Louis Ribak

Burning Woods

1966

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left, inscribed label verso. 59.25 x 55.25 in. 61 x 57 in. (framed) Custom framed in a wooden double tray frame, hand-painted white. Provenance Galerie Lovers of Fine Art, Gstaad, Switzerland This work has been recorded under no. 1531 in the digital Catalogue Raisonné of the artist, prepared by Michel Reymondin, Montreux, Switzerland. Carl Walter Liner was born in the Swiss canton of Appenzell, near the border with Liechtenstein, in 1914. The son of famed artist Carl August Liner, the younger Liner enjoyed more critical and commercial renown for his landscapes. In 1938 at the age of 24, he undertook what would become the first of several residencies in Paris. This particular sojourn helped to establish the trajectory of his career, as Paris would provide the setting in which he became acquainted with early twentieth century masters Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque, Ossip Zadkine, Gérard Schneider, and Erich Heckel. The stylistic and technical influence of his contemporaries is clearly evident in Liner’s work from this point forward. Unfortunately, the dawn of the 1940s would bring about a number of challenges for Liner. With the outbreak of war, Liner was mobilized for the Swiss Border Guard, and returned home to Switzerland in 1939. He remained on active duty until 1945, only to lose his father the following year. The death of the elder Liner left a profound impact on his son, who eventually made his way back to Paris in 1947 and embarked upon what would become a very successful series of nudes. By his own admission, 1948 was a pivotal year in Liner’s career, as a particularly spiritual trip to Algeria would foment the emotions led to the beginning of his practice with abstraction. Henceforth, Liner would vacillate between the figurative and abstract, creating parallel oeuvres. His abstraction from the 1950s and 60s mirrored...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on canvas. Signed verso. Some scratched out, illegible writing in paint and graphite verso, which may ha...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on canvas. Signed lower right, signed, dated, and titled verso. 59 x 62.75 in. 60.75 x 64.5 in. (framed) Custom framed in a matte white hardwood floater, with gilded metallic front. Roger Mühl was born on December 20, 1929 in Strausbourg, France, where he attended the National School of Decorative Arts. He spent most of his life living and working in Provence, while regularly exhibiting in London, Paris, Geneva, Tokyo, and New York. Mühl is best known for his brightly colored, heavily textured landscape renderings of the south of France. His bucolic paintings...

Waterline Fine Art, Austin, TX is pleased to present the following work: Oil on canvas. Signed lower right, signed and dated verso. 62.25 x 56.25 in. 64 x 58 in. (framed) Custom framed in a natural cherry wood floater. Provenance Washburn Gallery, New York Behnke Doherty Gallery, Washington Depot, CT Born in 1908 in Chicago, John Opper moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1916. In high school, he began studying art and attending classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. After graduation, he enrolled in the Cleveland School of Art (now Cleveland Institute of Art), only to withdraw after a year and move to Chicago, where he took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. He eventually returned to Cleveland, enrolling at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve), receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1931. The Depression has taken hold during this period, so Opper found work by teaching metalworking and sketching classes at the Karamu Settlement House, the oldest African American theater in the United States. In 1933, Opper traveled to Gloucester, Massachusetts, eventually connecting with the artist Hans Hofmann, who was teaching at the school run by Ernest Thurn. Hofmann encouraged Opper to work “in a more modern vein and start finding what it’s all about.” Heeding this advice, Opper relocated to New York, co-founding a mail-order club of American and British prints for dissemination to schools and museums. By the mid-1930s, he joined the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Easel Division, and also began attending the 57th Street school that Hans Hofmann had established after leaving the Art Students League. Looking back at his time at the school, Opper felt that beyond Hofmann’s teaching, most advantageous was his contact with fellow artists, including Byron Browne, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, and George McNeil. At the time, he also met Giorgio Cavallon and the sculptor Wilfrid Zogbaum. In 1936, Opper became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, along with Balcomb and Gertrude Greene. The organization was formed to provide an opportunity for artists to show abstract works at a time when such opportunities were scarce. This led to his first solo show in 1937 at the Artists’ Gallery in New York. During his summer in Gloucester in 1933, Opper came to know Milton Avery. Painting in Avery’s informal studio in New York City the following winter, he became acquainted with Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko. Opper participated in a couple of shows during the 1930s of the American Artists Congress Against War and Fascism, whose president was Stuart Davis. About the same period, Opper joined the Artists’ Union and served as the business manager of its publication, Art Front. During World War II, Opper worked for a ship design company creating drawings for piping systems used in PT boats...