Larry Abramson

Large Israel Modernist Landscape Painting Bezalel Artist

1983

Signed, dated, and titled "MAX MARRA XXX 2002 verso. Mixed media sculpture painting including acrylic, ink, cord, and wax on shaped canvas, 20 3/4 x 24 in., unframed. Ho viaggiato ...

"First Rain at San Miguel de Allende", mixed media, acrylic and collage on canvas, signed lower left, titled, signed and dated 1984 verso, depicting a verdant tropical landscape with a pool with koi fish, in a n abstracted view with in an oak bullnose frame with burlap mat and gold liner, frame size: 53" x 37", canvas size: 48" x 32". Leonard Brooks (Canadian-Mexican artist) was born in Enfield, London, England, in 1911. He emigrated to Toronto, Canada with his parents. after seeing a lecture on Canadian art by Arthur Lismer, in which the Group of Seven painter described his love for the natural beauty surrounding them he decided he was going to become a painter. He took evening art classes at the Toronto Central Technical School (c. 1928); at the Ontario College of Art for six months under Frank Johnston. He then travelled and painted in England, France, Spain and in the United States at Woodstock, New York. On his return to Canada he settled in Toronto and in 1935 married Reva Silverman. He taught drawing, painting and graphic arts at the Northern Vocational School and was active in art circles and participated in most of the major exhibitions in Canada, and the U.S. and in the Canadian Section at the 1936 World's Fair. He began painting activities on the Great Lakes around 1939, visiting various docks and many of the ships that arrived and departed from the Great Lake ports. During World War II he left his teaching post in 1943 to enlist in the Navy (RCNVR) as an Able Seaman (1943). He was promoted to Petty Officer, then to Sub-Lieutenant in August of 1944. In September was appointed Official War Artist. Overseas he went aboard warships to paint the activities of minesweepers, motor torpedo boats off the coast of Normandy, in the Channel, off the East Coast and on the aircraft carrier HMS Puncher in waters off Scotland. On his return to Canada he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. Following his army discharge he went to Mexico on a D.V.A. grant to study and decided to take up residence there with his wife Reva. The couple were early members of what became a well known colony of artists in that town, other Canadian artists such as York Wilson, Fred Taylor, Michael Forster and Fred Powell followed him there. He studied under Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, while his wife Reva pursued photography. Their impressions of Mexico appeared in Canadian Art (Spring, 1950). Critic Rose MacDonald in the Evening Telegram wrote, "Like Siqueiros he paints in the abstract only as an exercise with a view to clarification, believing that this is the purpose of abstract painting . . . ." Since that time his figurative work evolved from abstract, to non-objective, to free-form collage acrylics with rich texture. Some of his paintings have been transposed into large tapestry works by five Mexican weavers under his direction. Leonard and Reva held a joint exhibition of their works in a number of centres including Eaton's Fine Art Galleries, Tor. (1949). Leonard Brooks has worked in a variety of media over the years including oils, acrylics, water colours, casein, duco, polymer, wax, and graphic mediums. He has written a number of books on painting techniques including: Watercolor A Challenge (1957); Oil Painting Traditional and New (1959); Wash Drawing and Casein (1961); Painting and Understanding Abstract Art (1964); Painter's Workshop (1969); Oil Painting, Basic and New Techniques (1971). He has had a lifelong love of music, is an accomplished player of the violin and has given free lessons to local Mexican children. He eventually was encouraged to head the music department at the Bellas Artes in San Miguel and as a result of his activity in music, an annual festival of chamber music is held which attracts players and listeners from around the world. He has held many solo shows during his career and his paintings have been exhibited at the following: Eaton's Fine Art Galleries, Tor.; Roberts Gallery, Tor.; the Cowie Galleries, L.A., Calif.; Childs Gal., Boston, Mass.; Ohio Univ., Athens; Kenyon College; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, San Francisco; San Antonio Biennial Interamericana, Mexico and at the 2nd Annual exhibition at San Miguel (1960) where he won 1st Prize. He is represented in the following collections: LAG, Lond., Ont.; U. Guelph; AGO, Tor.; NGC, Ott.; Can. War Museum, Ott.; Dartmouth College, N.S.; Worcester Art Museum, Mass.; Mus. of Modern Art, Mexico City; Ohio U., Athens; Slosberg Collection, Boston and in many private collections in Canada, Mexico and the United States. His teaching experience includes: Ohio U., Athens; Doon Sch. of Art, Ont.; UBC; Art Inst., San Antonio, Texas; Wells College, Aurora, N.Y. His wife Reva Silverman Brooks, began photographing his work to make a record, then gradually expanded her interest to record the Mexican people and their land. In 1952, Reva Brooks...

Marius Sznajderman Hand signed and dated lower right, with an inscription on the verso 40 X 30 inches Oil or acrylic on canvas. Machu Picchu is an Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, above the Urubamba River valley. Built in the 15th century and later abandoned. The lost city of the Incas. Expressively capturing the mystique of the famed Incan ruins, this 1983 exprerssionist painting by Marius Sznajderman, titled Machu Picchu Courtyard, showcases his signature blend of bold color and dynamic brushwork. The composition features a stylized interpretation of Machu Picchu's verdant landscape and ancient stone structures, rendered in an abstracted yet recognizable form. Sznajderman's use of undulating greens, deep blues, and earthy tones imbues the work with an almost dreamlike quality, emphasizing the spiritual and historical significance of the site. Marius Sznajderman was a French-born American painter, printmaker, and scenic designer. Born in Paris in 1926 to Polish-Jewish parents, he fled Nazi-occupied France in 1942, eventually settling in Caracas, Venezuela. There, he studied at the School of Fine Arts and co-founded the Taller Libre de Arte, an influential experimental art workshop. In 1949, he immigrated to the United States, earning both Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees from Columbia University. Over his extensive career, Sznajderman explored themes ranging from Latin American culture to Jewish heritage, with his works held in numerous public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Artist: Marius Sznajderman (French-American, 1926-2018) Issued: 1983 Dimensions: 41"L x 31"H Country of Origin: France/United States Marius Sznajderman was a Jewish Venezuelan painter, printmaker and scenic designer living and working in the United States. Born in Paris, France in 1926 his Jewish parents had migrated to France from Poland in 1923. In November 1942 the family fled Nazi-occupied France for Spain before settling in Caracas, Venezuela. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Caracas where his teachers included illustrator Ramon Martin Durban, scenic designer Charles Ventrillon-Horber and painter Rafael Monasterios. and immigrated to the United States in 1949, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York. He settled in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he lived and had a studio for more than 50 years before moving to Amherst, Massachusetts in 2015. His work, which includes painting, prints and collages, as well as set designs, is in more than 45 museum and public institution collections in the United States, Latin America and Israel. He held more than 40 solo exhibitions at galleries and museums and participated in more than 75 group shows around the globe. He helped found the Taller Libre de Arte, an experimental workshop for the visual arts, sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The Taller Libre de Arte was a center for young artists to work and to meet with critics and intellectuals to discuss avant-garde ideas and artistic trends from Europe and Latin America. Among the notable artists who participated in the Taller Libre de Arte were Ramón Vásquez Brito, Carlos González Bogen, Luis Guevara Moreno, Mateo Manaure, Virgilio Trómpiz...

Philippe Visson, (1942-2008), whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of La Gazette des Beaux-Arts from 1930 to 1960, and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major political journalist for The Washington Post and Roving Editor for The Reader’s Digest. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. At the Vissons, one devours; one spends beyond one’s means; one falls, but only to land on one’s feet. Visson is a painter to whom it is difficult to assign a particular movement in art history; and that, principally for two reasons: firstly, his origins,his education and his way of life have produced a personality without any true roots, but rather a citizen of the world, who carries with him all cultures, from pre-Revolutionary Russia to the black ghetto of Washington, D.C. Secondly, he is self-taught, and can work in complete solitude, as well as before a large audience. His art is therefore uniquely his own, and certainly not that of an Art Brut ‘author’. His faces, his anti-portraits, reveal a continuum of humanity’s facets: from Christ to the demon, from the child to the aged, from the Caucasion to the African. Biography Philippe Visson, whose parents were both of Russian origin, was born in New York in 1942. His mother, a Parisian art historian, was the Editor of “The Gazette des Beaux-Arts” and had always frequented the international artistic milieu. His father was a major American political journalist for “The Washington Post” and “The Readers Digest”. Philippe Visson therefore was raised in a cosmopolitan milieu between the United States and Europe. He starts to paint in the bathroom of Parisian luxury hotel at the age of 16, working in a frenzy and without art lessons. He’s immediately confronted with the scrutiny of professional experts that surround his parents. He has instant success when he shows at the Craven Gallery in Paris in December, 1958, quickly offered to him; then in New York in the Milch Galleries in May, 1959; followed by shows in Monte Carlo, Geneva and New York again. It was too much, too soon. Visson falls into drinking. Returning to Washington, D.C. on 1960, the period 1963-1979 is differentiated by a life that is sometimes social, sometimes reclusive, which continues when his family settles in a large villa in Switzerland (Epalinges above Lausanne) in the mid-sixties. Visson has stopped drinking. He paints in one of the rooms of his parents’ house and inundates all the empty rooms with his productions that remain hidden from the public, allowing them to be seen only by personalities such as Marcel Brion and René Huyghe, both of the Académie Française; or Jean Leymarie, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It’s only at the start of the seventies that he once again opens his work to the public. He meets several important cultural figures of the time, such as René Berger, Director of the State Fine Arts Museum of Lausanne; and Michel Thévoz, future Director of the Art brut Museum. After the death of his father in 1973, he settles without money with his mother in a luxury hotel in Paris. It’s only after a year and a half of perpetual and colorful adventures that they return to Washington, D.C., where he resumes painting and produces a unique period of abstracts. Returning to Switzerland at the death of his mother in the beginning of the eighties, Visson meets with blatant success in Switzerland, where institutions exhibit and purchase his paintings (Aarau State Fine Arts Museum, the Federal Office of Culture in Bern). His fury for painting takes the form of an explosion while remaining focused (he always keeps what he considers the best paintings for himself). After the life of a hermit in the Paccots, Visson comes down from his mountain to settle in Montreux on the Swiss Riveria. This moving is marked by a sort of return to social life, despite the fact that he paints in a cellar. A period of public projects with charitable goals is launched. Visson thrives on this contact with the public. This changes somewhat when he receives a working studio in The Montreux Palace in the late nineties. This emerging from the cellars denotes a new era for the artist. He starts an intense period of painting, and moves six thousand of his paintings to the Palace. He continues his public projects, including the acquisition against paintings of a Stradivarius violin...