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Impressionist and Modern Art
Post-War and Contemporary Art
American Art
Impressionist and Modern Art
JEAN ARP (1886-1966)
Evocation d'une Forme Humaine Lunaire Spectrale cast cement 33 1/8 x 30 x 19 in. Executed in 1950 Edition 2/2 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Jean Arp is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century for his ability to create abstract yet organic sculptures in a variety of media. He was a founder of Dada and participated in the surrealist movement. Rather than starting with a subject, Arp utilized form and chance to produce art. Evocation d'une Forme Humaine Lunaire Spectrale is a stellar example of Arp’s abstract biomorphic sculpture. It presents a smooth and graceful form that melds the human figure with an ethereal lunar landscape. Arp experimented with this form in diverse media and other iterations can be found in the collection of the Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (in bronze), Museo d'Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro (in pink limestone), and the Dotremont Collection in Brussels (in white marble).
GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894) Vue du Jardin de l’Artiste et de la Vallée de Yerres oil on canvas 19 1/8 x 25 1/2 in. Painted in 1877
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Gustave Caillebotte’s scenes from his country home at Yerres display soft brushwork and a pastel palette typical of the Impressionists. Although closely associated with that movement, Caillebotte drew inspiration from other approaches as well, resulting in a style closer to Realism than many of his contemporaries. His noteworthy urban scenes employ flatter colors and dramatic perspectives inspired by Japanese wood block prints. Here, the artist’s delicate paint handling compliments his measured use of color. Naturalistic hues of the artist’s garden and the valley beyond – a bed of cool green and blue that divide the canvas into contrasting swaths of heavy and light tones – underscore the details touched by light. Caillebotte not only contributed his painting to the Impressionist movement, but also became a crucial benefactor upon receiving a sizable inheritance. He helped to fund exhibitions, purchased works for his own collection, and even paid rent for Claude Monet’s studio.
SALVADOR DALÍ (1904-1989) Les Yeux Fleuris oil on canvas 27 x 19 3/8 in. Painted in 1944
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This oil painting by the preeminent and wildly eccentric Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí amplifies a common theme not only in his work, but also in Surrealism as a movement. Dalí, a Spanish artist who moved to New York in 1940, often depicted eyes as both a symbol for the act of perception and as an allusion, and to promote a new way of seeing. To the Surrealists, eyes impart a sense of omnipotence and, in Dalí’s case, represent an obsessive desire to become a clairvoyant and explore the unconscious. In 1942 — a few months after his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York — Dalí parlayed the idea of accumulated, or “flowering,” eyes into a grand oil and tempera painting for the set of his 1944 ballet Mad Tristan. In this painting from the same year, Les Yeux Fleuris, Dalí depicts three rows of four eyes with long lashes and a tear dropping on a brick wall backdrop. Its provenance traces to Marques Jorge de Cuevas, who also owned a similar painting by Dalí — the 15-foot-wide Yeux Fleuris, a 1931 tempera and oil on canvas that was used on the set for Mad Tristan. Eyes appear in Dalí paintings throughout his career — as late as the 1981 painting Argus, which has five eyes. Most notably, the eye appears in paintings Dalí made for the dream sequences of the film Spellbound starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) Le Mont Riboudet à Rouen au Printemps Signed lower right, "Claude Monet" oil on canvas 21 1/2 x 28 5/8 in. Painted in 1872 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Claude Monet completed this painting in 1872, after which it was purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel, Monet’s major patron and primary dealer, then by fellow painter Gustave Caillebotte for his private collection. The year 1872 saw great inspiration and productivity for Monet. It was the year that he painted the notable Impression, Sunrise, which was exhibited at the now famed 1874 Paris show that served as the debut of Impressionism. Earlier that spring while visiting his brother in a region northwest of Paris, Monet created many oil paintings observing the changing scenery as urban development took hold. Included among them was this more traditional landscape, which embraces the natural beauty of the French countryside, perhaps clinging to the idyllic charm of a rural landscape slowly disappearing. Monet’s delicate handling of soft light on the hillside dotted with houses and foliage translates atmospheric effects to canvas. The piece is a wonderful example of Monet’s characteristic process—to put paint to canvas outdoors, within the very setting that he aims to depict, moving with spontaneity and capturing the light of a fleeting moment.
HENRY MOORE (1898-1986) Reclining Figure Curved: Rough
Signed and editioned base, "Moore 6/9" bronze 5 x 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. Executed 1976 Edition 6/9
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One of the pioneers of modern British art, Henry Moore pushed the boundaries of figurative sculpture while at the same time sustaining a vein of classicism running through his work. This intimate sculpture features a reclining figure, one of Moore’s favorite and iconic motifs. The figure has been abstracted to sensuous curves giving the viewer of a sense of modernity and the fluidity possible in bronze. Nevertheless, this sculpture and much of Moore’s oeuvre is in dialogue with art history and the use of classic figural forms and themes. Moore masterfully mixes modernity, primitivism, and classicism to create a sculpture that speaks across time and culture.
CAMILLE PISSARRO (1830-1903) Les Gardeuses de Vaches
Signed lower left, "C. Pissarro 1883" mixed media, gouache and watercolor with charcoal on paper 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Painted in 1883 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
This work shows a favored subject of Pissarro – the country peasant. The idea behind many of the artist’s works on paper is to convey to the viewer a sense of immediacy and relevance particularly of life in the countryside. The work presents his instantly recognizable soft, atmospheric effect in an idyllic setting. Important not only for his artwork, Pissarro influenced the next generation of painters chiefly Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Cézanne described that “Pissarro was like a father to me”, and fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt noted that Pissarro “could have taught stones to draw correctly.” This pastel was handled by the most important 19th century dealer of Impressionist works, Galerie Durand-Ruel, who acquired it on 25 August 1891.
ALFRED SISLEY (1839-1899) Printemps a Veneux
Signed lower left, "Sisley" oil on canvas 28 3/4 x 35 3/4 in. Painted in 1880
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Painting en plein air, directly onto a primed canvas outdoors, Sisley rarely reworked his paintings back in his studio. This mode of painting brings an immediacy to his work, particularly in Printemps a Veneux. He painted this piece in April of 1880 in Veneux-Nadon, a small village along the west bank of the Seine river. Sisley had settled in this area three months prior, focusing on painting the snow-covered landscape. As Spring began to bloom, Sisley was charmed by the environment in which he found himself and his paintings took on a renewed sense of exuberance. Cerulean skies with plush white clouds prevail in many of Sisley’s paintings. The crisp Spring air rustling the leaves of the orchard in which Sisley placed his easel shifts the light across the grove, creating delightful patterns of shadow. The atmosphere of Printemps a Veneux is palpable. The large scale of the canvas is rare in Sisley oeuvre and enhances the immersive feeling. Two years after Sisley painted this work, Impressionist champion and patron Paul Durand-Ruel acquired the painting from the artist and was so delighted with it that he kept it in his private collection for decades. Three years after Sisley’s death, Durand-Ruel finally exhibited Printemps a Veneux in an important 1899 Impressionist exhibition in his Parisian gallery.
Post-War and Contemporary Art
CARL ANDRE (b. 1935)
Five Hundred Terms for Charles A. Lindbergh Signed verso, "Five Hundred Terms for Charles Lindberg (Carbon) 1962 Carl Andre" ink on paper on board 8 x 6 1/8 in. Executed in 1962
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Carl Andre is an American artist who helped pioneer minimalist sculpture and was the husband of famed and celebrated artist Ana Mendieta. This is a classic text piece from the early 1960s and is typical of his poems which are composed by selecting individual words from source texts, and then ordering them on the page according to simple and self-evident criteria, which, in this case, is by alphabetical listing. Aviator Charles Lindbergh deep fascinated Carl Andre whom he returned to as a source for his poetry. This work with its structured repetition like his famed sculptures reflect the minimalism and post-minimalism emerging in the 1960s and the 1970s including fellow concrete poet Christopher Knowles.
ROSS BLECKNER (b. 1949) West to East
Signed verso, " Ross Bleckner 2007" oil on linen canvas 72 x 72 in. Painted in 2007
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Ross Bleckner is a celebrated American painter whose works reference loss, memory, and change such as explorations of the cell during the AIDS epidemic or in response to his father’s cancer diagnosis. The 1965 MoMA exhibition that brought Op Art to the fore, The Responsive Eye and included artists Richard Anuszkiewicz, Tadasky, and Francis Celentano, had a profound influence on him as an artist. This painting, like his other immersive, large-scale works, elicit a powerful, hypnotic, dizzying effect. Aesthetically pleasing, Bleckner’s canvases explore perception – visual, emotional, physical, time. Bleckner is part of the same generation of and friends with Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Eric Fischl, and Peter Halley, all of whom returned painterly technique to the canvas.
AUGOSTINO BONALUMI (1935-2013) Untitled
Signed verso, "Bonalumi 83" vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 27 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 1 5/8 in. Painted in 1983 INQUIRE
Painters are often concerned with creating dimension through perspective and shading, but Italian-born Agostino Bonalumi took dimensionality to a new level. He was a selftaught painter, though his formal studies involved technical and mechanical design. After spending time in the studio of Lucio Fontana and witnessing his slashed canvasses, Bonalumi produced his first “extroflection” painting. He would build frames and structures and use them to stretch his canvas, producing a three-dimensional effect. This allowed viewers to interact with his works in a novel way, which was important to him, as he said, “beauty has to be experienced, not described.” His canvasses are often monochromatic, sometimes brightly colored and sometimes all dark or stark white—but the paint is not what draws the eye. His works puncture the picture plane and demand attention via their use of space and texture. These pieces sport horizontal lines of extroflection running down the canvas, complemented by matching, painted lines in shades of a slightly different color than that of the main canvas. The first piece is a vibrant, rich red and the other a pure white. The extroflections in each piece have a slightly different shape—the red shorter with the angles resembling a boomerang in shape, and the white with greater protrusions appearing on either end. As Bonalumi intended with all his works, these paintings are best enjoyed when viewed from many different angles, to truly appreciate and experience the ways in which the shapes, dimensions, and colors interact with each other.
DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD (b. 1949) Yellow River
steel 26 x 96 x 56 in. Executed circa 1984
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With extraordinary focus and conviction, Deborah Butterfield has created three-dimensional images of horses from whatever a nature enthusiast and junkyard fan can find. But to listen to her talk about flesh and blood horses is to appreciate the depth of her bond to her subject – the blood and the death, the colic surgeries, the love and pain. Horses for her are really a metaphor for life and about having the courage to love knowing that loss and pain are sure to follow. Of crumpled, distressed, and wielded steel, Yellow River evinces what great art often does - an economy of means. Birthed in part from Wayne Thiebaud’s suggestion she work to fully assimilate the reclining form, Butterfield cites the compelling voluptuousness of the female form – an odalisque, or otherwise – with a horse’s most vulnerable state of lying down as touchstones of association.
DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD (b. 1949) Walking Stick
bronze 40 x 48 x 24 in. Executed in 1994 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Deborah Butterfield is an American sculptor, best known for her sculptures of horses made of wood, metal, and other found objects. The 1994 piece Walking Stick is comprised of bronze elements that mimic the natural appearance of wood. The impressive scale of this piece creates a remarkable effect in person, presenting a striking example of Butterfield's celebrated subject matter. Butterfield originally created the horses from wood and other materials found on her property in Bozeman, Montana, and saw the horses as a metaphorical self-portrait, mining the emotional resonance of these forms.
ALEXANDER CALDER (1898-1976) Cantilever
sheet metal, wire and paint 34 1/4 x 60 1/4 x 14 3/4 in. Executed in 1973
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By the 1970s, when Cantilever was created, Alexander Calder was at the height of artistic prowess. He created this piece with an informed eye, having been working for the better part of the century on identifying and expounding upon his unique creative vision. One of the most instantly recognizable artists of his time, Calder was referred to as an "Engineer of Beauty" by his close friend and neighbor Robert Osborn. Cantilever is a bold experiment in balance, form, and color in the third dimension. The work was exhibited at the Perls Gallery, Calder's primary dealer. Since that time, the work has remained in the same private collection. It is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A08148.
GEORGE CONDO (b. 1957) The Arrival, The Departure
Signed verso, "Departure Condo 04" and signed verso, "Condo The Arrival" oil on canvas 36 x 36 in. ea. Painted in 2004
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George Condo’s iconic “pod people” portraits portray an adapted reality invented by the artist. Akin to surrealist and cartoon-like imagery, the works explore the unconscious and share many attributes of the work of Magritte and Dali. A two-canvas piece from Condo’s 2004 Religious Paintings series, The Arrival, The Departure features a prominent priest figure appearing and disappearing through the sky. The work is filled with symbols that invite a much deeper interpretation of the work.
ELAINE DE KOONING (1918-1989) The Bull
mixed media on masonite 30 1/2 x 35 1/4 in. Painted in 1959 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Described as the "voice" of Abstract Expressionism, Elaine de Kooning was an outspoken proponent of the movement. While studying painting in New York, Elaine met and later married Willem de Kooning. She wrote countless pieces about her fellow artists and eventually became a critic for ARTnews. Following her visit to Juarez, Mexico, where she attended many bullfights, Elaine's palette moved to bolder and brighter colors, and her format changed from the typical vertical orientation to the horizontal. Her studio was soon filled with paintings and drawings based on bullfights and the American landscape.
CARLOS CRUZ-DIEZ (1923-2019) Physichromie No 1051
serigraph on aluminum, slats in stainless steel 39 5/8 x 59 3/8 x 1 5/8 in. Executed in 1976 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Carlos Cruz-Diez was one of the most important contemporary and Latin American artist. His work explores the experiential transience of color. He was often associated with the Op Art, Kinetic Art, and Concretism movement exploding out of Latin America from the mid-20th century. This work is one from one of Cruz-Diez's signature series Physichromie translated as "physical color", which explores the changing, physical dimension of color through the interaction of light and space. As Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, said, “He made us see and experience color as pure and sensuous pleasure; a participatory, interactive experience open to everyone, regardless of age, class, culture or social standing.”
JIM DINE (b. 1935) Double Silver Point Robes
silverpoint and acrylic on 2 joined canvases, wood, knife, and string in artist's frame 53 1/2 x 96 in. Painted in 1964
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Jim Dine was an American Pop artist whose work meditated on objects with childlike appeal to find a universal and nostalgic language. Dine’s robes are among the most recognizable images to have emerged from his long and illustrious career. They were first shown at Sidney Janis gallery in the fall of 1964 – this is one such example. Double Silver Point Robes is a large-scale mixed media assemblage. The work is executed in silverpoint – a technique that utilizes a piece of silver as a drawing instrument over a specially prepared ground by which it oxidizes over a period of months to create a warm brown tone. The two joined canvases feature blocks of wood in place of where the heads should be and a hanging wood element that moves in response to air currents.
RICHARD DIEBENKORN (1922-1993) Untitled
welded scrap iron 20 1/4 x 42 1/4 x 29 1/2 in. Executed circa 1951
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Richard Diebenkorn was a primary figure in West Coast Abstract Expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement. As a student and then faculty member at the California School of Fine Arts in the late 1940’s, he worked alongside David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Clyfford Still. Although influenced by these contemporaries, Diebenkorn’s style of expression was intensely individual. This rare sculpture comes from a period of experimentation and a burst of lyrical creativity that the artist experienced while in graduate school at the University of New Mexico. Like many American artists before him, Diebenkorn was enthralled with the atmosphere and landscape of the Southwest. He produced energetic and unpredictable canvases with bold, warm colors, barely contained within their underlying geometric structure. This welded iron sculpture demonstrates the far reaches of the artist’s exploration, establishing the essential linear framework that would come to characterize his later work. This piece appeared in the artist’s Master’s Degree Exhibition in 1951, and was the only sculpture included in the 2008 exhibition Diebenkorn in New Mexico.
SAM FRANCIS (1923-1994) New York, New York
gouache/egg tempera on gessoed French paper 39 3/4 x 27 in. Painted in 1959
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After his move to Paris in 1950, Sam Francis began to use vibrant, bold color in his painting. Influenced by Henri Matisse, Francis evolved his palette to include bright reds, yellows, whites and blues. New York, New York is an exemplary work that shows the influence of the Parisian art scene on the artist. Francis provides the link between the audacious American Abstract Expressionism and the more calligraphic European Tachisme.
SUBODH GUPTA (b. 1964) Magic Wands 6
chrome-plated aluminum 62 x 1 7/8 x 1 7/8 in. Executed in 2004-2005
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Magic Wands is a 2004-2005 creation by India’s most renowned contemporary artist, Subodh Gupta. The work seamlessly blends a sculptural approach with an installation art aesthetic to create a statement on his heritage and universal themes. Since Gupta’s first installation in 1996, Twenty-nine Mornings, the artist has been driven to incorporate everyday utilitarian objects into his work. Bicycles, wands, and pans all play heavily in the work of Gupta. Gupta’s work often reflects the economic transformations in India and provides a view into the experience of those whose lives are changed by the rise of the country as a global economic power. Gupta is widely collected as the pre-eminent Indian Contemporary artist. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among many others.
PETER HALLEY (b. 1953) Eulogy (Commission)
Signed in pencil, verso, "Peter Halley 2004" acrylic on canvas 159 x 72 x 4 in. Painted in 2004
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Brightly colored geometric paintings by Peter Halley address the rigid organization of social space through visual representations of cells and conduits. Eulogy (Commission), a 2004 piece at a grand scale, presents the neon-colored forms that characterize his work. The piece incorporates Roll-a-Tex, a material most often used as cheap surfacing for suburban homes or motels, a comment on the commoditization of domestic life.
GRACE HARTIGAN (1922-2008) Portrait of W
oil on canvas 85 x 58 in. Painted in 1951-52 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
The title of this piece alludes to the artist Walt Silver, who was Hartigan's boyfriend at the time she created the work. Grace Hartigan's Portrait of W was exhibited in the 2016 traveling exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism, where it was displayed at the Denver Art Museum, Mint Museum, and the Palm Springs Art Museum. Hartigan moved to New York City in 1945, and her work matured simultaneously alongside Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
DAMIEN HIRST (b. 1965) Overwhelming Love
Signed in pencil, verso, "Overwhelming Love, Damien Hirst, 2008" household gloss, butterflies 36 x 60 in Painted in 2008
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A leading figure in the Young British Artists movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, Damien Hirst garnered international attention with his striking displays with death as a central theme. Some of Hirst’s most iconic images include Spot paintings, consisting of organized rows of colored circles, and Butterfly paintings, such as Overwhelming Love (2008). Hirst’s Butterfly paintings speak to his characteristic themes, offering the contradiction of death with the bright vitality of a butterfly's wings. Hirst explains: “I think rather than be personal you have to find universal triggers: everyone’s frightened of glass, everyone’s frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies.” Damien Hirst Butterfly works feature prominently in his oeuvre, he started to incorporate them after flies, and other insects were accidentally affixed to some of his paintings. Hirst's record for paintings at auction is held by the butterfly painting Eternity which sold for $9.6 million in 2007.
M.F. HUSAIN (1915-2011) Brown Seal
Signed lower right, "Husain 78" oil on canvas 48 x 48 in. Painted in 1978
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M.F. Husain's narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—sometimes treated in series— include topics as diverse as Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after The Partition of 1947. Husain, a secular Muslim, triggered criticism for his often irreverent treatment of sensitive subject matter, including Hindu goddesses painted as nudes.
ANISH KAPOOR (b. 1954) Blood Cinema
acrylic and steel 77 1/4 x 77 1/4 x 18 3/4 in. Executed in 2000
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Anish Kapoor, one of Great Britain’s most important and influential sculptors, has created monumental installations around the world, including Cloud Gate at Chicago’s Millenium Park, and Dirty Corner in the Gardens of Versailles. His work typically manifests in simple curved forms, usually monochromatic and richly colored, to draw the viewer through extraordinary scale and surface. Standing in front of one of Kapoor’s sculptures can be a sublime experience. Blood Cinema, a sculpture created in 2000, is nearly six-and-half feet in diameter. It is composed of acrylic, glass, and steel and rests on the floor like an oversized lens. One’s reflection does not appear as it would in a mirror; instead, the viewer’s perspective is warped and distorted through ethereal shades of red. The sculpture internally features a convex mirror, resulting in different visual effects when it is viewed from either side. Blood Cinema explores space, structure, and perception, and touches on a variety of metaphysical polarities, such as presence and absence, inward and outward, visible and invisible, light and dark. It is the viewer’s presence which activates these relationships, creating an individualistic experience that could not exist without the viewer’s participation.
ALEX KATZ (b. 1927) Ukulele Player oil on canvas 54 x 48 in. Painted in 1981
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Alex Katz is a pivotal figure in American figurative art. His colorful, stylized, flat portraiture and paintings stand in stark contrast to the Abstract Expressionism in which he came of age. Not quite minimalist, his deadpan figures have qualities that also lends comparisons to pop culture and commercial design. This painting of a man playing the ukulele highlights the sort of gatherings of young people that would interest Katz giving both the sense of cool detachment but also cool hipness.
ANSELM KIEFER (b. 1945) San Loretto
mixed media on canvas 74 x 111 in. Executed in 2008
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Anselm Kiefer is one of the most important and influential European Contemporary artists because of his unique approach to painting and sculpture and the issues with which he wrestles. Kiefer’s work incorporates diverse materials including dirt, lead, ash, and other symbolically loaded media in order to contend with fraught cultural and political histories. Much of his work addresses themes of creation and destruction, often incorporating religious references. San Loretto, a large-scale mixed media piece typical of Kiefer’s style, references a story from the Catholic faith, in which the house of the Holy Family was miraculously transported out of Nazareth to Loreto, Italy, for protection during the Crusades. The story appeals to Kiefer's distinctive visual themes of ruin and renewal as the buildup of fragments and rubble on San Loretto coalesce into an image of a winged stone. Kiefer has said, “People think of ruins as the end of something, but for me they were the beginning. When you have ruins you can start again."
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997) Reflections on Crash
Signed in pencil, lower middle, "25/68 Roy Lichtenstein '90" lithograph, screenprint, relief, and metalized PVC collage 59 1/8 x 75 in Executed in 1990 Edition 25/68
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Roy Lichtenstein’s style of Pop art was inspired by comic strips, in which he created images through a combination of mechanical reproduction and hand-drawing. He used iconic images and cultural influences to create striking action images, often with captions and onomatopoeic exclamations, much as one would find in comics. This screenprint is from a group of seven Reflections prints and in each, the image is obscured by color and patterns resembling the reflected light as if behind glass. Inspired by trying to photograph a work by Robert Rauschenberg behind glass, Lichtenstein appropriated images from his past and thus brings the appropriation of Pop art full circle.
ROBERTO MATTA (1911-2002) Untitled
Signed verso, "Norman / Bluhm / Black & Red / 1953" oil on canvas 39 1/8 x 40 3/8 in. Painted in 1976
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One of the most prominent modernist artists, Roberto Matta created artworks brimming with color and surrealist forms. Born in Chile, Matta worked for two years in modern architect Le Corbusier’s studio in Paris. He also formed strong friendships with Salvador Dalí and Andre Breton, officially joining the surrealists in 1937. This painting incorporates psychological responses to political and social concerns, hallmarks of Matta’s paintings influenced by the impact of World War II. The painting also contains his classic style of numerous, overlapping architectural planes. Matta deftly merges his surrealist background with the visual language of the Abstract Expressionists.
SADAMASA MOTONAGA (1922-2011) Untitled
Signed lower left "S. Motonaga" oil on canvas 16 x 12 1/2 in. Painted in 1966
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Sadamasa Motonaga traveled to New York from Japan in 1966. His year-long residency there greatly informed his work. A member of the renowned Gutai Art Association, a Japanese avant-garde movement, Motonaga experimented with innovative painting styles and techniques. Brightly colored spills of paint characterize his most celebrated works as seen in the 1966 Untitled painting in this exhibition. This piece, an elegant composition with swirling pools of color, represents the moment just before a significant stylistic transition for Motonaga. During his year in New York, he began to create airbrushed works characterized by light, flat, and precise forms.
TAKASHI MURAKAMI (b. 1962) Eye Ball Pink
acrylic on canvas layed on wood 24 x 23 3/4 x 2 in. Painted in 2001
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Takashi Murakami is one of the most celebrated contemporary and Japanese artists. Murakami developed the theoretical and visual language of “Superflat”. He based his art movement on the Japanese “flat” art aesthetic and of anime and manga fused with commentary on the Kawaii tendency in postmodern Japan. Murakami and his art have chartered new ground in infiltrating and merging high and low culture. The painting features a proliferation of eyes in his trademark style. No two eyes are exactly alike, and each are in various states of opening or closing. Like his art, these eyes have hidden depth – the irises contain a multitude of miniature concentric circles. The painting seems to combine elements of pop culture, cartoons, technology, and fashion into a singular plane.
ARNALDO POMODORO (b. 1923) Disco in forma di rosa del deserto, studio I
Signed base, "Arnoldo Pomodoro '93/94, 2/6" bronze 23 in. dia. Executed circa 1993-94
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Italian-born sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro uses his knowledge as a former architect and goldsmith to create the bronze, geometric sculptures for which he is best known. He begins with streamlined, classic lines, and then dissects the shapes, adding new ones within the original. He creates depth and wonder within the familiarity of geometry. These sculptures come in all sizes, but his crowning achievements are his large, freestanding commissioned works, which are installed in public and outdoor places. These include multiple renditions of his Sphere within a Sphere, as well as large discs, pyramids, cubes, and columns, which are variously located in Belvedere Fortress in Florence, the United Nations Plaza in New York, Amaliehaven park in Copenhagen, and the Palais-Royale in Paris, to name just a few. A quartet of sculptures jointly titled Forma del Mito stand outside Brisbane City Hall. This sculpture, like many of his works, has jagged protrusions and deep gouges, which give the piece a sense of motion, or transition—as if it were frozen in midst of shifting into another form entirely. It consists of two discs that appear to be skewered together by other discs and jagged shapes, which protrude from either side. The piece has been in a private collection since its creation in the early 1990s and other versions of the same work were exhibited in Europe and in Milan, where Pomodoro currently lives and works.
RICHARD PRINCE (b. 1949) Untitled (Portrait)(Boy)
Signed verso, “Richard Prince 2014” inkjet on canvas 65 3/4 x 48 3/4 in. Executed in 2014
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Richard Prince is one of the most influential names in contemporary art. Prince is part of The Pictures Generation, a loosely associated group of artists who appropriated mass media imagery to examine and question issues of stereotypes, cultural tropes, and the constructed narrative of images. Prince and The Pictures Generation helped to usher in post-modernism in art. Prince, in particular, centered appropriation within his art practice that both constructs and deconstructs the nature of images. This painting comes from his “Instagram” series in which Prince utilizes social media posts on which he has commented. This work and series ask us to question the meaning within the proliferation of “selfies” and how people use these images to create and to project a narrative of themselves.
MARC QUINN (b. 1964) (Red) Eclipse
Signed in pencil, on verso, "Marc Quinn 2018" oil on canvas 78 1/8 in. diameter Painted in 2018
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Marc Quinn is one of the most influential members of the YBA or Young British Artists who emerged in the 1990s through their shocking artwork underpinned by radical new approaches to art making. A multidisciplinary artist, Quinn’s output explores and blurs the boundaries of art, science, and technology along with issues of corporeality, decay, and preservation. This painting is part of his series derived from scientific photographs of solar eclipses from the last 100 years. Quinn brings to the fore themes of temporality – the duration of an eclipse against human life, human life against the cyclical cosmos. What does it mean to capture a temporal action? The series name Anthropocene is a nod to the human effect on nature. Not just conceptually deep, the painting is aesthetically beautiful, capturing the explosion of reds, oranges, and yellows during the cosmic event. The circular canvas is sympathetic to the eclipse of the moon across the sun.
MEL RAMOS (1935-2018)
Peek-a-boo Chris: The Lost Painting of 1965 #56 Signed verso, "Mel Ramos 06" oil on canvas 36 x 24 in. Painted in 2006
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Mel Ramos is best known for his paintings of superheroes and female nudes juxtaposed with pop culture imagery. Ramos’s Peek-A-Boo portfolio is a well-known series by the artist, positioning the viewer to observe the pin-up girl figures through a keyhole shape surrounded by black. The series is noted for the confident and direct gazes of its subjects as well as the commentary it provides on the sexualization of a traditional art historical motif: the nude female figure. Alongside fellow Pop artists like Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, and friend Roy Lichtenstein, Ramos provided a visual language for audiences to understand and experience the proliferation of commercial images that exploded in post-war America.
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (1925-2008) Berm (Hoarfrost)
Signed in pencil, lower right, "Rauschenberg 75" solvent transfer on fabric with cardboard 62 1/2 x 35 1/2 in. Executed in 1975
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American artist Robert Rauschenberg helped to revolutionize art in the 20th century through his assemblages incorporating found objects and pop culture. For the Hoarfrost series, Rauschenberg used solvent to transfer images from newspapers and magazines to unstretched fabric. Hoarfrost is a kind of lacy film made up of minute, needle-like ice crystals. Rauschenberg evoked the transience of the hoarfrost by printing newspaper and magazine pages on overlapping layers of delicate fabrics. Other pieces in this series are in the collections of The Guggenheim, MoMA, SF MOMA, the National Gallery of Art and Tate.
ED RUSCHA (b. 1937) Evolution Revolution
Signed lower right, "Ed Ruscha 2013" acrylic on museum board paper 24 x 36 in. Painted in 2013
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Ed Ruscha is one of the most distinguished American artists due in part for his explorations of the symbols of Americana and the relationship between language and art. He is perhaps best recognized for paintings incorporating words and phrases, or for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement. Ruscha employs words as images, taking phrases out of their original context and transforming them into subject matter. As with his East Coast Pop counterparts Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Ruscha’s initial artistic training was in commercial art – a background evident in his iconic typographical works. In this painting from 2013, the words Evolution Revolution overlay a serene mountain silhouette. Describing his inspiration, Ruscha once said, “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.”
JULIAN SCHNABEL (b. 1951) Pascin Pig Passin Time
oil, plates, and bondo on board 48 x 40 x 6 in. Painted in 1983
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Julian Schnabel is an American painter whose style is associated with the Neo-Expressionist movement of the 1980s. Pascin Pig Passin Time is part of Schnabel’s broken plate series of paintings, inspired by the trencadís, or broken tile mosaic, of architect Antoni Gaudí. With a humorous title and depicting his first wife, Jacqueline Beaurang, the broken ceramics give Schnabel an assertive and textural surface in which to create large-scale works that captured the brash and audacious period of the 1980s.
HASSEL SMITH (1915-2007) Piano, Bass and Drums
Signed upper left, "HWS 1961" and titled lower middle, "Piano, Bass & Drums" oil on canvas 67 7/8 x 48 1/4 in. Painted in 1961
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Hassel Smith was born in 1915 in Sturgis, Michigan. Matching his restlessness in painting, Smith moved back and forth between the Midwest and the West Coast of the United States and at one point settling in Cornwall and Bristol in the UK. After WWII, Smith joined the faculty of CSFA, teaching alongside Clyfford Still, who would become a lifelong friend, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Ansel Adams, and Richard Diebenkorn, along with visiting faculty Mark Rothko, another lifelong friend, and Ad Reinhardt. It was his friendship with Still that pushed Smith from figurative painting to Abstract Expressionism. These shifts in styles would become a hallmark of Hassel Smith’s career. In the 1970s and 1980s, Smith would embrace Hard-Edge Abstraction, contributing his unique spin via his “measured” paintings, which encompassed geometric shapes and numbers on grids. Using a system known only to him, Smith found rhythms in the paintings through the intervals and sizes of the shapes. Furthermore, unlike many Hard-Edge paintings that erased the hand of the painter, Hassel Smith’s paintings are lush in their varied brushstrokes and in their layered multi-hued surfaces.
WAYNE THIEBAUD (b. 1920) Beach Shop
Signed and dated lower right, "Thiebaud '60". oil on canvas 18 x 36 in. Painted in 1960 ALERT ME WHEN OTHER WORKS BY THIS ARTIST ARE AVAILABLE
Thiebaud painted Beach Shop in Mexico in 1960 as part of a series featuring similar scenes. The 18-by-36-inch oil exudes Thiebaud’s strongest qualities — particularly his ability to bring the action brushwork of the Abstract Expressionists to his distinctive, representational style.
RICHARD TUTTLE (b. 1941) Untitled (Cloth and Paint Work #2)
rope and oil on canvas 15 1/2 x 16 in. Executed in 1973
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Richard Tuttle is a seminal American postminimalist artist. Tuttle’s work is conceptual and meditative, crossing the boundary of sculpture, painting, and poetry, and often challenging the viewer. Untitled (Cloth and Paint Work #2) from 1973, a pivotal period in the artist’s career, evokes the earlier minimalism of his career while pushing towards material-based conceptual art. In the work he pays homage to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. Textiles, as in this piece, play a large role in his oeuvre and become sites on which to focus performance, engagement, and meaning.
TOM WESSELMANN (1931-2004) 1962 Plus 35 Nude Sketch II
Signed lower left, "Wesselmann '97" alkyd oil on canvas 43 x 58 5/8 in. Painted in 1997
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Tom Wesselmann was a painter, who also worked with collage in many of his works. He was known as a Pop artist due to his use of culture and commercialism in his work, however Wesselmann himself never fully agreed with the label. He felt that American culture naturally influenced his work because he was living in it, and made aesthetic use of it, but that it wasn’t the subject of his work. This painting is inspired by sketches from his most wellknown series, the Great American Nudes, which were directly influenced by Willem de Kooning’s Women series from the 1950s. Given Wesselmann’s background in cartooning, however, his women have a strikingly different appearance. He would reduce his models to their erogenous zones, detailing the figure in a graphic style. He said that he wanted to “make figurative art as exciting as abstract art.” This example, titled 1962 Plus 35 Nude Sketch II, features his classically recognizable nude with tan lines, and is flatly painted using vibrant colors. Her legs are parted in a carefree pose he used often, and her head is tilted toward the viewer in an inviting manner. This intimate painting was completed in 1997, the second in a series in which he revisited works and sketches he created in 1960s.
NORMAN ZAMMITT (1931-2007) North Wall
Signed verso, "September 1976, Norman Zammit" acrylic on canvas 96 x 168 in. Painted in 1976
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North Wall was exhibited at the Getty Museum in the Pacific Standard Time exhibition tracing the history of art in L.A. from 1945 to 1980, which reignited interest in Light and Space and brought fresh eyes to the work of Zammitt. For this piece, the artist measured the width of each band and created parabolic graphs to calculate the exacting color progression — not only for aesthetic precision, but also for emotional and spiritual effect. The colors seem to radiate as they shift from dark bands of black and blue to fiery yellows, oranges and reds. The hard edges of these bands bring to mind the school of L.A. artists who worked in geometric abstraction during the same period, predominantly the 1960s and ’70s, particularly Karl Benjamin's classic stripe paintings. But Zammitt’s ethereal pictures defy any such classification. His edges appear seamless — a moment in space frozen in time. His late, longtime dealer, Joni Gordon of Newspace, suggested the exacting bands of brilliant color relate to Native Indian sand paintings, noting that the artist was raised on the Mohawk [Caughnawaga Indian] reservation near Montreal.
American Art
WINSLOW HOMER (1836-1910) The Busy Bee
watercolor and gouache on paper 10 x 9 1/4 in. Painted in 1875
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The Busy Bee (1875), demonstrates Homer's influential excellence in watercolor. He began working in the medium in 1873, painting scenes of children and the daily lives of everyday people. Homer's prolific work in watercolor helped to establish it as a serious artistic medium. This piece is from the reconstruction era and depicts a single figure. The boy depicted in The Busy Bee is a model that appears repeatedly in Homer's work from this period, including some of the most widely celebrated reconstruction era paintings like Dressing for the Carnival (1877) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nearly all Homer’s works from of the reconstruction era south are in museum collections. Another painting of the same model, Taking Sunflower to Teacher (1875), is in the Georgia Museum of Art. This work is available from a private collection where it has stayed for the last 25 years. It has been exhibited widely beginning in 1876 at the National Academy of Design in New York and going on to be exhibited throughout the 20th century at major American museums such as The Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.
EDWARD HOPPPER (1882-1967) Farm House at Essex
Signed lower left, "Edward Hopper, Essex House" watercolor on paper 14 x 19 15/16 in Painted in 1929
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In the catalog for his 1933 retrospective, Edward Hopper wrote, "My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature." Farm House at Essex is one of two watercolors that Hopper completed in Essex, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1929 while driving north to Maine with his wife, Jo. He spent summers in New England throughout his life, and often used watercolor to capture the landscape. The medium allows the artist to capture an instant impression of nature, here a spontaneous moment in rural Massachusetts. This piece speaks to the most enduring theme in Hopper's work: mood. Noted for the sense of melancholy in his realist paintings, Hopper’s scenes are often populated by few isolated figures, or in this case, vacant of any human presence. Instead, he centers on the formal aspects of the building and the temporal beauty of place.
JOHN MARIN (1870-1953) Cape Split, Maine
Signed lower right, "Marin 45" oil on canvas 22 1/4 x 28 1/4 in. Painted in 1945
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In Cape Split, Maine, abrupt, gestural brushwork echoes the turbulent waves and snaps of wind at sea. John Marin painted distinctly American subject matter including the cityscape of New York or as in this painting, the Maine coast. He melded post-impressionism with the budding modernism of the early 20th century. Marin made annual trips to Maine, inspired by its coast and landscape. Within this painting, Marin is able to fully realize his idea that “the true artist must perforce go from time to time to the elemental big forms – Sky Sea Mountain Plain”. Marin was part of Alfred Stieglitz's modernist circle and counted among his friends and champion Edward Steichen. A 1948 survey of directors, curators, and art critics voted Marin as the greatest painter in America.
STANTON MACDONALD-WRIGHT (1890-1973) La Gaite
Signed lower middle, "S. Wright" oil on canvas 50 x 36 in. Painted in 1958
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Stanton Macdonald-Wright was a co-founder of the Synchromism movement, which combined abstraction and intense color. He was influenced by ideas that the qualities of color were connected to the qualities of music. He stopped painting this way in the 1920s, but his work experienced a revitalization in the 1950s, following a retrospective of his work at LACMA. Inspired by the renewed interest, Wright began producing works with increased passion; these works were considered Neo-Synchromism. La Gaîté is a phenomenal example of this period in Wright’s career, showcasing the brighter colors and larger canvases he favored during his personal renaissance.
CHARLES RUSSELL (1864-1926) Cascade Buffalo Hunt
Signed lower left, "CM Russell" with artist's skull device and dated, "1895" oil on board 18 1/4 x 24 in. Painted in 1895
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One of the most celebrated artists of the American West, Charles Russell deeply appreciated Native American culture with particular focus on the Northern Plains Indians. He spent the summer of 1888 living near the camps of the Blackfeet, Piegan, and Blood Indians in Canada, which would inspire his work for decades to come. One of the first "Western" artists to live the majority of his life actually in the West, Russell lived in Montana from the age of 16. Russell achieved great popularity during his lifetime for his emotionally charged depictions of the people and places he observed. This direct familiar observation added a depth to his work that was groundbreaking and affecting. Russell would work on the preliminary studies for his paintings in nature, out in the wild. Cascade Buffalo Hunt has remained in a private collection for nearly 50 years.
JOHN SINGER SARGENT (1856-1925) Mrs. Huth Jackson
Signed lower left, "John S. Sargent 1907" oil on canvas 60 1/2 x 40 1/8 in. Painted in 1907 INQUIRE
John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Mrs. Huth Jackson is more than the usual nod to the rarified world of elegance typical of the Gilded Age. For one, it shares a close kinship with Lady Agnew, a portrait lauded by The London Times at its unveiling in 1892 as “a masterpiece…a triumph of technique (and) the finest example of portraiture in the literal sense of the word.” That reputation has not diminished over time. Lady Agnew stands second only to Madam X as the finest society portrait of Sargent’s career. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Jackson, the former Clara Annabel Grant Duff and a close friend of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw was also a great admirer of that painting. Presumably, she asked that the painter fashion her own portrait in a similar manner. Yet painted 15 years after Lady Agnew, and at a time when Sargent had become infatuated with oriental costuming, the Huth Jackson portrait proved to be one of the first of six such studies executed in 1907 when the artist often asked models to drape a Kashmiri shawl around the shoulders, its serpentine folds lending a sensual, if exotic flair to the subject — a tribute of sorts to Sargent’s love of Neoclassism and Ingres in particular.
WILLIAM WENDT (1865-1946) Spring
Signed lower right, "William Wendt 1916" oil on canvas 40 x 50 in. Painted in 1916
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Spring, an unusually large-scale oil painting by William Wendt, depicts a huge expanse of blue, almost cloudless California sky over a wide, flat plain of verdant grass. The only other adornments to this landscape are stands of tall, thin trees that, in the forefront, seem to tower over the far distant snow-capped mountaintop. Wendt’s Impressionist style is evident in the detailed brushwork that makes up the sky. Using short dashes of blue upon blue, Wendt builds the varying color from dark at the top to lighter blue as it nears the mountain on the horizon. Looking closely, the sky almost appears to be a mosaic, but from further back, the colors and strokes blend seamlessly to create its soft, pastel look.
ANDREW WYETH (1917-2009) Star Route
watercolor on paper 21 1/4 x 29 in. Painted in 1977
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Andrew Wyeth is considered among the preeminent representational painters of the 20th century. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Wyeth drew his subject matter from the world around him: the interiors and exteriors of the stone buildings, mills, and farms of the Brandywine River countryside, and in the summers, the clapboard houses and stark landscape of the Maine coast. In this full-sheet watercolor, Star Route (1977), Wyeth depicted a house on the road to East Friendship, Maine, not far from his own summer residence. While relying on keen visual observation, he pared down the elements of a composition to their most essential, giving his works an abstracted quality and imbuing them with a sense of quietude and stillness.
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