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Emil BisttramGeometric Abstraction1939
1939
$8,500
£6,501.01
€7,439.76
CA$12,097.83
A$13,098.43
CHF 6,963.83
MX$157,976.07
NOK 87,574.10
SEK 81,644
DKK 55,565.59
About the Item
A unique, beautifully composed, large-scale geometric abstraction encaustic, with fresh colors, on fibrous buff, wove paper; the image extending to the sheet edges, in excellent condition. Signed and dated '39, lower left; estate stamped lower right, verso. The artist’s delicately stippled rendering in contrasting values produces the effect of shimmering color.
Image size/sheet size 12 3/8 x 9 inches (314 x 229 mm).
Archivally matted to museum standards, unframed.
ABOUT THE ARTIST AND THIS WORK
In 1938, Emil Bisttram was one of the founding members of the Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico. Seeking to emphasize the spiritual in art and its value as a positive force in society, the group's member artists contributed to the early development of non-objective modernism in the Southwestern United States. Bisttram held that the spiritual beliefs of native cultures like the American Indian had a link to the divine that had been lost by Western religions.
Bisttram's encaustic geometric works are precisely crafted, meditative explorations of his connection to these inner spiritual realities—his personal 'mandalas.' Created between 1936 and 1947, the artist never exhibited his encaustic works and only showed them privately toward the end of his life. A unique and relatively unexplored genre in the artist's highly acclaimed and otherwise well-documented oeuvre, they stand as essential and seminal works of the Transcendental Painting Group.
Bisttram was extremely active in the artistic growth of New Mexico throughout his life in Taos. In 1952, he co-founded the Taos Art Association, and in 1959, he won the Grand Prize for painting at the New Mexico State Fair. In 1975, the state honored him by declaring April 7 (the artist's birthday) 'Emil Bisttram Day', a state holiday. Bisttram received numerous awards and is represented in many major US museums, including the Joslyn Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
THE ENCAUSTIC MEDIUM
Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, dates back to ancient Greece. Traditionally, colored pigments were added to heated beeswax, the oldest known pigment binder, to create the paint medium. The encaustic medium, similar in appearance to oil painting, can be applied to any number of surfaces, from paper to stone. It allows for a great variety of texture and has the advantage of not yellowing, weathering well, and being unaffected by moisture. The final surface may be polished with a soft cloth to create a luminous sheen.
- Creator:Emil Bisttram (1895 - 1976, American, Hungarian)
- Creation Year:1939
- Dimensions:Height: 12.375 in (31.44 cm)Width: 9 in (22.86 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Myrtle Beach, SC
- Reference Number:Seller: 985681stDibs: LU53232414313
Emil James Bisttram Born Hungary, 1895
Died New Mexico, 1976 Emil Bisttram was born in Hungary in 1895 and emigrated with his parents when he was eleven to America. Bisttram choose a more economically promising career in commercial art design due to his economic conditions. Bisttram opened his own art agency at the young age of twenty and during this time took classes with Leon Kroll at the Art Student League and with Jay Hambidge, an advocate of Dynamic Symmetry, at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (renamed the Parsons School of Design). Dynamic Symmetry is a system of spacial balances and had a lifelong impact on Bisttram. Bisttram taught at Parsons from 1920 to 1925 and at the New York Master Institute of United Arts at the Roerich Museum from 1925-1930. The Institute was a spiritual inspiration to Bisttram because it advocated linking the fine arts together. His style of painting however was more influenced by Kandinsky and he began to experiment in non-objective art. Bisttram received many awards including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1931 to study mural painting. However, he decided to go to Mexico study with the great Mexican Muralist Diego Rivera. After returning from Mexico, Bisttram participated in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum for Guggenheim fellows in 1933 and received a commission to create a mural for the Taos, New Mexico courthouse. The Taos School of Art (renamed Bisttram School of Fine Art) which explored spiritualism and meditation was opened by Bisttram in 1932 where he taught some famous painters including Florence Miller Pierce. Together with Raymond Jonson and Lauren Harris, the Transcendental Painting Group was formed in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1938-1942. This group was considered very radical for the time and the community reacted with much disdain. Bisttram continued to teach and paint and it is thought that Bisttram’s art truly represents transcendental ideas.
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