Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet Arabe Signed Crayon on Paper Drawing

1948

Very well executed original pastel on archival paper of New York City at night with beacon by the well known American artist, Leon Dolice. Signed lower right. Circa 1930. Condition is excellent. Beautifully gallery framed with stained mahogany wood frame. Under glass. Overall framed measurements are 21 by 30 inches. Birham Wood Galleries, East Hampton, New York provenance. Exhibited artwork. See photo gallery labels verso. Leon Dolice was born in Vienna, Austria on August 14, 1892, the son of a machinest/welder. He went on to study art in Europe and viewing the works of the Masters. Dolice immigrated to the United States in 1920, finding a retreat in the European Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, he picked the streets of this landmark neighborhood as his first subjects. Concentrating on etching and with the encouragement of new found friends and artists such as George Luks and Herb Roth, he soon ventured out and devoted all his time to chronicling the architecture, back streets, dock scenes and other nostalgia that was fast disappearing from the face of Manhattan, mainly in copperplate etchings. A favorite subject for him was the Third Avenue El near one of his New York City studios on Third Avenue. He won accolades for his work, and although he traveled the East Coast recording landmarks in other cities including Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, he always returned to his new home Manhattan. A decline in popular favor for etchings led him to put aside his plates in the late 1930s and devote some ten years to pastels, linocuts and painting. His subject matter was almost exclusively New York City street scenes, but figurative works, country scenes, and even experiments with Abstract Expressionism at the height of its new found favor in the 1940s punctuated his career. In 1953, after learning of the forthcoming demise of the Third Avenue El, in the shadow of which he had maintained his studio for over a decade, he once again took to his plates and press and created a final series of Third Avenue and or other New York City landmarks that were then threatened with extinction. His work brings to light aspects of nostalgic New York that survives today only in small part, whether in architecture or in spirit. Dolice's works are in a number of notable museums and private collections, including the Museum of the City of New York; The New York Public Library Print Collection; The New York Historical Society; Georgetown University Lauinger Library; The Print Club of Philadelphia and others. In the past few years, his work has been exhibited at Hofstra Museum, Long Island, NY; with the Montauk...

Alex (Cuban, b.1949). Indigenous Mexican Woman, 1982. Pastel and charcoal on wove paper, sheet measures 23 x 33 inches. 31 x 40.5 inches on backing board...

This is a pastel painting on toned archival signed and dated by the artist. The subject matter refers to a time in the artist's life in Brooklyn where fig trees were wrapped and tie...

Modern original oil pastel on archival paper of a rooftop view of buildings and New York harbor by the Swedish born American artist, Carl Sprinchorn. ...

Love is a drawing in watercolor and pastel realized in the Mid-20th Century by Jean Delpech (1916-1988). Good conditions with minor folding. The artwork is realized in harmonious ...

Francesco Spicuzza (American, 1883-1962) Untitled Landscape, 20th century Pastel on paper Sight size: 24 x 30 in. Framed: 26 1/4 x 32 3/8 in. Signed lower right: Spicuzza Italian-born Francesco Spicuzza was primarily a Wisconsin painter who did portraits, still-lives and local landscapes. He spent the first part of his life in near-poverty to become a painter. An eternal optimist, in 1917, the artist reported: "I am happy and my only ambition now is to paint better and better until I shall have reached the measure of the best of which I am capable." (Spicuzza, 1917, p. 22). His predilection for beach scenes germinated early: reportedly, the five-year-old boy first drew the outlines of his father's fishing boat in the sand on the seashore near their home in Sicily. After setting himself up as a fruit peddler in Milwaukee, Spicuzza's father sent for his family when Francesco was eight years old. For the following six years the boy was unable to attend school because of his job in his father's fruit and vegetable business. The poor lad suffered a caved-in shoulder from carrying a heavy wooden crate. The young Spicuzza was aided by moral and financial support from a sympathetic Milwaukee businessman named John Cramer, publisher and editor of the Evening Wisconsin, who raised Spicuzza's salary as a newspaper assembler so that he could attend school. In 1899 or 1900, Spicuzza began studying drawing and anatomy under Robert Schade (1861-1912), a painter of panoramas who had been trained in Munich under Carl Theodor von Piloty. Spicuzza was also taught by Alexander Mueller (1872-1935), a product of the Weimar and Munich academies. Mueller realized Spicuzza was a colorist and encouraged that orientation (Madle, 1961). Spicuzza found it beneficial to accept an apprenticeship in a lithographic studio for $8 a week, which demanded most of his time. During the St. Louis Universal Exposition in 1904, still a struggling student, Spicuzza attended the fair, thanks to Cramer. It was not long before Spicuzza received a twenty-five dollar portrait commission, and this inaugural success led to new commissions and allowed him to continue as a painter. The earliest influences in his work appear to be from Edward H. Potthast and Maurice Prendergast, though Spicuzza never mentioned either artist. Already in August 1910, Spicuzza was described in a newspaper as "one of the most talented of Milwaukee's rising workers." He undoubtedly received lasting inspiration from his one summer study period in 1911 with John F. Carlson at the Art Students League's Summer School in Woodstock, New York. Certainly Spicuzza would have picked up spontaneity in handling the brush from Carlson. Although he executed numerous still-lives and an occasional religious work, Spicuzza is best known for his Milwaukee beach scenes populated with frolicking bathers in multi-colored attire, not unlike the images of Potthast, who used a similar technique. Many of these are small, preparatory works on canvas board executed between 1910 and 1915. Frequently with even greater animation than Potthast, Spicuzza produced moving images of youthful energy and uninhibited child's play. These beach genre scenes reflect the attitude of American impressionists who depicted the more pleasant side of life. Spicuzza manipulated a successful balance of rich pigment applied in varying degrees of impasto texture with subtle nuances of hue. Working all'aperto, he sought "the soft enticing shades of yellow, blue, green, pink and lavender . . . to get the effects of bright glistening summer air." (L.E.S., n.d.). As a painter whose color not only derived from direct observation but also from a personal theory of color symbolism, Spicuzza traded the linear approach of lithography for dynamic patches of brilliant color. Like Prendergast, he would often tilt the angle of the picture plane to bring the viewer's position above the scene. Spicuzza was unable to enter the 1913 Armory Show or the Panama-Pacific International Exposition two years later but he did submit work to the annual exhibitions of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and those of the Art Institute of Chicago. His first important award was the bronze medal presented by the St. Paul Institute in 1913, which was followed by the silver medal two years later. Before long, Spicuzza had acquired a greater sense of security in his profession and was described by a writer in International Studio (April 1917) as "an independent artist with an assured future. His pastels and water-colours are poetic and joyous bits of nature with a genuine out-of-door feeling." In 1918, his Spirit of Youth, exhibited at the National Academy of Design, sold for $112.50. Four years later, the artist achieved his greatest local recognition by winning the gold medal from the Milwaukee Art Institute. Spicuzza spent a great deal of time painting en plein air and by 1925 he began summering at Big Cedar Lake, near West Bend, Wisconsin to gather his subject matter. Easter Morning (1926) owes something to the Symbolist movement, with its figure of Christ appearing over a seascape. During the difficult era of the Depression, patrons came to Spicuzza's aid and during the 40s, he taught housewives, businessmen and students at the Milwaukee Art Institute, the Milwaukee Art Center, and in his private studio. In the following decade, although his kind of art was no longer popular in the "make-it-or-break-it" New York gallery world, Spicuzza enjoyed regular patronage and sales. His beach scenes became more static and he would experiment with modernist techniques. Spicuzza died at the age of seventy-eight. Sources: L.E.S., "Do Colors Change a Person's disposition? Experiments of a Milwaukee Artist...

Pastel, circa 20th century

Portrait is a Pastel and Watercolour artwork realized by Reynold Arnould (Le Havre 1919 - Parigi 1980). Good condition on a little sheet. No Signature. Reynold Arnould was born i...

Sicilian Cart is a Watercolour and Pastel Drawing realized by Reynold Arnould (Le Havre 1919 - Parigi 1980). Good condition included a white cardboard passpartout (32.5x49 cm). n...

Portraits is an artwork realized by Mino Maccari (1898-1989). Colored portrait on one side, figure of a woman and two heads in black on the other side. Pastel and charcoal on pape...