN 418)

Woman in Chair - Ivory Mixed Media on Canvas 50 x 40 inches (RH 246)

ROCKY HAWKINS Rocky Hawkins was born in 1950 in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in small towns near the Cascade Mountains. He earned his degree at the Burnley School of Professional Art. His interest in the mystery and spiritual element of the Indian culture began in his childhood. Traveling with his family to historic locations that conveyed Native American history, he was taken with the beauty and mysticism of the Indian’s individual expression.

Hawkins’ art career began with illustration and commercial art; however, this path was unable to satisfy his creative quest for self-expression. As a result, his personal journey led him to New Mexico, and ultimately to Montana, where he connected more closely with the spirit of the Native American imagery that dominates his art.

Hawkins’ dynamic style invites viewers on a journey into the mysterious world of the unknown. Many of Hawkins’ paintings seem to hold secret passageways detectable only at specific perspectives or distances. Thus viewers play an active role in what they see. It’s often noted that his paintings possess a shamanistic quality.

As one of the premier painters in the American West, his work reaches beyond typical representations of the region. His interests lie in the texture of the paintings’ surfaces, the relationships of the colors, and in representing what he feels about what he sees.

Hawkins’ exhibitions include the The Russell: The Sale to Benefit the Museum, Yellowstone Art Museum Auction, Santa Fe Art Auction, and Museum Of the Rockies, among others.

Jupiter’s Chair Emerging Mixed Media on Board 12 x 9 inches (RH 249)

Woman In Chair - Venus Mixed Media on Board 24 x 18 inches (RH 251)

You Want What?

Oil on Canvas 45 x 35 inches (BS 237)

BILLY SCHENCK Bill Schenck was born in a small town north of Columbus, Ohio, in 1947. He spent childhood summers exploring the wilderness near Lander, Wyoming. He attended Columbus College Of Art and Design from 1965 to 1967, and received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 1969. While still a young man, he moved to New York where he was influenced by the Photo-Realists, Color Field, and Minimalist painters in vogue at the time. When he was 24 years old, his first solo show in New York City sold out.

Early in his career, Schenck became known for utilizing cinematic imagery, reproduced in a flattened, reductivist style, where colors are displayed side-by-side rather than blended or shadowed. His art incorporates techniques from Photo-Realism and Pop Art to both praise and mimic classic western images. His work is characterized by hot colors, surreal juxtapositions and patterning which explore clashes between wilderness and civilization, the individual and community, nature and culture, freedom and restriction.

In the mid-1970’s, the work exemplified in his paintings drew him west, where he split his time between Wyoming and Arizona. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work can be found in numerous major collections throughout the world, including the Smithsonian Institution, Denver Art Museum, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Booth Western Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, and many more. Schenck’s work has been the subject of four museum retrospectives, including The West as It Never Was, at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art. The 2013 illustrated book, Schenck in the 21st Century: The Myth of the Hero and the Truth of America, by Amy Abrams, features paintings, caption drawings and caption paintings produced by Schenck from 2000-2012. A book of his serigraphs, Bill Schenck: Serigraphs 1971-1996, was published in 2010 in conjunction with a touring retrospective of the same title.

Opposite Page: How’d They Do It? Oil on Canvas 40 x 55 inches (BS 230) I Forgot my Purse Oil on Canvas 40 x 30 inches (BS 236)

For more information please contact Audrey Parish at az@altamiraart.com Katherine Harrington at katherine@altamiraart.com or Dean Munn at dean@altamiraart.com or call 307.739-4700 or 480.949.1256 www.altamiraart.com

ALTAMIRA FINE ART

172 Center Street | Jackson, Wyoming | (307) 739.4700 7038 E. Main Street | Scottsdale, Arizona | (480) 949.1256