Wolf Kahn began using intense colors in his landscapes, in the late 1960s, while on vacation in Deer Isle, Maine. The sweep of the fog, the sea and the sky led him to move away from the monochromatic tones he had been using, to the swaths of radiant colors that he has been using for the last fifty years.
Neil Welliver was one of America's leading landscape painters. His large paintings of the Maine woods evolved from his appreciation of both traditional landscape painters of the nineteenth century and the abstract expressionists of his generation.
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love. - Marc Chagall The oldest of nine children, Marc Chagall experienced poverty, prejudice and the limitations put on Jews in his home country of Russia. He was witness to the [...]
Our focus at Surovek Gallery is on the acquisition and sale of works by American masters. Most of the artists in our gallery are known for their works in oils, and not as well-known for their watercolors. Watercolors, made from ochre and other minerals mixed with water, were used by the first artists to paint their cave walls and Ancient Egyptians to paint their tombs and temples. With the advancement of paper making in Italy in the thirteenth century, artists were able to use watercolors to produce major works.
The Whitney will be establishing the The Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, with the Foundation's donation of more than four hundred works created by Lichtenstein during his long career. The works, made from 1940 until his death in 1997, include paintings, drawings, prints, collages, sculptures, maquettes, models, study photographs and drawings, with additional work to be donated in the future.
Grant Wood The Whitney Museum show Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables, the most extensive retrospective of Wood's work ever presented, has just ended, and still the questions remain about both the artist and his art. American Gothic is one of America's most recognizable paintings, but Wood's large body of work and his life story, are unfamiliar [...]
Palm Beach is home to some of the finest and most distinctive art galleries in the world. Each art gallery in Palm Beach has its own unique focus and style, reflecting the interest and passions of gallery owners and staff. Here is a look at the Surovek Gallery and some of the other art galleries in Palm Beach that make it a fabulous destination for art lovers and collectors.
Joan Miró spent his life in both his birthplace of Barcelona and his adopted home of Paris. He lived in turbulent times and saw his country ravaged by civil war, the fascist Franco regime and World War ll. He lived long enough to see Spain become a constitutional monarchy and to see himself become a national treasure, but [...]
The works of Andrew Wyeth have always garnered public adoration. His original works are coveted by art collectors. Wyeth's exhibits routinely broke attendance records. What the artist often failed to get, was the support of art critics, who often slammed him for sticking to his own style during a time when Modernism and avant-garde movements were sweeping [...]
After studying in Paris, Benton returned to New York in the early 1920's and said that his time in Europe had made him an "enemy of modernism", ironically, the art movement that his teaching generated. Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935. Jackson Pollock, one of the leading figures in the Abstract Expressionist movement, was one of Benton's favorite students. They traveled through the West together in the 1930s, and Benton had a profound effect on Pollock's work and life.
Haring had his first solo museum exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1986. He painted a mural for the exhibit inside the museum, and then asked the museum curators if he could paint a public mural outside as a gift to the city. The curators let Haring paint one of the brick walls of a museum warehouse. Haring painted one of his distinctive figures riding a giant sea creature.
At age 88, Jasper Johns has remained one of America's most prominent living artists. He lives, and works, in his home in Sharon, Connecticut. Jasper Johns with his dog, Dougal, outside his home in Sharon, Connecticut, 2018Andrew White for The New York Times Johns has been making his mark on the art world for more [...]
Maurice Prendergast brought modernism from Europe to America, around the turn of the twentieth century, while still maintaining his own unique style. Last month, Christie's New York auctioned American art from the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection. Maurice Prendergast's Steps of Santa Maria d'Aracoeli, Rome was expected to go for $1,500,000 to $2,500,000 and realized $3,372,500.
The 1970s was a time when critics began to talk about, “the death of painting.” Frank Stella rejuvenated both painting and fine art printmaking by pushing the limits of both. In the middle of the 1970s, Stella’s work became more lavish and unrestrained. He began to use French Curves and other technical drafting tools to create sweeping and sinuous lines and new materials to give his paintings and extra dimensions.
Some of Renoir's most beautiful, and well-known works were of Paris life at the Moulin da la Galette. His use of color and composition made his Impressionist works a bridge between the Renaissance and Baroque artists who came before him and the modern artists who followed.
Reginald Marsh painted, photographed and sketched the teeming crowds of people that lived, worked and played in New York. He rode the subways, walked the streets and spent hours at Coney Island chronicling everyday life.
Words played a large part in the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. The words Boom for Real appear in several of his works, including Crown. Boom for Real was phrase that he used when he found something exciting or inspiring.
Pablo Picasso had two wives, four children by three women and many mistresses. He painted them all, but is was his last muse, Jacqueline Roque, whom he painted the most. Picasso created over 400 portraits of Roque, seventy of them done in a single year.
Thomas Hart Benton was one of the most popular, interesting and controversial artists of twentieth century America. He was born in Missouri in 1889. His father was a U.S. congressman. His great uncle, after whom he was named, was a U.S. senator.
Kahn was born in Germany in 1927. His father was a well-known conductor with the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra. The family had to leave Germany when Hitler came to power. Kahn emigrated to New York when he was thirteen. Khan's artistic ability was recognized and encouraged when he was as young as four.
At age 90, Alex Katz still jogs, works out, and draws or paints every day, even when he has to climb a ladder to reach the top of one of his massive canvasses. Katz still works in the SoHo studio where he lives with Ada, wife and muse of sixty years.
Kelley began working in watercolors when he was a child and continued to work in this most difficult medium while attending the Cooper Union School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art in London and then as a fellow at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. His mastery of watercolor is apparent in all of his work.
The people of Prout's Neck, Maine thought of their neighbor, Winslow Homer, as a character and a curmudgeon. But Homer was able to infuse a sensitivity into each of his works, whether he painted a raging sea or a lone wanderer in the woods.
In the early 1940s, Andrew Wyeth was viewed as a radical, surrealist painter. When abstract expressionism took hold, Wyeth was attacked by critics for not changing his style. Although the critics were unkind, the public was not and Wyeth is still one of the most beloved American artists.
Young describes himself as a hermit. He says that being an army brat, who moved from base-to-base every year, made it difficult to make friends. He is passionate about his work, which keeps him busy, but his life is far from solitary.
In 1965, Lichtenstein began working on the Brushstroke Series. His inspiration was a comic book cell, done by Dick Giordano. Giordano's work depicted an artist who emotionally drained after completing a painting. Lichtenstien's first Brushstroke painting was very similar to the work of Giordano but Lichtenstien continued to use the brushstroke in varying ways for the rest of his career.
Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms spoke to a nation in turmoil during World War ll. The paintings were created in response to President Roosevelt's State of the Union address in 1941, in which he said that all people have the right to four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
New Auction Highs for Marc Chagall Paintings Two of Marc Chagall's paintings sold for over the estimated price at November's Sotheby's Auction. Le Grand cirque, a ten-foot wide painting, that Chagall did in 1956, was sold to a bidder at Sotheby's Asia for $16 million. The estimate price for Le Grand cirque was $15 million. Marc Chagall Le Grand Cirque, [...]
Calder was born in Philadelphia in 1898. Both his grandfather and father, A. Stirling Calder, were successful sculptors, who created large-scale public works. His mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was an accomplished painter. Calder created small sculptures as a child, and studied engineering before deciding to pursue a career as an artist.
Cassatt's determination led her to take private lessons and copy the master works at the Louvre on her own, alongside other female artists who worked as copyists, and earned money by selling their copies of the works.
The Whitney Museum is putting together an exhibit called Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables. The exhibit, which will run from March 2 through June 10, 2018, will showcase Wood's extraordinary range of talents and his often overlooked sophistication as an artist.
Wolf Kahn has been awarded the 2017 U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts. Kahn's work has been part of the State Department's Art in Embassies program, which loans work to diplomatic bureaus around the world. Wolf Kahn received the 2017 U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts. Photo by Melany Kahn At age 90, [...]
Winslow Homer was in his forties when he began to create some of the most beautiful watercolor paintings the world has ever seen. Homer’s mother, Henrietta, was a talented watercolorist who painted nature studies and whose works were the only paintings by another artist he ever collected and hung in his studio in Prouts Neck, Maine.
The works of Julio Larraz are technically exquisite and are filled with irony and humor. A painting may appear serene, but reveal some disturbing nuance.
Dale Nichols was raised on a farm in rural Nebraska, where he did chores, walked two miles to school…not the sort of life one imagines would lead to a sophisticated career in art and design…but it did.
Orville Bulman The works of Orville Bulman have long been a favorite of collectors. During his lifetime he sold more than 2000 paintings and exhibited in more than forty solo shows. Bulman took some art classes, but was mostly self-taught and the popularity of his paintings surprised even him. When given his first solo show in Palm [...]
Maine’s rugged coastline, lush forests and breathtaking mountains, streams and sky, even the people of Maine and the wildlife, have inspired many artists to set up their easels and paint.
The works of Stephen Scott Young are like comfort food; they convey a sense of serenity and longing to stay in the moment that he captures in each work of art. In a recent New York Times essay, Dr. Mikkael A. Sekeres, Director of the Leukemia Program at the Cleveland Clinic, fondly recalled the way his journalist [...]
John Whalley is not just a great artist. He is also a joyful and generous man, who shares his fascination of found objects with his audience. John Whalley Shorthand, 2016 Egg Tempera on panel 24 x 16 inches For his solo exhibit last summer, called Etudes, Whalley wrote, “The word étude is defined as “a [...]
The focal piece of the Wynn Boston Harbor casino, currently under construction, will be Jeff Koons' 6-foot, 5-inch Popeye sculpture, which casino owner Steve Wynn purchased in 2014 for $28 million. Wynn is a big fan of Jeff Koons work and has purchased Koons sculptures for other properties.
Scott Kelley’s paintings reflect his fascination with, and appreciation and respect for, the flora, fauna and geology of his home in Peaks Island, Maine.
Ellsworth Kelly had his first solo exhibit at the Galerie Arnaud, Paris, in 1951. He’s considered an iconic innovator in American art, but it wasn’t until 1957, when the Whitney Museum of American Art bought his Atlantic painting, that he began to get the recognition that he deserved.
Picasso continued to create pottery throughout his lifetime. He bought an estate in Mougins, just five miles north of the Madoura pottery, in 1961, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. After Jacqueline died, in 1986, the property was abandoned and sat empty for thirty years. It was restored a few years ago and will be auctioned by Christie’s real estate next moth. Bidding will start at 20.2 million euros ($24 million).
“The artist does not live in bliss.” wrote Joan Miro. “He is sensitive to the world, to the pulsation of his time, to the events which compel him to act. This is bound to happen. This is not an intellectual attitude but a profound feeling, something like a cry of joy which delivers you from anguish.”
Maurice Prendergast was one of America’s most original painters. His works, although labeled Impressionist, have both a European and American sensibility, but are unlike the works of other artists of his time. Maurice Prendergast, 1913 Prendergast was, during much of his lifetime, a painter’s painter. It wasn’t until around the start of World War 1, [...]
Martin Lewis was one of the best printmakers to ever live and work in America. In the 33-volume Masters of Etching, compiled by London publisher Studio Ltd., Lewis was ranked alongside James Whistler, Goya and Rembrandt.
Between 1980 and 1985, Haring created as many as forty drawings a day in New York subways. People stopped to watch, some spoke with him and, eventually, his simple drawings of people, space ships, TVs, animals and a barking dog became instantly recognizable.
“No man with a conscience can just bat out illustrations.” Rockwell wrote, “He’s got to put all of his talent and all of his feelings into them. If illustration is not considered art, then that’s something that we have brought upon ourselves; not considering ourselves as artists. I believe illustrators should say, ‘I’m not just an illustrator. I’m an artist.”
In spite of being born into poverty in the small village of Liozna, near Vitebsk, part of the Russian Empire, where, as a Jew, his movements were restricted and his options limited, Chagall managed to maintain an optimism that still resonates with people throughout the world.
Nichols spent fifteen years in Chicago, working as a commercial illustrator. He was not just a talented painter, but also a skilled lithographer, wood carver, designer, writer and an advocate of the use of fine art in commercialism.
What is especially significant about the work of Montoya and Ortiz is, not just the modeling and casting, but the unique and varying hues and shades of patinas that they are able to achieve.
I consider myself an animal part of nature, not a Homo sapien. Like the deer, the bear and the other small whatever else are out there, all the other small things and I feel totally at home there, completely and absolutely at home in the woods.” The backpack that Neil Welliver took with him, when he went [...]
Julio Larraz began his career as political cartoonist whose work was published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. He has become one of the world’s most important contemporary Latin American painters, with his work in major museums and galleries around the world. Just this year, his work has been included in shows in both Milan and Houston.
Orville Bulman’s paintings are joyful, whimsical and playful. It’s hard to imagine that his paintings of lush jungles, tigers, giraffe and elegant Haitian women and men, were created by a businessman who was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Lillian said that her husband Anthony Thieme often insisted that “‘he was born fifty years too late.” He was born in Rotterdam in 1888 and became an American citizen in 1935. “He disliked the rush and roar of the modern age” she said, “… this conflict was always within him, the longing to paint peace and quiet, beauty and harmony, yet confronted daily with the ugliness of modernity.”
Like his older brother, Louis, William Glackens began his career as an illustrator. McClure’s Magazine sent him to Cuba, to cover the Spanish-American War. His drawings, like The Night After San Juan, clearly illustrate the devastation and sadness of war.
Tom Wesselmann spent much of his young adult life searching for his identity, both as an artist and a human being. Born and raised in a middle class family in Cincinnati, Wesselmann knew he wanted to be an artist, but wasn’t sure how to go about fulfilling his aspirations. “I had no point of view.” he said “I hadn’t seen paintings. I hadn’t seen anything. I hadn’t gone to galleries yet or to museums.”
Roy Lichtenstein was inducted into the US Army and sent to England just before Christmas in 1944. Although his induction interrupted his studies at the Art Students League, Lichtenstein’s time in London had a profound influence on his work.
The work of Jasper Johns has never fit into any category. Not a minimalist, abstract expressionist, Dadaist, modernist or Pop artist, Johns influenced all of those art movements, but his style remains distinctly his own. Jasper Johns in his Pearl Street studio. 1955 What Johns did for the artists who have come after him, was [...]
Alexander Calder turned 71 in 1969. He was still playful, energetic and continued to create fantastic drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures but, like all humans, Calder had to deal with the events that accompany the aging process. He lost two of his closest friends, Marcel Duchamp and Ben Shahn, and was beginning to feel the effects of Parkinson’s Disease. It was Duchamp who named Calder’s original works mobiles and who remained a great friend, until Duchamp’s death, in 1968.
