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Contemporary Art

CONTEMPORARY STYLE

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Contemporary
Coupled Poppies - analogue floral photography, Limited edition 2 of 10
Located in London, GB
'Coupled Poppies’ photographed in London, United Kingdom 2023. It is a still life black and white film photograph, made with a large format 4x5 Linhof...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Film, Photographic Film, Archival Paper, Giclée

Werner Bronkhorst - Birdie Chance
Located in London, GB
Werner Bronkhorst, Birdie Chance, 2025 Giclée print on heavyweight 395gsm matte Canson Infinity PhotoArt ProCanvas, made with long-lasting Epson archival inks. Hand-stretched over F...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Giclée

Whispering Grove II - Original Minimalist Blue Abstract Landscape Artwork
Located in Los Angeles, CA
The organic aesthetic and textures of Peter Kuttner’s original boho minimalist artworks are the result of patient layering and unique uses of media. Through a combination of collage ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Mixed Media, Acrylic

Two Presence
Located in Zofingen, AG
In this work, Daria explores the acceptance of different shades of oneself. Two dogs — dark and crimson — stand together in silence, not competing but acknowledging each other. The p...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Vetyver Pool, Poovar, Kerala - Tropical Palm Print Indian Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Vetyver Pool, photograph from Richard Heeps India series, The Ambassador's Window. On a journey through India, a pilgrimage from Kerala in the South, to his Grandfather's birthplace ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Two male Nudes. Painting.Pastel, carbon pencil, ink on archival paper mounted
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Drawing on paper is his basic work tool, some are sketches of his surviving works, others are sketches of moments he documents. Undefined by medium, Celso Castro’s works each carry the presence of the artist’s hand through the transparency of their process. Castro’s oeuvre is strongly divided between his photomontage assemblies and watercolor paintings: the prior is marked by the labor-intensive deconstruction of portrait photographs and the latter, by the seemingly frenzied recreation of a past encounter rendered in the drips and scribbles of paint and ink. Both discriminating in what they reveal of the subject, his photomontage and watercolor portraits exude raw sexuality through the combination of Castro’s mark-making and gaze. Celso Castro’s work is a bare-bulb erotic photo foray into the underbelly of Colombia’s drug world. Castro’s labor-intensive, photo-collage works of drug kingpins, smugglers, hitmen, countrymen, street vendors, soldiers, paramilitaries, kidnappers, and pimps pose showing with pride their erect penises...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Carbon Pencil, Paper, Pastel, Ink

Male Nude from the 29 Palms, CA series
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, matte surface, based on a Polaroid. Signature la...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

I Love…
Located in Bristol, GB
4 colour screenprint on Somerset Tub Sized Satin White 410gsm Edition 117 of 125 76 x 60 cm (29.9 x 23.6 in) Signed, numbered and dated on the back Mint. Minor imperfections may appe...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Screen

Laurel Forest, old bent Tree, color photography, landscape, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Laurel Forest Study 1, Portugal - no. 21247 - Color fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 8. All Gerald Berghammer prints are ma...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Hidden in dots 21st Century Contemporary portrait Painting of a man
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Tania Rivilis Hidden in dots 30 x 30 cm framed (included in price) 33,5 x 33,5 cm Oilpaint on wood panel Tania Rivilis (b. 1986) 2022 winner of the 'William Locke Price' ( £ 30.0...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Synthesis C1 by Tom Price - Resin, tar, steel, acrylic and LED lights sculpture
Located in Paris, FR
Synthesis C1 is a sculpture by the English artist Tom Price. Resin, tar, steel, acrylic, LED. 41.5 cm × 31.5 cm × 28.8 cm. Dimensions include the base of the sculpture. This artwork...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Steel

White Cliffs of Etretat, Alabaster Coast - seascape - limited color photography
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Color Photography. Cliffs along a coastline with green vegetation, white rock formations, and a calm sea under a partly cloudy sky. Archival pigment ink print as ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Skindeep - 21st Century, Polaroid, Nude Photography, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Skindeep - 2018, 50x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2018-4...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

It s Just Paper /// Jack Graves Wild Western Bandit Outlaw Funny Desert Painting
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: Jack Graves III (American, 1988-) Title: "It's Just Paper" Series: Americana *Signed by Graves lower left. It is also signed, dated, and titled on verso Year: 2025 Medium: Or...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Acrylic

Beach Huts, silent Morning, minimalist black and white photography, landscape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white minimalist photography. Two small white beach huts and a bench on a pebbled beach, with a clear sky in the background. Archival pigment ink print...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Paris with Apples Neo Mythology by Paula Craioveanu
Located in Forest Hills, NY
"Paris with Apples" The original legend says Paris, prince of Troy had one golden apple, and had to choose between 3 goddesses. Modern Paris has more than one apple, and he is depi...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Paper, Ink, Tempera

Rocks on the Shore, Great Rock, Sand Beach, color photograph, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Color fine art long landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Hahnemu...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital Pigment

9/11
Located in Brooklyn, NY
​Tom Otterness's offset lithograph print, titled "9/11," serves as a poignant tribute to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Hand-signed and dated by the artist, this piece feat...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Offset

Tony Ward Figure series #1, 21st Century, Contemporary, Celebrity, Photography
Located in München, BY
Edition 10 Also available in 40 x 50 cm / 16 x 20 inch, Edition 25 Black and white portrait of nude model Tony Ward. From personality portraits and advert...
Category

1980s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Eleven Cherry Trees, stormy Clouds, black and white, landscape, art photography
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white landscape photography. Field with uniform crops, seven evenly spaced trees in the distance, and a cloudy sky overhead. Archival pigment ink print...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Lakeside Winter Panorama Snow, Mountains, Limited Edition Monochrome Print
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Lakeside, Winter Panorama Study 1, Austria - no. 21052 // Black and white fine art panorama long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Winter panorama with mountains, lake an...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Tuscan Courtyard, Old Town, Tuscany, monochrome landscape photo, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white cityscape photography. Old stone building with wooden shutters, potted plants and outdoor seating in a narrow courtyard. Archival pigment ink pri...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Unchained Soul
Located in Ibadan, Oyo
This painting captures the strength and beauty of a black African girl who gazes directly at the viewer with a thought of total liberation. The use of oil on canvas creates a vibrant...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Fabric, Canvas, Oil

Dark Hedges - Ireland - Tree Avenue - Monochrome - Limited Edition Photography
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white mystic landscape photography. Road through a tunnel of twisted, gnarled trees on both sides with branches overhead. Archival pigment ink print, e...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Flora 09, 2015 - Nude Renaissance Style Portrait Flower Photography
Located in Brighton, GB
Flora 09 is a vibrant Digital C-Type print in a Limited Edition of 15 in this size by contemporary photographer duo Tortora & Travezan. Photography duo Tortora & Travezan create vib...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Digital, Color

Velocity Bloom, Contemporary Abstract Painting by Matt Higgins
Located in Philadelphia, PA
This large-scale oil painting on a wood panel bursts with kinetic energy and bold color, dominated by a vivid red background that envelops and contrasts with dynamic strokes of blue,...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Empire State Building, New York City - cityscape photography - limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white photography. Empire State Building and surrounding skyscrapers, taken from below with a reflection on a glass surface. Archival pigment ink print...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Blushing Pears, Oil Painting
Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
Two pears rest on a wooden surface. The light accentuates their blemished yellow skin with reddish blush, along with their curvy form. A curling leaf adorns one...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil

There There
Located in New York, NY
Sila Sehrazat Yucel is a talented artist based in Istanbul. Her background in landscape and interior architecture shapes her creative vision. With experience as an art director in ci...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Row of Cypress Trees, Tuscany, color photography, limited edition, landscape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Color landscape photography. A rural landscape with a curved dirt road and a line of tall cypress trees on a hill against a pale sky. Archival pigment ink print ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

"Beaded Flower 10" Oversized terracotta beads, Ceramics, Flora Hanging Sculpture
Located in Philadelphia, PA
"Beaded Flower 10" is an original piece by Jeff Rubio made from terra cotta and stoneware beads, glaze, rope, metal hardware, steel paperclip. This pieces measures 30"h x 7.5"w x 2.5...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Metal, Steel

Harvest Field with Cypresses color photograph limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Color minimalist Landscape Photography. Five tall cypress trees standing in a row on a hilly, plowed field with a pale sky. Color fine art long minimalist landsc...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number
Located in Santa Fe, NM
Tableau, Japanese, limited edition lithograph, black, white, red, signed, number Shinoda's works have been collected by public galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum (all in New York City), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. New York Times Obituary, March 3, 2021 by Margalit Fox, Alex Traub contributed reporting. Toko Shinoda, one of the foremost Japanese artists of the 20th century, whose work married the ancient serenity of calligraphy with the modernist urgency of Abstract Expressionism, died on Monday at a hospital in Tokyo. She was 107. Her death was announced by her gallerist in the United States. A painter and printmaker, Ms. Shinoda attained international renown at midcentury and remained sought after by major museums and galleries worldwide for more than five decades. Her work has been exhibited at, among other places, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. Private collectors include the Japanese imperial family. Writing about a 1998 exhibition of Ms. Shinoda’s work at a London gallery, the British newspaper The Independent called it “elegant, minimal and very, very composed,” adding, “Her roots as a calligrapher are clear, as are her connections with American art of the 1950s, but she is quite obviously a major artist in her own right.” As a painter, Ms. Shinoda worked primarily in sumi ink, a solid form of ink, made from soot pressed into sticks, that has been used in Asia for centuries. Rubbed on a wet stone to release their pigment, the sticks yield a subtle ink that, because it is quickly imbibed by paper, is strikingly ephemeral. The sumi artist must make each brush stroke with all due deliberation, as the nature of the medium precludes the possibility of reworking even a single line. “The color of the ink which is produced by this method is a very delicate one,” Ms. Shinoda told The Business Times of Singapore in 2014. “It is thus necessary to finish one’s work very quickly. So the composition must be determined in my mind before I pick up the brush. Then, as they say, the painting just falls off the brush.” Ms. Shinoda painted almost entirely in gradations of black, with occasional sepias and filmy blues. The ink sticks she used had been made for the great sumi artists of the past, some as long as 500 years ago. Her line — fluid, elegant, impeccably placed — owed much to calligraphy. She had been rigorously trained in that discipline from the time she was a child, but she had begun to push against its confines when she was still very young. Deeply influenced by American Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, whose work she encountered when she lived in New York in the late 1950s, Ms. Shinoda shunned representation. “If I have a definite idea, why paint it?,” she asked in an interview with United Press International in 1980. “It’s already understood and accepted. A stand of bamboo is more beautiful than a painting could be. Mount Fuji is more striking than any possible imitation.” Spare and quietly powerful, making abundant use of white space, Ms. Shinoda’s paintings are done on traditional Chinese and Japanese papers, or on backgrounds of gold, silver or platinum leaf. Often asymmetrical, they can overlay a stark geometric shape with the barest calligraphic strokes. The combined effect appears to catch and hold something evanescent — “as elusive as the memory of a pleasant scent or the movement of wind,” as she said in a 1996 interview. Ms. Shinoda’s work also included lithographs; three-dimensional pieces of wood and other materials; and murals in public spaces, including a series made for the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo. The fifth of seven children of a prosperous family, Ms. Shinoda was born on March 28, 1913, in Dalian, in Manchuria, where her father, Raijiro, managed a tobacco plant. Her mother, Joko, was a homemaker. The family returned to Japan when she was a baby, settling in Gifu, midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. One of her father’s uncles, a sculptor and calligrapher, had been an official seal carver to the Meiji emperor. He conveyed his love of art and poetry to Toko’s father, who in turn passed it to Toko. “My upbringing was a very traditional one, with relatives living with my parents,” she said in the U.P.I. interview. “In a scholarly atmosphere, I grew up knowing I wanted to make these things, to be an artist.” She began studying calligraphy at 6, learning, hour by hour, impeccable mastery over line. But by the time she was a teenager, she had begun to seek an artistic outlet that she felt calligraphy, with its centuries-old conventions, could not afford. “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style,” Ms. Shinoda told Time magazine in 1983. “My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” Moving to Tokyo as a young adult, Ms. Shinoda became celebrated throughout Japan as one of the country’s finest living calligraphers, at the time a signal honor for a woman. She had her first solo show in 1940, at a Tokyo gallery. During World War II, when she forsook the city for the countryside near Mount Fuji, she earned her living as a calligrapher, but by the mid-1940s she had started experimenting with abstraction. In 1954 she began to achieve renown outside Japan with her inclusion in an exhibition of Japanese calligraphy at MoMA. In 1956, she traveled to New York. At the time, unmarried Japanese women could obtain only three-month visas for travel abroad, but through zealous renewals, Ms. Shinoda managed to remain for two years. She met many of the titans of Abstract Expressionism there, and she became captivated by their work. “When I was in New York in the ’50s, I was often included in activities with those artists, people like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Motherwell and so forth,” she said in a 1998 interview with The Business Times. “They were very generous people, and I was often invited to visit their studios, where we would share ideas and opinions on our work. It was a great experience being together with people who shared common feelings.” During this period, Ms. Shinoda’s work was sold in the United States by Betty Parsons, the New York dealer who represented Pollock, Rothko and many of their contemporaries. Returning to Japan, Ms. Shinoda began to fuse calligraphy and the Expressionist aesthetic in earnest. The result was, in the words of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1997, “an art of elegant simplicity and high drama.” Among Ms. Shinoda’s many honors, she was depicted, in 2016, on a Japanese postage stamp. She is the only Japanese artist to be so honored during her lifetime. No immediate family members survive. When she was quite young and determined to pursue a life making art, Ms. Shinoda made the decision to forgo the path that seemed foreordained for women of her generation. “I never married and have no children,” she told The Japan Times in 2017. “And I suppose that it sounds strange to think that my paintings are in place of them — of course they are not the same thing at all. But I do say, when paintings that I have made years ago are brought back into my consciousness, it seems like an old friend, or even a part of me, has come back to see me.” Works of a Woman's Hand Toko Shinoda bases new abstractions on ancient calligraphy Down a winding side street in the Aoyama district, western Tokyo. into a chunky white apartment building, then up in an elevator small enough to make a handful of Western passengers friends or enemies for life. At the end of a hall on the fourth floor, to the right, stands a plain brown door. To be admitted is to go through the looking glass. Sayonara today. Hello (Konichiwa) yesterday and tomorrow. Toko Shinoda, 70, lives and works here. She can be, when she chooses, on e of Japans foremost calligraphers, master of an intricate manner of writing that traces its lines back some 3,000 years to ancient China. She is also an avant-garde artist of international renown, whose abstract paintings and lithographs rest in museums around the world. These diverse talents do not seem to belong in the same epoch. Yet they have somehow converged in this diminutive woman who appears in her tiny foyer, offering slippers and ritual bows of greeting. She looks like someone too proper to chip a teacup, never mind revolutionize an old and hallowed art form She wears a blue and white kimono of her own design. Its patterns, she explains, are from Edo, meaning the period of the Tokugawa shoguns, before her city was renamed Tokyo in 1868. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, which is virtually free of lines and wrinkles. except for the gold-rimmed spectacles perched low on her nose (this visionary is apparently nearsighted). Shinoda could have stepped directly from a 19th century Meji print. Her surroundings convey a similar sense of old aesthetics, a retreat in the midst of a modern, frenetic city. The noise of the heavy traffic on a nearby elevated highway sounds at this height like distant surf. delicate bamboo shades filter the daylight. The color arrangement is restful: low ceilings of exposed wood, off-white walls, pastel rugs of blue, green and gray. It all feels so quintessentially Japanese that Shinoda’s opening remarks come as a surprise. She points out (through a translator) that she was not born in Japan at all but in Darien, Manchuria. Her father had been posted there to manage a tobacco company under the aegis of the occupying Japanese forces, which seized the region from Russia in 1905. She says,”People born in foreign places are very free in their thinking, not restricted” But since her family went back to Japan in 1915, when she was two, she could hardly remember much about a liberated childhood? She answers,”I think that if my mother had remained in Japan, she would have been an ordinary Japanese housewife. Going to Manchuria, she was able to assert her own personality, and that left its mark on me.” Evidently so. She wears her obi low on the hips, masculine style. The Porcelain aloofness she displays in photographs shatters in person. Her speech is forceful, her expression animated and her laugh both throaty and infectious. The hand she brings to her mouth to cover her amusement (a traditional female gesture of modesty) does not stand a chance. Her father also made a strong impression on the fifth of his seven children:”He came from a very old family, and he was quite strict in some ways and quite liberal in others.” He owned one of the first three bicycles ever imported to Japan and tinkered with it constantly He also decided that his little daughter would undergo rigorous training in a procrustean antiquity. “I was forced to study from age six on to learn calligraphy,” Shinoda says, The young girl dutifully memorized and copied the accepted models. In one sense, her father had pushed her in a promising direction, one of the few professional fields in Japan open to females. Included among the ancient terms that had evolved around calligraphy was onnade, or woman's writing. Heresy lay ahead. By the time she was 15, she had already been through nine years of intensive discipline, “I got tired of it and decided to try my own style. My father always scolded me for being naughty and departing from the traditional way, but I had to do it.” She produces a brush and a piece of paper to demonstrate the nature of her rebellion. “This is kawa, the accepted calligraphic character for river,” she says, deftly sketching three short vertical strokes. “But I wanted to use more than three lines to show the force of the river.” Her brush flows across the white page, leaving a recognizable river behind, also flowing.” The simple kawa in the traditional language was not enough for me. I wanted to find a new symbol to express the word river.” Her conviction grew that ink could convey the ineffable, the feeling, "as she says, of wind blowing softly.” Another demonstration. She goes to the sliding wooden door of an anteroom and disappears in back of it; the only trace of her is a triangular swatch of the right sleeve of her kimono, which she has arranged for that purpose. A realization dawns. The task of this artist is to paint that three sided pattern so that the invisible woman attached to it will be manifest to all viewers. Gen, painted especially for TIME, shows Shinoda’s theory in practice. She calls the work “my conception of Japan in visual terms.” A dark swath at the left, punctuated by red, stands for history. In the center sits a Chinese character gen, which means in the present or actuality. A blank pattern at the right suggests an unknown future. Once out of school, Shinoda struck off on a path significantly at odds with her culture. She recognized marriage for what it could mean to her career (“a restriction”) and decided against it. There was a living to be earned by doing traditional calligraphy:she used her free time to paint her variations. In 1940 a Tokyo gallery exhibited her work. (Fourteen years would pass before she got a second show.)War came, and bad times for nearly everyone, including the aspiring artist , who retreated to a rural area near Mount Fuji and traded her kimonos for eggs. In 1954 Shinoda’s work was included in a group exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, she overcame bureaucratic obstacles to visit the U.S.. Unmarried Japanese women are allowed visas for only three months, patiently applying for two-month extensions, one at a time, Shinoda managed to travel the country for two years. She pulls out a scrapbook from this period. Leafing through it, she suddenly raises a hand and touches her cheek:”How young I looked!” An inspection is called for. The woman in the grainy, yellowing newspaper photograph could easily be the on e sitting in this room. Told this, she nods and smiles. No translation necessary. Her sojourn in the U.S. proved to be crucial in the recognition and development of Shinoda’s art. Celebrities such as actor Charles Laughton and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet bought her paintings and spread the good word. She also saw the works of the abstract expressionists, then the rage of the New York City art world, and realized that these Western artists, coming out of an utterly different tradition, were struggling toward the same goal that had obsessed her. Once she was back home, her work slowly made her famous. Although Shinoda has used many materials (fabric, stainless steel, ceramics, cement), brush and ink remain her principal means of expression. She had said, “As long as I am devoted to the creation of new forms, I can draw even with muddy water.” Fortunately, she does not have to. She points with evident pride to her ink stone, a velvety black slab of rock, with an indented basin, that is roughly a foot across and two feet long. It is more than 300 years old. Every working morning, Shinoda pours about a third of a pint of water into it, then selects an ink stick from her extensive collection, some dating back to China’s Ming dynasty. Pressing stick against stone, she begins rubbing. Slowly, the dried ink dissolves in the water and becomes ready for the brush. So two batches of sumi (India ink) are exactly alike; something old, something new. She uses color sparingly. Her clear preference is black and all its gradations. “In some paintings, sumi expresses blue better than blue.” It is time to go downstairs to the living quarters. A niece, divorced and her daughter,10,stay here with Shinoda; the artist who felt forced to renounce family and domesticity at the outset of her career seems welcome to it now. Sake is offered, poured into small cedar boxes and happily accepted. Hold carefully. Drink from a corner. Ambrosial. And just right for the surroundings and the hostess. A conservative renegade; a liberal traditionalist; a woman steeped in the male-dominated conventions that she consistently opposed. Her trail blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s. When she says goodbye, she bows. --by Paul Gray...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

Cabinet of Curiosities - Contemporary salvaged wood found objects Sculpture
Located in DE
Lesley Hilling is a self-taught English artist known for her intricate constructions made entirely from salvaged wood and found objects. Her work reflects a deep connection to the pa...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Wood, Found Objects

ZT 230604 - contemporary modern white abstract geometric painting relief
Located in Doetinchem, NL
ZT 230604 is a unique one-of-a-kind medium size contemporary modern painting relief by Dutch artist Herman Coppus. This bas-relief relief consists of a meticulously hand cut, folded ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Cardboard

Dusk from an Airplane, Abstract Aerial Diptych, Giclée, Deep Blue to Yellow Hue
Located in Barcelona, ES
Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world o...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Giclée, Archival Pigment

Cowboy TV - large format photograph of iconic western in American landscape
Located in San Francisco, CA
large scale original photograph of vintage TV set with iconic western movie in American wild west landscape Cowboy TV by Frank Schott 30 x 40...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment, Archival Paper, Giclée, Archival Ink

Chroma-Q- 21st Century Contemporary portrait Painting
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Tania Rivilis Chroma-Q 41 x 29 cm framed (included in price) 44 x 32 cm Oilpaint on wood panel Tania Rivilis (b. 1986) 2022 winner of the 'William Locke Price' ( £ 30.000 ) from ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

11th Osage (40% OFF LIST PRICE)
Located in Kansas City, MO
Bryan Atkinson 11th & Osage Year: 2024 Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuehle Baryta Rag Framed Size: 13 x 13 x 0.25 inches COA provided *Ready to hang; matted and framed in a minima...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Ashabi Oge - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative, Africa Women, Fashion
Located in Ibadan, Oyo
Shipping Procedure Ships in a well-protected tube from Nigeria This work is unique, not a print or other type of copy. Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. Azeez Muritadoh ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

"Blueberry Pancakes", girl with a basket of blueberries and dog tap maple tree
Located in Edgartown, MA
Fred Calleri was born in Maryland and has slowly moved westward towards his current home in Santa Barbara, California. On his way, he earned an Illustration and Graphic Design degree...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Female Nude, New York City, Black and White Photograph in Studio, Alabaster Nude
Located in New york, NY
Shot on film, this is a 14" x 11" a black-and-white contemporary gelatin silver print of a female nude with symmetrical proportions, suggesting a Greek sculpture. A feminine and stat...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Silver Gelatin, Photographic Film, Photographic Paper

Nude. Figurative and abstract acrylic painting, Body, Polish artist
Located in Warsaw, PL
Contemporary acrylic on canvas painting depicting a nude by Polish artist Michal Bajsarowicz. The artwork is an artistic take on human body with abstract elements. Composition is ske...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

ELLA FITZGERALD Lithograph, Celebrity Caricature Portrait, Female Jazz Vocalist
Located in Union City, NJ
ELLA FITZGERALD is a limited edition lithograph by the renowned artist/caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) printed using traditional lithography techniques on archival printmaking...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

Abstract Landscape Paint on Canvas Made in Italy by Marilina Marchica
Located in Agrigento, AG
Original Painting by Marilina Marchica, "Landscape " (2018) Details of the artwork: Title:Landscape Year: 2018 Dimensions: 50x50 cm (depth 3.5 cm) Technique: Contemporary abstract ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Acrylic

Esplanade, Beach, France, black and white photograph, limited edition landscape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Vacation Reading, Original Painting
Located in San Francisco, CA

Artist Comments
A young boy lies sprawled on a couch, fully absorbed in a comic book. His relaxed pose conveys a sense of calm and quiet. The scene captures the simple pleasure...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Acrylic

Deep Red glossy ceramic balloon sculpture handmade for wall, ceiling - Large
Located in Tel Aviv, IL
This Red glossy ceramic balloon sculpture is a balloon for life and an art collectors piece. Its Vivid glossy color enhances sophisticated and cheerful space environment. handmade in...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Ceramic, Clay, Coating, Glaze

New York City, Handcuffed, Police Work 1970s, Documentary Street Photography
Located in New york, NY
Handcuffed, New York City, 1978 is a 14" x 11" black and white lifetime print by Leonard Freed. Signed verso (back of photo) by Leonard Freed, with Freed's copyright stamp also verso, the image appears in Leonard Freed's seminal book "Police Work," published in 1980. For several years in the 1970s Leonard Freed worked alongside the New York police...
Category

1970s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin

Guardain Cat by Helle Crawford, Contemporary bronze cat animal sculpture
Located in DE
Even though Helle Rask Crawford often refers to classic myths in her sculptures, sh is not a classical sculptor in the neoclassical sense. Rather, Helle Crawford could be defined as ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Gold, Bronze

Warm Conversations
Located in Zofingen, AG
Warm Conversations captures the intimate glow of an evening shared beneath the shelter of trees. A small group of people gathers around a table, illuminated by the soft golden light ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Beauty is What I Posessed
Located in Ibadan, Oyo
My beauty is one of a kind, my color is one of a kind, and I cherished my My skin which brings out the strength in me Painting Ships in a well-protected tube from Nigeria This work ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Oil, Fabric

Human nature - Contemporary, Nude, Women, Polaroid, 21st Century
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Human nature - 2021 50x40cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Winter Storm, Minimalist Wooden Pier, Limited Edition, Waterscape Photography
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Winter Storm, Austria 2015 - no. 11591 Wooden pier during a storm on the lake Neusiedlersee in Austria. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Bergh...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Carmen By Marc Chagall
Located in Dubai, Dubai
Carmen By Marc Chagall 1966 Medium: Lithograph Paper Size: 40 x 26 inches ( 102 x 66 cm ) Image Size: 40 x 26 inches ( 102 x 66 cm ) Edition Size: 3000
Category

1960s Contemporary Art

Materials

Lithograph

110.01.98 by Klaus Kampert - Dancer Photograph, black white, male nude
Located in Paris, FR
110.01.98 is a limited-edition photograph by German contemporary artist Klaus Kampert. This photograph is sold unframed as a print only. It is available in 2 dimensions: *50 cm × 3...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Chance and Destiny, Contemporary Abstract Painting
Located in Philadelphia, PA
This painting uses an interplay of dark green, black, and negative space, forming abstract, gestural shapes that evoke a sense of rhythm and movement. The composition balances dense,...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Gesso, Canvas, Acrylic, Vinyl

Glass, Lake Landscape, Figure Standing by Water, Mountains, Sage Green, Yellow
Located in Kent, CT
A tall, fair-haired figure wrapped in a light blue towel stands on the bank of inviting, calm water. Dark green trees in a forest, and mountains in the dist...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Linen, Oil

Free Space Panorama, Gondola, Venice, black and white, landscape, photography
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white cityscape photography. Gondolas moored along wooden posts on a canal with view of a city skyline and a tall bell tower. Archival pigment ink prin...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment

Tuscan Courtyard, old House, Tuscany, black and white photography, art landscape
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Gerald Berghammer - Black and white cityscape photography. A courtyard with a wooden door, arched doorways, and potted plants on a cobblestone floor. Archival pigment ink print, edi...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

Digital Pigment, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Contemporary art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Contemporary art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Stefanie Schneider, Tyler Shields, Kirsten Thys van den Audenaerde, and Richard Heeps. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Paper and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Contemporary art, so small editions measuring 0.02 inches across are also available.

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