News

Art lovers know is that looking at a work of art is an emotional experience that can transport us to breathtaking places and stir feelings in us that can make us feel calm and serene. Many of the American artists whose works are in our gallery discovered places that they loved to paint and share with the world.

After World War ll many American artists found themselves in a world of new consumerism and were able to find work as commercial illustrators, designers and even billboard creators. Some of them, like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol  became notable Pop artists, whose works are still relevant today.

Derrick Adams works in his studio, just a few blocks away from the Nostrand Avenue Long Island Railroad Station, so it made sense for him to be asked to create a mural for newly renovated platform. The mural is made of 85 panels of laminated glass that spans the length of the platforms and extend on to the four new pedestrian bridges.

Being an artist can be a very solitary undertaking. For 93-year-old Alex Katz, it has been working every day, alone in his studio, for decades. During most of the year he lives and works in the SoHo studio that he and his wife and model, Ada, have been living in since 1968. They spend summers in their home and studio in Lincolnville, Maine.

The works of Roy Lichtenstein continue to be some of the most sought after in the art world. Last July, one of his later works, Nude with Joyous Painting, done in 1994, sold at Christie's on-line auction for more than $46 million. Born and raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Lichtenstein was a sophisticated, erudite New Yorker who studied drawing and design along with botany, history, and literature at Ohio State University. He also took engineering courses at De Paul University in Chicago during his service in the army during World War ll. Lichtenstein was deployed to Europe where, ironically, he found a book about Japanese brush painting, which had a profound influence on his art.

The first commercially printed Christmas card was sold at Christie’s Valuable Books and Manuscripts sale in London on December 9 for £13,750, or about $18,370. The card was designed by illustrator John Calcott Horsley in 1843 at the request of Sir Henry Cole, a British civil servant who founded the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Only 21 of the 1,000 copies that were printed have survived.

Alex Katz "A lot of people want to paint something timeless, but I paint the immediate present." – Alex Katz Alex Katz has been inspired by what is right in front of him. For the last seven decades he has followed his own sense of style. His works defy categorization. He paints figures, landscapes and flowers, using [...]

Pat Steir This has been a very good year for Pat Steir. She was commissioned to create an exhibit for the the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., which is set to open soon. A documentary of her life called, Pat Steir: Artist, which took four years to complete, has been released. Pat Steir painting in her [...]

Photograph of Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso on the beach, September 1937Tate Archive Picasso Dora Maar met Pablo Picasso in 1936. It was a rough year for Picasso, who had stopped painting for months, and a good year for Maar, who was at the height of her career as a photographer. Maar had a significant [...]

Alex Katz Alex Katz is a consummate New Yorker, and much of his work reflects the style and sensibility of a sophisticated city dweller...but not all of it. In 1949, after he graduated from Cooper Union, Katz received a scholarship to spend the summer at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was introduced [...]

Art lovers in Beijing flocked to the UCCA Center for Contemporary art last summer to view a retrospective of the works of Pablo Picasso. The show was the first comprehensive exhibit of Picasso's work in mainland China, and it set new attendance records.

Another summer has come and gone. Autumn is here. In the Northeast, the changing of the season brings with it cool weather, changing leaves, fall colors and inspiration for artists. Anthony Thieme 1888-1954 Anthony Thieme at his home in Rockport, Massachusetts, 1950. One of the most inspiring paintings of the seasons was done by Anthony [...]

Major museums and galleries in the U.S. and abroad are reopening and visitors will be able to see exhibits that had to be postponed at the start of the pandemic. Much of what has been going on in the art world has been taking place outdoors and online, and has generated a new audience of art lovers and collectors.

The American public is being encouraged to buy more stamps to support the US Postal Service. Buying stamps is easy, but getting a design accepted for use on a stamp is not so easy. It takes about three years from the time an idea for a stamp is submitted to the time that it's issued and made [...]

There's been a lot of news this week about saving the United States Post Office, a service that many of us take for granted. The USPS receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. Many wonderful artists and their art works are represented on stamps and the process by which they receive the honor is an interesting one.

Pablo Picasso was the most influential artist of the first half of the twentieth century. That influence can still be felt around the world. In 2011, a car bomb attack killed eight people and damaged two buildings in Oslo's government quarter. One of the buildings was adorned with a mural that Picasso designed in collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar in 1970.

A sculpture by Alexander Calder sold at a Paris auction for more than $5.5 million on July 9th. The 11-foot tall sculpture is just one of many that are installed in France, where Calder went to study at the  Académie de la Grande Chaumière in 1926. Calder was born in Pennsylvania in 1898, and received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1919.

Pablo Picasso and Alex Katz are both artists who established their own creative paths and their own styles, while others were conforming to the movements of the day.

In the 1950s a group of young artists, who had a lot of talent, an abundance of passion but not much money, settled into the old factory buildings in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. The industrial spaces, once used for manufacturing sails, had high ceilings and enormous rooms that were perfect for use as living and studio space. That section of Brooklyn, along the East River, was called Coenties Slip.

Like many artists, Milton Avery was influenced by the time he spent painting during the summer, sometimes with other artists,  sometimes in solitude. In the 1920s, Milton Avery lived and worked in New York, and began spending summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Avery was born in 1885, in the small upstate town of Sand Bank, New York. He spent much of his early adulthood caring for his extended family after the deaths of his father and brother-in-law. He was always interested in becoming an artist, but his priority was earning money to support the family.

David Hockney Sets New Record in Hong Kong David Hockney turned 83 on July 9th...the same day his 1996 30 Sunflowers painting sold for $14.8 million, making it the second-most expensive work by a Western artist to sell in Asia. David Hockney's 30 Sunflowers at auction at Sotheby's in Hong Kong. The work exceeded the presale [...]

Scott Kelley, Walton Ford and Stephen Scott Young are three of the finest watercolorists in America. Even with the unpredictable and, often, unforgiving medium, each has his own style, his own focus and each has created masterful works that we are pleased to offer in our gallery.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York is planning for a retrospective of the works of Alex Katz in 2022. The Guggenheim closed its doors, at the start of the pandemic and, like museums and galleries around the world, it is preparing to reopen safely. The Guggenheim in Venice and in Spain have both reopened.

Wolf Kahn was more than just a great American landscape painter. He was also a mentor, teacher, art ambassador, husband, father and friend. Wolf Kahn died on March 15, 2020, at the age of 92, in his Manhattan home, of congestive heart failure.

The history of American art, and American artists, reflects the changes and growth that occurred as the country matured and became increasingly independent. The British tradition of painting portraits and bucolic landscapes slowly evolved into art with an American sensibility. In 1820 the Hudson River School emerged as the first well-known school of American painters who created sweeping landscapes of uniquely American vistas.

The annual Fine Art Print Fair, the world's the largest international art fair, celebrating 500 years of printmaking, was scheduled to be held at the Javits Center in New York, but the Center has been turned into a 1,000-bed field hospital during the coronavirus, so the Fair will be held online through June 13th. The Fair includes [...]

This year Memorial Day was celebrated quietly, without much fanfare and without parades. When we looked at some of the paintings of soldiers in our gallery, we could see the poignancy with which they are often remembered in art; remembered in works that last far longer than a parade. Many artists have, themselves, served in the military, [...]

Many people around the world have had to isolate themselves for the past few months and have found it difficult to be alone. But solitude is a choice for many, especially many creative thinkers. Research on both artists and scientists shows that one of the most prominent features of creative people is their lesser interest in socializing. There's a serenity that solitude can bring.

If a movie was made today of the life of Jane Peterson, it would probably star Julia Roberts (who is 52, around the age that Jane Peterson married for the first time and settled down to a life of domesticity for four or five years) and a cast of international actors to play her teachers, patrons and friends. The film would be billed as, "small town girl becomes successful artist, travels the world and finally settles down with millionaire husband."

The sale of yeast in the U.S. increased by 647% at the end of March and is still on the rise. Baking, during this shelter-in-place time has been one of the things that many people are using as a distraction, a family activity and a comfort.

Many artists spend each day alone in their studio or in a natural setting, not so different than the lives some of us find ourselves leading today.  The difference is that artists choose solitude and it's not forced upon them by a pandemic.

Wolf Kahn, one of America's most lyrical landscape painters, died of congestive heart failure in his Manhattan home on March 15. He was 92.

The world, as we knew it, has been going through radical changes during these past few weeks. Our personal and professional lives have been disrupted and we have had to modify many of our activities of daily living. With many museums and galleries closed to the public, and offering virtual tours online, it stands to reason that more people than ever have been seeking comfort and solace by surfing for art. One of the unexpected consequences of people staying at home is that many are beginning to educate themselves and learning to appreciate works of art.

With museums and galleries temporarily closed, in the U.S. and around the world, we've become increasingly dependent on technology, especially with stay-at-home restrictions, to fill the need we have to socialize and find solace in creativity. Many of the artists whose works are in our gallery live and work in New York, which has been hard hit by the Corona virus.

For many of us, the order to stay at home and shelter in place has left us wistful for a trip to a museum or gallery. Thanks to modern technology, virtual tours of some of the most magnificent museums and galleries in the world can be taken without getting off the couch.

Eye to I at the Boca Museum Before there was the selfie, there was the self portrait. Eye to I, the current exhibit at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, explores the way in which twentieth-century American artists portrayed themselves through painting, drawing, photography, and film. Unlike selfies, which can be instantly gratifying and, often, very candid, self-portraits [...]

The National Portrait Gallery of London is currently holding an exhibit of Hockney's drawings, the first major exhibit of the artist's drawings in more than twenty years. Although there are more than 150 works on display, done from 1950 to the present, only five subjects are represented in the works: his friend Celia Birtwell, his mother, Laura Hockney, curator and friend Gregory Evans, master printer and friend Maurice Payne and Hockney himself.

This weekend art lovers are celebrating Art on Paper at Pier 36 in Manhattan. Nearly one hundred galleries have been invited to this annual event, that showcases works of art which are done on paper or constructed with paper.

A painting by Keith Haring sold for £3,206,000 ($4,181,630) at Phillips London auction on February 13th. The 96 x 96 inch Untitled painting was included in the groundbreaking 1982 show organized by art dealer Tony Shafrazi. The work was purchased by an anonymous collector, who held on to it until this auction, although it was shown at a Haring retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1997 and the retrospective Keith Haring: The Political Line at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2013.

Maria Oakey Dewing is one of the women included in the Smithsonian's archives, and whose works are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's art collection. Dewing began her career around the turn of the twentieth century. Her abstract, impressionist style was considered avant-garde, and way ahead of other artists of her generation.

After a decade of working on political caricatures, Larraz knew he wanted to create art that mattered to him, but the art scene in New York in the 1970s and ’80s was transitioning from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism and Conceptual Art, none of which interested Larraz. “I wasn’t bored of my job. I love drawing and I love politics,” he said in a 2015 interview in Huffpost, “but I knew I wanted to do something that completely filled me with joy. When I started, the type of painting I wanted to create was forbidden. Abstract art was in full force at the time, but I wanted to be a Realist painter, which was considered degenerate art. I remember thinking ‘Terrific. You are not supposed to do this, and this is exactly what I am going to do.’ I had to go there, it was calling me.”

A new record for the work of Alex Katz was set at the Phillips auction house in London last October. His 1972 painting, Blue Umbrella sold for $4.1 million. The painting is just one of the more than 200 that Katz has created of Ada, his wife and muse. The 92-year-old Brooklyn born artist is going to have his first solo exhibit in Spain this fall, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. The exhibit will include paintings of flowers, landscapes and portraits, done in the distinctive style and colors that Katz has refined during his long career.

When the Roman Empire declined, around 133 BC, the art of landscape painting also declined. Although artists have been painting landscapes since antiquity, they were used only as background for religious, mythological or historical figure paintings. The word landscape comes from the Dutch word landschap, meaning region or tract of land. The Netherlands was one of the first places where landscapes became a popular subject for paintings and the term landscape came to mean a picture depicting scenery on land.

The contemporary art market has grown 1,800% in the last 19 years and its Price Index rose 22% in 2018/19, according to artprice.com. Of the top ten artists whose work set auction records in 2019, Claude Monet's Meules topped the list at Sotheby's New York, when it sold at the May 14th auction for $110,747,000. Jeff Koons [...]

This time of year stirs up memories, gives rise to feelings of nostalgia and, hopefully, joy. Great works of art awaken many of the same emotions. Each work at Surovek Gallery has been carefully chosen because of its beauty, its history and the sensation it evokes. We would like to showcase some of the fine works of [...]

The holidays bring up many emotions that artists are often able to capture. Many of the paintings by the American artists in our gallery seem to take on a deeper, more nostalgic, heartwarming feeling this time of the year. Here's a look at just a few of the works in the Surovek Gallery that evoke a sense of joy and the extraordinary artists who created them.