Storied Pasts Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Study No. 12 - German Newsprint Collage German newspaper collage on paper by Janet Todd Young. An abstract collage by Janet Todd Young, early AAA member and lifelong abstract artist...

An abstract pencil drawing in paper by Janet Todd Young, early AAA member. Janet Todd Young was born in Illinois in 1908, and earned a bachelor's degree in languages from Oberlin Co...

An abstract collage by Janet Todd Young, early AAA member and lifelong abstract artist. Janet Todd Young was born in Illinois in 1908, and earned a bachelor's degree in languages fr...

An exhibited American watercolor by Italian-born American modernist Joseph Stella. Stella is widely recognized for his futurist and precisionist contributions to American modern art...

An abstract collage by Janet Todd Young. Study No. 16 - Collage (The Cord) Young is a very interesting, female modernist. She was born in Illinois in 1908, and earned a bachelor's ...

An abstract collage by Janet Todd Young, early AAA member and lifelong abstract artist. Janet Todd Young was born in Illinois in 1908, and earned a bachelor's degree in languages fr...

A figurative modernist drawing by American artist, writer, and educator, Erle Loran. Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American painter and educator who painted for the entirety of hi...

A modernist drawing by California artist, writer, and educator, Erle Loran. Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American who painted for the entirety of his adult life. Loran studied in...

An early abstract expressionist work on paper by American artist Felix Ruvolo. Mystery revolves around the very beginnings of Felix Ruvolo’s life.  Any biographical information to be found only lists a birth year for Felix, but no day or month.  We know he was born in New York City in 1912, and was raised by his grandparents in Sicily until the age of 12.  Why he was sent back to Italy remains a mystery as well. What we do know is that young Felix showed so much promise as an artist that the family hired a professional artist to work with Felix while he was being raised in Sicily.   In 1924, at the age of 12, Ruvolo was sent back to the United States to rejoin his parents, who were settling in Chicago. In Chicago, Ruvolo continued his private art lessons, and later enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute.   By the 1930s, the young prodigy was exhibiting his work regularly in Chicago, and was invited to participate in an American Federation of Arts traveling exhibition. This exposure brought more attention to Ruvolo’s work and he was soon invited to exhibit at major American venues, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Carnegie Institute, and the Walker Art Center.  In 1945, Ruvolo took a position teaching at the Chicago Art Institute where he had studied just a few years prior.   With extensive exhibitions in the United States, international attention arose and Ruvolo was invited to show at the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, and at the Galerie Creuse in Paris, France.    By this time, Felix’s works were being reproduced in national magazines and in anthologies published by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and Albright Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, in the American Encyclopedia, the Dictionaire de la Peinture Abstraite, and Il Giornale D'Italia, and museums and private individuals around the world were acquiring works by Ruvolo for their collections. By 1950 Ruvolo was invited, by a unanimous vote of the staff, to join the faculty of the art department at University of California, Berkeley, which was a hotbed of modern art at the time. Ruvolo accepted the position at UC Berkeley and settled in Berkeley, CA where his home became a gathering place for many artists and intellectuals.   In 1951, Ruvolo’s work was included in the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America’ held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Ruvolo was so highly regarded and respected by his peers around the country.  George McNeil, who had been the director of the Pratt Institute in New York, is known to have said that he accepted an invitation to come to UC Berkeley because Felix was there.  Ruvolo was deeply engrained in the art scene in the San Francisco Bay Area during it’s mercurial rise to a cultural mecca, and was an influence on many young artist in the area including Mark di Suvero, William Brown, Mary Snowden...

This work is a colored pencil sketch by German born, American modernist, Oscar Bluemner. Bluemner immigrated to the United States in 1893. He settled in New York in 1901, and by 19...

An early abstract figurative painting on paper by American artist, Harry Bowden. Harry Bowden was an abstract painter, photographer, and educator, who lived, worked and exhibited in...

A rare work of art by an female modernist artist from the 1930s, by Janet Todd Young. Janet Todd Young is a very interesting artist. She was born in Illinois in 1908, and earned a bachelor's degree in languages from Oberlin College, specializing in French, Italian and German.  After graduating, Janet travelled to Europe to put her language skills to use, working for her father. While living in Berlin in the early 1930s she met and married Beckford Young, an American artist from Petaluma, California who had recently been working with Hans Hofmann at UC Berkeley.  Hofmann, widely considered to be one of the most influential abstract artists of the time, was returning to Germany and convinced Beckford to travel with him so the two could be closer the the cutting edge of emerging modern art in Europe. Through Beckford and Hofmann, Janet, a midwesterner, and the daughter of a congregational minister, was introduced to cutting edge ideas in the modern art world.  Soon after their marriage, Janet and Beckford travelled to Positano, Italy where Vaclav Vytlacil, a leading modern American artist, was teaching at an art colony.  In 1937, the unrest in Europe forced the Youngs to leave Europe for California. While living in California, Janet exhibited her work in New York City with the American Abstract Artists, which had been recently created by leading American abstract artists with the sole purpose of exposing the American public to American abstract art. In California Janet exhibited her work at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1938, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, and with the San Francisco Art Association in 1956. Janet, who had already been making and exhibiting Russian constructivist inspired constructions, was introduced to furniture making by her husband, and made constructivist furniture...

This watercolor by Asheville, NC artist Emma Clary Webb Peoples is a great example of the the artist's work. Peoples is known for her depictions of African-American people she enc...

A great piece of American modern art history. This work is one of the drawings Dwinell Grant created for his pioneering stop motion film, Contrathemis , circa 1941. Dwinell Grant ...

A great, and early, non-objective ab-ex study by Erle Loran, most likely created in the 1940s, Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American painter and educator who painted for the enti...

This is an energetic, colorful modernist study of two female figures in an interior, presumably a beach house in the summer. Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American painter and edu...

This work is a modernist study created by the artist in the 1940s. (possibly the 1930s). Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American painter and educator who painted for the entirety ...

This is a ink drawing on paper, most likely a study created by the artist in the early 1940s. Erle Loran, (1905-1999), was an American painter and educator who painted for the entir...

A fun and brightly color abstract city view by Erle Loran. This work is an early one for the artist, and comes to us from the estate of the artist, through a chain of art dealers t...