Michael Bowen

Cafe Life

1982

This artwork titled "Cirius Drug" 2004 is a mixed media, Etching with embossing and hand coloring on thin Japan paper by Vietnamese artist Tran Nguyen Hieu...

This artwork "Untitled, Two Women" c.1990 in a mixed media (Acrylic paint on off set lithograph) by Bolivian artist Marion Ferrer (Mario) Cespedes, b1942It is hand signed and numbere...

This artwork titled "Les Petit Rats, Ballerinas VI" c.1980 is an original color lithograph on Japan paper by noted Bolivian artist Graciela Rodo Boulanger, b.1935. It is hand signed and numbered XLII/C in pencil by the artist. The image size is 22.75 x 18 inches, sheet size is 30 x 22.15 inches. About the artist:   Born in La Paz, Bolivia in 1935, Graciela Rodo Boulanger was raised in an artistic environment. Her mother, a concert pianist, and her father, a businessman and art connoisseur, nurtured her talents. She studied the piano and at age 11 enrolled in the School of Fine Arts. At 17 she went to Vienna to study both art and music, and at 22 shetravelled to Argentina for the stimulating artistic environment of Buenos Aires. Continuing to study both piano and painting...

This artwork titled "Mascara Roja" 1969 is an original colors lithograph on B.F.K. Rives paper by renown Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, 1899-1991. It is hand signed and inscribed H.C. (Hors Commerce) in pencil by the artist. The image size is 21 x 27.25 inches, framed size is 37.25 x 42 inches. Published by Touchtone Publisher, New York, printed by Ateliers Desjobert, Paris. Referenced and pictured in the artist's catalogue raisonne by Pereda, plate #124. Custom framed in a wooden gold leaf frame, with gold and red spacer and fabric matting. It is in excellent condition. About the artist: A native of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, Rufino Tamayo's father was a shoemaker, and his mother a seamstress. Some accounts state that he was descended from Zapotec Indians, but he was actually 'mestizo' - of mixed indigenous/European ancestry. (Santa Barbara Museum of Art). He began painting at age 11. Orphaned at the age of 12, Tamayo moved to Mexico City, where he was raised by his maternal aunt who owned a wholesale fruit business. In 1917, he entered the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts, but left soon after to pursue independent study. Four years later, Tamayo was appointed the head designer of the department of ethnographic drawings at the National Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City. There he was surrounded by pre-Colombian objects, an aesthetic inspiration that would play a pivotal role in his life. In his own work, Tamayo integrated the forms and tones of pre-Columbian ceramics into his early still lives and portraits of Mexican men and women. In the early 1920s he also taught art classes in Mexico City's public schools. Despite his involvement in Mexican history, he did not subscribe to the idea of art as nationalistic propaganda. Modern Mexican art at that time was dominated by 'The Three Great Ones' : Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueros, but Tamayo began to be noted as someone 'new' and different' for his blending of the aesthetics of post Revolutionary Mexico with the vanguard artists of Europe and the United States. After the Mexican Revolution, he focused on creating his own identity in his work, expressing what he thought was the traditional Mexico, and refusing to follow the political trends of his contemporary artists. This caused some to see him as a 'traitor' to the political cause, and he felt it difficult to freely express himself in his art. As a result, he decided to leave Mexico in 1926 and move to New York, along with his friend, the composer Carlos Chavez. The first exhibition of Tamayo's work in the United States was held at the Weyhe Gallery, New York, in that same year. The show was successful, and Tamayo was praised for his 'authentic' status as a Mexican of 'indigenous heritage', and for his internationally appealing Modernist aesthetic. (Santa Barbara Museum of Art). Throughout the late thirties and early forties New York's Valentine Gallery gave him shows. For nine years, beginning in 1938, he taught at the Dalton School in New York. In 1929, some health problems led him to return to Mexico for treatment. While there he took a series of teaching jobs. During this period he became romantically involved with the artist Maria Izquierdo...