Constance Clark Willis

Untitled, (Abstract Expressionist color field painting).

ca. 1950s

Outstanding abstract expressionist suite of 4 compositions by American artist, Desmond McLean (1929-2015). Untitled, 1959. Each of the four paintings is ink and gouache on paper, each sheet measures 18 x 24 inches. Paper exhibits some unintended creasing, toning and very small tears. Naturally there are light crease marks vertically where paper was intentionally folded to create Rorschach mirror image. Signed and dated lower margins. Unframed and unmounted. Born: Ireland Studied: Heatherly School of Art, London; American School of Art, New York; Hunter College, NYC with Robert Motherwell, Richard Lippold...

Murray Hantman (1904-1999). Composition, 1951. Watercolor on paper, 14 x 21 inches. Unframed. Signed lower left. Signed, dated and titled en verso. Provenance: estate of Murray Hantman. Biography: Shaped by his life experiences and a commitment to the practice of making art, the work of Murray Hantman represents a career of personal exploration and aesthetic refinement that took him from New York, to Los Angeles, back to New York and eventually to the serene, yet dramatic, coast of Maine where he worked as part of the artists’ colony on Monhegan Island. Born in Pennsylvania in 1904, Hantman’s family moved many times to follow his father’s business opportunities, eventually settling in New York. A childhood of economic instability and dislocation formed Hantman’s early years, making him independent and self-reliant from a very early age. Hantman’s father owned movie theatres and photography studios and, recognizing his son’s artistic ability, employed him to print and hand-color photographs as a child. When he was eleven and living in Michigan, a public school teacher arranged for Hantman to receive a scholarship to the Detroit Museum of Art School where after a year he was awarded another scholarship to study at the Detroit School of Design. He studied in Detroit for a year until his family abruptly moved to Alabama, interrupting his artistic and academic studies until the family moved to New York at the end of the first World War. As a young man, Hantman supported himself by working many different jobs in New York and New Jersey. Steady work with his brother at the Hartford and New Haven Railroad...