1980s Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Vibrant abstract landscape watercolor titled "Sierra Country" by Erle Loran (American, 1905-1999), 1984. Titled, signed, and dated on verso. Presented in a painted metal frame, without glass. Image, 23"H x 31"L. Measures: 30"H x 37"W. Erle Loran was a modernist of urban and coastal views and geometric painting. Erle Loran was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Art under the direction of Cameron Booth...

Hand-augmented collotype by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). Signed "Patricia A. Pearce" in the lower right corner. There are embossed wavy lines running horizontally, with ri...

Erwin Pfrang, German (b. 1951) Graphite, Colored Pencil on paper Framed 20.5/8 X 16.5/8 sheet 6 X 7.75 Erwin Pfrang (born 1951, in Munich) is a German painter and printmaker. Pfra...

Hand-augmented collotype by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). Signed "Patricia A. Pearce" in the lower right corner. This piece has an iridescent quality to the coloration. No ...

As a teen, Paul Jenkins worked with ceramicist James Weldon which led to a fascination with glazes; Jenkins cultivated and eventually achieved a similar effect in his paintings by mixing oil and enamel on canvas in the 50s. In 1937, Jenkins attended classes at the Kansas City Art Institute where he painted his first series of watercolors he called interior landscapes inspired by caves in the Ozarks. After serving in the US Naval Air Corps for 2 years, Jenkins moved to New York to study with Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League from 1948 to 1952. During those years, Jenkins met Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. In 1953 left for Paris where he discovered and was struck by the color density and luminosity in abstract oil works termed ébauches by Gustave Moreau and pastels by Odilon Redon. He began to experiment with poured paints in various thicknesses on canvas and paper and found this technique achieved luminosity of color which in its own way was comparable to that of Moreau and Redon. The next year, Jenkins added Winsor Newton pigments and chrysochrome, a viscous enamel paint, into his poured paintings, further enriching their color density and incandescence. The next major development in technique came in 1959 when he began using an ivory knife to guide the flow of paint. That same year, he also began to title his paintings Phenomena followed by a key word or phrase. A film on Jenkins' technique titled The Ivory Knife: Paul Jenkins at Work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art and received the Golden Eagle Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1966. In 1954 Jenkins had his first solo exhibition in Paris where he met Martha Jackson, whose New York gallery included Jenkins in a group show the following year. In 1956, Martha Jackson Gallery held a solo exhibition of Jenkins’ work at which Divining Rod...

Abstract multicolor watercolor with bold color fields by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unsigned and un...

A miniature abstract expressionist etching by Russian artist R. Silvestrov (Russian, 20th Century). Very finely detailed lines create an abstracted image that has elements resembling a mechanical drawing...

Vintage abstract watercolor with purple lines and yellow forms bleeding together by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed "Les Anderson" on verso. From the esta...

Abstracted composition by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Unsigned, but acquired from the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Presented in a new grey...

Artist: Yasmin Brandolini d'Adda, South African/Italian (1929 - ) Title: I Year: 1984 Medium: Tempera on Paper, signed and dated Size: 40 in. x 25 in. (101.6 cm x 63.5 cm)

Double-sided watercolor of pink chrysanthemums along a tree branch and a colorful abstract on verso by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les And...

Blue & yellow abstract watercolor by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Signed on verso and unframed. Image...

Abstract composition with bold pink and yellow forms by Les Anderson (American, 1928-2009). Signed lower left. Acquired from the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. No fr...

Abstract watercolor with bold, dynamic colors by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unsigned and unframed. ...

Abstract watercolor with soft pinks and purples by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Signed on verso and u...

Purple & red abstract watercolor by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unsigned and unframed. Image 10"H x ...

Abstract watercolor with bold, dynamic colors by Les (Leslie Luverne) Anderson (American, 1928-2009). From the estate of Les Anderson in Monterey, California. Unsigned and unframed. ...

Hand-augmented collotype on layered paper by Patricia A. Pearce (American, b. 1948). Signed "Patricia A. Pearce" in the lower right corner. Titled "Red Medusa...

Black And White Landscape is an original artwork realized by Michel Gigon in 1980. Mixed media on cardboard (chalcography and ink). Hand-signed by the artist on the upper left corner. Very good conditions except for some foxing on the back. Totally black Surrealist composition realized by Michel Gigon at the end of his artistic career. During this period, the artist realized several black artworks...

This Vicente has a color glow akin to a Mark Rothko. Vicente explored parallel ideas to Rothko and others of the abstract expressionist and color field era. The pastel gives this w...

Black flower is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1987 by Mario Surbone. Colored mixed media (watercolor and carchoal) on paper. Hand signe...

Abstract composition is an original contemporary artwork realized by Loris Ferrari in 1987. Tempera and chalk on paper. Hand signed and dated by the artist.

La casa delle cose is an original watercolor on paper realized by the Italian artist Giuseppe Uncini in 1980. Hand signed and dated on the lower right margin. Mixed colored waterco...

Black flower is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1987 by Mario Surbone. Colored mixed media (watercolor and carchoal) on paper. Hand signe...

From Earth is an original contemporary artwork realized in 1988 by Mario Surbone. Colored watercolor on paper. Hand signed and dated by the artist on...

Detlef Baltrock (*1954 Stuttgart), Untitled, 1985. Watercolor, 29.5 cm x 21 cm (visible dimensions), 41 cm x 32 cm (frame), signed “Baltrock” lower center and signed “[19]85”, label ...

"Bourrée Fantasque #7", Pastel on Paper by Artist Francisco Moncion, is a Mid-20th Century fantasy image inspired by George Balanchine's 1949 ballet of the same name for the New York...

Ghosts is an original watercolor realized by Leo Guida in the 1980s. Good condition. Leo Guida (1992 - 2017). Sensitive to current issues, artistic movements and historical techni...

Simon Samsonian (1912 - 2003) Colorful Geometric Abstraction, 1981 Oil on paper 16 x 22 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Estate of the artist This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told. Art historians are finally beginning to realize that the power of abstraction in its early years was a zeitgeist not limited to the major European centers of the avant-garde — Paris, Munich, and Moscow — but one that quickly rippled to major cities throughout the world. Within a few decades that original shock of a new vision had inspired thousands of artists from different cultures — particularly those the Middle East — whose translations were not slavish imitations of works by seminal figures like Picasso, Braque, Malevich, and Kandinsky but creative variants colored by their respective cultures. This essay focuses on an extraordinary Armenian artist, his harrowing survival of the genocide, his rise to fame in Cairo, and his creation of a unique style of abstraction. Art historians have typically formed a chorus that teaches the history of abstraction like this: Just before and during the World War I era, several avant-garde artists emerged to create shockingly different new forms by which artists could express themselves. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke out with cubism, quickly followed by Mondrian. In Moscow, Malevich created Suprematism, the ultimate hard-edge geometric abstraction. And in Munich, Kandinsky emerged as the father of Abstract Expressionism. Within these few short years a zeitgeist was sensed throughout the art world. American pioneers, too — particularly Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell — felt this explosive freedom of expression. When Europe was recovering after World War I it became clear that Paris would retain its title as capitol of the art world, lasting through the Roaring Twenties and even through the Great Depression. But the end of World War II changed everything. A parallel war had been won by a group of irascible young Abstract Expressionists in New York — led by Pollock, Rothko, DeKooning, and Kline. No sooner had Paris been liberated from the Germans than Picasso, Matisse, Breton, and Duchamp surrendered to the Americans. From that point on New York would be the epicenter of the art world. But a lens that focuses myopically on the war between the avant-garde of Paris and New York misses the wider narrative of multiple aesthetic modernities that developed in the several decades following World War I. For Armenian artists the matter is even more complex owing to the genocide of 1915 where more than 1.5 million people — seventy-five percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire — were massacred. Those not shot on the spot were sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped and forced to walk naked under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. As a child Samsonian witnessed the murder of his parents and most of the members of his family. Soon thereafter, his older sister, Anahid, quickly shepherded him into a line of children being rescued by Greek nuns. But they became separated and he lost her, too. He was sent to a Greek orphanage in Smyrna (now Izmir), on Turkey’s west coast. Because he only knew his first name, the orphanage gave him a last name based on the place where they found him — Samsun — a major port on Turkey’s north coast on the Black Sea. His birth date was unknown, too. According to Samsonian’s vague recollections he assumed he was about three or four years old at the onset of the genocide, which would place his birth year in 1911 or 1912. In 1922, when Samsonian was about 10, the Turks ended their war with the Greeks by putting Smyrna to the torch in what has been called the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” Once again, the child was on the run, escaping the fire and slaughter. He found temporary refuge in Constantinople, but within a year that major port would fall to the Turks, too, and become renamed as Istanbul. This time, Samsonian was whisked away to an orphanage in Greece founded by the American charity, Near East Relief — which is credited with saving so many Armenian orphans that the American historian Howard M. Sachar said it “quite literally kept an entire nation alive. Any understanding of Samsonian’s approach to modernism requires careful consideration of the impact of his early years because his art is inseparable from the anguish he experienced. In 1927, when he was a teenager, he was transferred to Cairo, Egypt, then a cosmopolitan city hosting a sizable portion of the Armenian diaspora. There he lived with thirty-two other children on the top floor of the Kalousdian Armenian School. Upon graduating in 1932 he won a scholarship to attend the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute — an Italian art school in Cairo — where he won first prize in final examinations among one hundred students. He found work with an Armenian lithographic printer and he returned to the Kalousdian Armenian School to teach drawing. In 1939 he married one of his students, Lucy Guendimian. The Cairo in which Samsonian matured as an artist was home to many prominent art collectors after World War I. In this receptive environment Samsonian exhibited widely and won many awards. Beginning in 1937 and for the next thirty years he exhibited annually at the prestigious Le Salon du Caire hosted by the Société les Amis de l’Art (founded in 1921). After World War II he hit his stride as a modernist in Cairo, counting among his peers other artists of the Armenian diaspora such as Onnig Avedissian, Achod Zorian, Gregoire Meguerdichian, Hagop Hagopian...

"Bourrée Fantasque #12 Blue", Pastel on Paper by Artist Francisco Moncion, is a Mid-20th Century fantasy image inspired by George Balanchine's 1949 b...

Harmony Hammond Ruffled Waters, 1980 Signed lower right Mixed media on paper 18 1/8 x 24 inches Provenance Private Collection, New York Heritage Auctions, Dallas, Contemporary Art W...

"Bourrée Fantasque #11 Blue", Pastel on Paper by Artist Francisco Moncion, is a Mid-20th Century fantasy image inspired by George Balanchine's 1949 ballet of the same name for the Ne...

"Bourrée Fantasque #1", Pastel on Paper by Artist Francisco Moncion, is a Mid-20th Century fantasy image inspired by George Balanchine's 1949 ballet ...

Artist: Stephen Greene, American (1917 - 1999) Title: Untitled Year: 1986 Medium: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper, signed and dated l.r. Size: 40 x 30 inches

Peter Pinchbeck, English (1931 - 2000) - Green and White Squares, Year: 1982, Medium: Gouache on Paper, signed and dated in pencil on verso, Size: 22.25 x 30 in. (56.52 x 76.2 cm)

Peter Pinchbeck, English (1931 - 2000) - Yellow, Red and Purple Square, Year: 1981, Medium: Gouache on Fabriano Cotton Paper, signed, and dated in pencil, Image Size: 18 x 25.5 inc...

"The Mainvjine of Farsplintoc" is an original oil pastel drawing on paper by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. This piece features a variety of abstract marks...

Signed lower right, 'Jane Malinasky' (American, 1920-2003) and dated, verso, 1980. Jane Malinasky attended the College of William and Mary.

Artist: Kazuhide Yamazaki (Japanese-American, 1951-2023) Title: "Untitled" *Titled, signed, and dated by Yamazaki in pencil lower right Year: 1981 Medium: Original Watercolor and Oil...

This is a mixed media monoprint titled Homage a Sam (I first thought it was for Sam Gilliam but the artist told me it was for Sam Francis. He has done a number of these Homages as I have found a New York Times article referencing a "cast paper folded into an airplane shape by Richard Royce serves as an homage to the late sculptor Alexander Calder".Richard Royce, born New York, 1941. After getting his BA and MA in fine art at the University of Wisconsin where he studied under Alfred Sessler...

Artist: Stephen Greene, American (1917 - 1999) Title: Untitled Year: 1986 Medium: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper, signed and dated l.r. Size: 40 x 30 inches

Artist: Kazuhide Yamazaki (Japanese-American, 1951-2023) Title: "Banana" *Titled, signed, and dated by Yamazaki in pencil lower right Year: 1981 Medium: Original Graphite Pencil and ...

The color harmony on paper. stamp singed lower right Pinajian. Archived numbered 1580

Emil Wachter (1921 Neuburgweiser - 2012 Karlsruhe), Rebekka, 1987. Watercolor mounted on cardboard, 13.5 (height) x 14 cm (width). Signed “E.[mil] Wa[chter]” in pencil within the ima...

Robert Petersen After A Rain #2, 1987 Collage on Paper: Pencil, Oil, Acrylic and Cloth Hand signed, dated and titled on lower front with Castelli Graphics label on the back Frame Inc...

Willard MacGregor (American, b. 1901-1993), Abstract Composition, Crayon and Ink Wash on Paper, 1983, signed lower left, giltwood frame. Image: 12" H x 8.75" W; frame: 17.5" H x 13....

An original painting on paper by British Modern artist Robyn Denny. It is signed and dated lower right and titled lower left. Framed to 44 x 32 inches.

Artist: Ben Hancocks Title: 24th April Year: 1982 Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper, signed and dated Paper Size: 34 x 15 inches [86.36 x 38.1 cm] Image Size: 27.5 x 11 in. [69.85 x 27.94 cm]

Artist: Cynthia Carlson, American (1942 - ) Title: Hornet Rocks Year: 1980 Medium: Roplex, acrylic, & wax crayon, signed, titled and dated verso Size: ...

Artist: Juhachiro Takada, Japanese XXth Title: Untitled I Year: 1982 Medium: Tempera with Graphite on Paper Size: 22 x 28 inches Frame: 29 x 35 inches

Artist: Stephen Greene, American (1917 - 1999) Title: Untitled Year: 1986 Medium: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Paper, signed and dated l.r. Size: 40 x 30 inches

Artist: Ben Hancocks Title: 28th March Year: 1982 Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper, signed and dated Paper Size: 34 x 15 inches [86.36 x 38.1 cm] Image Size: 27.5 x 6 in. [69.85 x 15.24 cm]

Diagonal lines in pink, pink, orange, and black make up the composition of this original drawing by Yaacov Agam. Signed above the printed text ’Agam’. Title: Beyond the Visible Medi...

This Lovely Modernist Lithograph Originates from the Israeli born artist Yaakov Agam (made in Paris, France Circa 1980). This Lithograph is an Artist's Proof and a member of Agam's "...

Untitled (Yellow, Gray and Pink) Pastel on paper, 1981 Signed and dated lower right Condition: Excellent Sheet size: 12 x 18 inches Frame size: 15 x 21 inches Provenance: Jan Cowles ...

Artist: Karl Fred Dahmen Title: Tagebuch August Year: 1980 Medium: Drawing with Mixed Media on Paper, signed Size: 31 x 24.5 in. (78.74 x 62.23 cm)

Artist: Ben Hancocks Title: 31st March Year: 1981 Medium: Oil Pastel on Paper, signed and dated Image Size: 27.5 x 8.5 in. [69.85 x 21.59 cm] Paper Size: 34 x 15 inches [86.36 x 38....

James Wolfe, American (1944 - ) - Sculpture Study, Year: 1986, Medium: Gouache on Guarro paper, signed and dated in pencil, Size: 22.25 x 30 in. (56.52 x 76.2 cm)

James O. Clark, American sculptor, art educator. Recipient Sculpture award, Creative Artists Public Service, 1978, award for sculpture, National Endowment for Arts, 1982, Graphics award, 1983; fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1989; grantee, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, 1995, New York Counsel on Arts. Member selection committee Islip (New York ) Museum, 2002; Member of American Abstract Artist (associate; active 1999—2003). ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS 2015 ltd los angeles, Los Angeles, CA 2011 RHV Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY 2010 Mariboe Gallery, Hightstown, NJ 2009 Lesley Heller Gallery, New York, NY 2006 Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY 1998-9 “Tulips, Hysteria, Coordinating”, Nicholas Davies, New York, NY 1997 “James O. Clark”, Ohio University, Athens, OH 1994 The College of Saint Rose Art Gallery, Albany, NY 1991 Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY 1990 James...

SEYMOUR LIPTON Seymour Lipton Untitled sculptural study, 1981 Charcoal on paper hand signed and dated in charcoal pencil on the front Framed Original drawing done in charcoal by reno...