Join Senior Director, Andrea Rico-Dahlin, as she shares some of her favorite artworks currently on view at our Jackson Hole, WY gallery. Spanning almost 400 years, the gallery exhibition features blue-chip artists from across a variety of genres from Old Masters and Impressionism to Post-War and Contemporary.

JACKSON HOLE: TOP WORKS

August 18 – October 31, 2022 | Jackson Hole, WY

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August 18 - October 31, 2022

Claude Monet: An Impressionist Genius

August 18 – October 31, 2022

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September 8, 2022 – March 31, 2023

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willem de kooning

georgia o'keeffe

IN THE NEWS

ARTWORK ON VIEW

On May 15, 1886, a visual manifesto for a new art movement was born when Georges Seurat’s crowning achievement, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was unveiled at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Seurat can claim title as the original “Scientific Impressionist” working in a manner that came to be known as Pointillism or Divisionism. It was, however, his friend and the confidant, 24-year-old Paul Signac and their constant dialogue that led to a collaboration in understanding the physics of light and color and the style that emerged. Signac was an untrained, yet a blazingly talented, Impressionist painter whose temperament was perfectly suited to the rigor and discipline required to achieve the painstakingly laborious brushwork and color. Signac quickly assimilated the technique. He also bore witness to Seurat’s arduous two-year journey building myriad layers of unblended dots of color on the colossally-sized La Grande Jatte. Together, Signac, the brash extrovert, and Seurat, a secretive introvert, were about to subvert the course of Impressionism, and change the course of modern art.

PAUL SIGNAC

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico (1943) by celebrated American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is exemplary of the airier, more naturalistic style that the desert inspired in her. O’Keeffe had great affinity for the distinctive beauty of the Southwest, and made her home there among the spindly trees, dramatic vistas, and bleached animal skulls that she so frequently painted. O’Keeffe took up residence at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch twelve miles outside of the village of Abiquiú in northern New Mexico and painted this cottonwood tree around there. The softer style befitting this subject is a departure from her bold architectural landscapes and jewel-toned flowers.
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<br>The cottonwood tree is abstracted into soft patches of verdant greens through which more delineated branches are seen, spiraling in space against pockets of blue sky. The modeling of the trunk and delicate energy in the leaves carry forward past experimentations with the regional trees of the Northeast that had captivated O’Keeffe years earlier: maples, chestnuts, cedars, and poplars, among others. Two dramatic canvases from 1924, Autumn Trees, The Maple and The Chestnut Grey, are early instances of lyrical and resolute centrality, respectively. As seen in these early tree paintings, O’Keeffe exaggerated the sensibility of her subject with color and form.
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<br>In her 1974 book, O’Keeffe explained: “The meaning of a word— to me— is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Color and shapes make a more definite statement than words.” Her exacting, expressive color intrigued. The Precisionist painter Charles Demuth described how, in O’Keeffe’s work, “each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow” (As quoted in C. Eldridge, Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1991, p. 33). As well, congruities between forms knit together her oeuvre. Subjects like hills and petals undulate alike, while antlers, trees, and tributaries correspond in their branching morphology.
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<br>The sinewy contours and gradated hues characteristic of O’Keeffe find an incredible range across decades of her tree paintings. In New Mexico, O’Keeffe returned to the cottonwood motif many times, and the seasonality of this desert tree inspired many forms. The vernal thrill of new growth was channeled into spiraling compositions like Spring Tree No.1 (1945). Then, cottonwood trees turned a vivid autumnal yellow provided a breathtaking compliment to the blue backdrop of Mount Pedernal. The ossified curves of Dead Cottonweed Tree (1943) contain dramatic pools of light and dark, providing a foil to the warm, breathing quality of this painting, Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu). The aural quality of this feathered cottonwood compels a feeling guided by O’Keeffe’s use of form of color.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

<br>In Diego Rivera’s portrait of Enriqueta Dávila, the artist asserts a Mexicanidad, a quality of Mexican-ness, in the work along with his strong feelings towards the sitter. Moreover, this painting is unique amongst his portraiture in its use of symbolism, giving us a strong if opaque picture of the relationship between artist and sitter.
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<br>Enriqueta, a descendent of the prominent Goldbaum family, was married to the theater entrepreneur, José María Dávila. The two were close friends with Rivera, and the artist initially requested to paint Enriqueta’s portrait. Enriqueta found the request unconventional and relented on the condition that Rivera paints her daughter, Enriqueta “Quetita”. Rivera captures the spirit of the mother through the use of duality in different sections of the painting, from the floorboards to her hands, and even the flowers. Why the split in the horizon of the floorboard? Why the prominent cross while Enriqueta’s family is Jewish? Even her pose is interesting, showcasing a woman in control of her own power, highlighted by her hand on her hip which Rivera referred to as a claw, further complicating our understanding of her stature.
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<br>This use of flowers, along with her “rebozo” or shawl, asserts a Mexican identity. Rivera was adept at including and centering flowers in his works which became a kind of signature device. The flowers show bromeliads and roselles; the former is epiphytic and the latter known as flor de jamaica and often used in hibiscus tea and aguas frescas. There is a tension then between these two flowers, emphasizing the complicated relationship between Enriqueta and Rivera. On the one hand, Rivera demonstrates both his and the sitter’s Mexican identity despite the foreign root of Enriqueta’s family but there may be more pointed meaning revealing Rivera’s feelings to the subject. The flowers, as they often do in still life paintings, may also refer to the fleeting nature of life and beauty. The portrait for her daughter shares some similarities from the use of shawl and flowers, but through simple changes in gestures and type and placement of flowers, Rivera illuminates a stronger personality in Enriqueta and a more dynamic relationship as filtered through his lens.
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<br>A closer examination of even her clothing reveals profound meaning. Instead of a dress more in line for a socialite, Rivera has Enriqueta in a regional dress from Jalisco, emphasizing both of their Mexican identities. On the other hand, her coral jewelry, repeated in the color of her shoes, hints at multiple meanings from foreignness and exoticism to protection and vitality. From Ancient Egypt to Classical Rome to today, coral has been used for jewelry and to have been believed to have properties both real and symbolic. Coral jewelry is seen in Renaissance paintings indicating the vitality and purity of woman or as a protective amulet for infants. It is also used as a reminder, when paired with the infant Jesus, of his future sacrifice. Diego’s use of coral recalls these Renaissance portraits, supported by the plain background of the painting and the ribbon indicating the maker and date similar to Old Master works.
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<br>When combined in the portrait of Enriqueta, we get a layered and tense building of symbolism. Rivera both emphasizes her Mexican identity but also her foreign roots. He symbolizes her beauty and vitality but look closely at half of her face and it is as if Rivera has painted his own features onto hers. The richness of symbolism hints at the complex relationship between artist and sitter.

DIEGO RIVERA

WILLEM DE KOONING - Woman in a Rowboat - oil on paper laid on masonite - 47 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.

WILLEM DE KOONING

Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. "Prelude to Man-Eater" is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience.
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<br>Calder's Standing Mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. This Standing Mobile is a historically significant prelude to a larger work commissioned in 1945 by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Prelude to Maneater" is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it.
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<br>The present work is a formal study for Man-Eater With Pennant (1945), part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work is also represented in "Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus", which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum.
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<br>Calder's mobiles and stabiles can be found in esteemed private collections and the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London among others.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Between Île-de-France and Burgundy and on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest lies the medieval village of Moret-sur-Loing, established in the 12th century. When Alfred Sisley described its character to Monet in a letter dated 31 August 1881 as “a chocolate-box landscape…” he meant it as a memento of enticement; that its keep, the ramparts, the church, the fortified gates, and the ornate facades nestled along the river were, for a painter, a setting of unmatched charm. An ancient church, always the most striking townscape feature along the Seine Valley, would be a presence in Sisley’s townscape views as it was for Corot, and for Monet at Vétheuil. But unlike Monet whose thirty views of Rouen Cathedral were executed so he could trace the play of light and shadow across the cathedral façade and capture the ephemeral nature of moment-to-moment changes of light and atmosphere, Sisley set out to affirm the permanent nature of the church of Notre-Dame at Moret-sur-Loing. Monet’s sole concern was air and light, and Sisley’s appears to be an homage keepsake. The painting exudes respect for the original architects and builders of a structure so impregnable and resolute, it stood then as it did in those medieval times, and which for us, stands today, as it will, for time immemorial.
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<br>Nevertheless, Sisley strived to show the changing appearance of the motif through a series of atmospheric changes. He gave the works titles such as “In Sunshine”, “Under Frost”, and “In Rain” and exhibited them as a group at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1894, factors that suggest he thought of them as serial interpretations. Nevertheless, unlike Monet’s work, l’église de Moret, le Soir reveals that Sisley chose to display the motif within a spatial context that accentuates its compositional attributes — the plunging perspective of the narrow street at left, the strong diagonal recession of the building lines as a counterbalance to the right, and the imposing weight of the stony building above the line of sight.

ALFRED SISLEY

Trained as a woodcarver, Emil Nolde was almost 30 years old before he made his first paintings. The early paintings resembled his drawings and woodcuts: grotesque figures with bold lines and strong contrasts. The style was new, and it inspired the nascent movement Die Brücke (The Bridge), whose members invited Nolde to join them in 1906. But, it was not until the garden became his locus operandi by 1915 that he built upon his mastery of contrasting luminosities to focus on color as the supreme means of expression. Later, Nolde claimed “color is strength, strength is life,” and he could not have better characterized why his flower paintings reinvigorate our perception of color.
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<br>Much of the strength of Nolde’s dramatic, Wagnerian-like color sensibilities is the effect of staging primary colors, such as the deep reds and golden yellows of Sonnenblumen, Abend II, against a somber palette. The contrast highlights and deepens the luminosity of the flowers, not just visually, but emotionally as well. In 1937, when Nolde’s art was rejected, confiscated, and defiled, his paintings were paraded as “degenerate art” throughout Nazi Germany in dimly lit galleries. Despite that treatment, Nolde’s status as a degenerate artist gave his art more breathing space because he seized the opportunity to produce more than 1,300 watercolors, which he called “unpainted pictures.” No novice in handling watercolor, his free-flowing style of painting had been a hallmark of his highly-charge, transparent washes since 1918. Sonnenblumen, Abend II, painted in 1944, is a rare wartime oil. He let his imagination run wild with this work, and his utilization of wet-on-wet techniques heightened the drama of each petal.
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<br>Nolde’s intense preoccupation with color and flowers, particularly sunflowers, reflects his continuing devotion to van Gogh. He was aware of van Gogh as early as 1899 and, during the 1920s and early 1930s, visited several exhibitions of the Dutch artist’s work. They shared a profound love of nature. Nolde’s dedication to expression and the symbolic use of color found fullness in the sunflower subject, and it became a personal symbol for him, as it did for Van Gogh.

EMIL NOLDE

When forty rural Sacramento Delta landscapes by Wayne Thiebaud were unveiled at a San Francisco gallery opening in November 1997, attendees were amazed by paintings they never anticipated. This new frontier betrayed neither Thiebaud’s mastery of confectionary-shop colors nor his impeccable eye for formal relationships. Rather, his admirers were shocked to learn that all but seven of these forty interpretations had been completed in just two years. As his son Paul recalled, “the refinements of my father’s artistic process were ever changing in a chameleon-like frenzy.” The new direction had proved an exhilarating experience, each painting an affirmation of Wayne Thiebaud’s impassioned response to the fields and levees of the local environment he dearly loved.
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<br>Viewed from the perspective of a bird or a plane, The Riverhouse is an agrarian tapestry conceived with a kaleidoscopic range of shapes and simple forms; fields striped with furrows or striated fans, deliriously colored parallelograms and trapezoids, an orchard garnished pizza-shaped wedge, and a boldly limned river, the lifeline of a thirsty California central valley largely dependent upon transported water.
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<br>The Riverhouse is a painting that ‘moves’ between seamlessly shifting planes of aerial mapping that recalls Richard Diebenkorn’s stroke of insight when he took his first commercial flight the spring of 1951, and those partitions engaging a more standard vanishing point perspective. Thiebaud explained his process as “orchestrating with as much variety and tempo as I can.” Brightly lit with a fauve-like intensity, The Riverhouse is a heady concoction of vibrant pigment and rich impasto; one that recalls his indebtedness to Pierre Bonnard whose color Thiebaud referred to as “a bucket full of hot coals and ice cubes.” Among his many other influences, the insertion of objects — often tiny — that defy a rational sense of scale that reflects his interest in Chinese landscape painting.
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<br>As always, his mastery as a painter recalls his titular pies and cakes with their bewitching rainbow-like halos and side-by-side colors of equal intensity but differing in hues to create the vibratory effect of an aura, what Thiebaud explained “denotes an attempt to develop as much energy and light and visual power as you can.” Thiebaud’s Sacramento Delta landscapes are an integral and important part of his oeuvre. Paintings such as The Riverhouse rival the best abstract art of the twentieth century. His good friend, Willem de Kooning thought so, too.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color.
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<br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure.
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<br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.”
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<br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Widely recognized as one of the most consequential artists of our time, Gerhard Richters career now rivals that of Picasso's in terms of productivity and genius. The multi-faceted subject matter, ranging from slightly out-of-focus photographic oil paintings to Kelly-esque grid paintings to his "squeegee" works, Richter never settles for repeating the same thought- but is constantly evolving his vision. Richter has been honored by significant retrospective exhibitions, including the pivotal 2002 show, "Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting," at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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<br>"Abstraktes Bild 758-2" (1992) comes from a purely abstract period in Richter's work- where the message is conveyed using a truly physical painting style, where applied paint layers are distorted with a wooden "Squeegee" tool. Essentially, Richter is sculpting the layers of paint, revealing the underlayers and their unique color combinations; there is a degree of "art by chance". If the painting does not work, Richter will move on- a method pioneered by Jackson Pollock decades earlier.
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<br>Richter is included in prominent museums and collections worldwide, including the Tate, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

GERHARD RICHTER

During the early 1870s, Winslow Homer frequently painted scenes of country living near a small farm hamlet renowned for generations for its remarkable stands of wheat, situated between the Hudson River and the Catskills in New York state. Today Hurley is far more famous for inspiring one of Homer’s greatest works, Snap the Whip painted the summer of 1872. Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes and wheat spike touches. In 1874, Homer sent four paintings to the National Academy of Design exhibition. One was titled, “Girl”. Might it not be this one?

WINSLOW HOMER

When Frida Kahlo died in 1954, a grief-stricken Diego Rivera had her belongings locked away for fifteen years, and her personal effects remained sealed, undisturbed, and undocumented until 2004 when the small room in the home her father built in Coyoacán, Mexico was opened to the world. Among the many belongings revealed at Casa Azul were her clothes, jewelry, drawings, letters, documents, and more than 6,500 photographs (among them works by Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, and Nickolas Muray) as well as the most personal and ironically moving item: the orthopedic plaster corsets she turned into an extension of herself. These harsh clinical objects assaulted her free-spirited nature, yet they remain today as the most palpable reminders that as she suffered through unbearable pain — over thirty surgeries, batteries of tests, X-rays, spinal taps, blood transfusions, physical therapy and strong pain killing drugs, she was an absolute survivor, not a victim.
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<br>It was Frida’s father, Guillermo who gave her his box of paints and brushes as she was recovering from the bus accident that had shattered her spine. The devastation she suffered is shown in excruciating detail in her 1944 painting, The Broken Column. Yet the first canvas she painted upon was the most convenient one — the plaster cast bodice encasing her body. As she related, she had dreamed of becoming a doctor, yet “to combat the boredom and pain (and) without giving it any particular thought, I started painting.” Later, her mother asked a carpenter to fashion an easel “if that’s what you can call the special apparatus which could be fixed to my bed because the plaster cast didn’t allow me to sit up.” (Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahol: 1907-1954: Pain and Passion, Taschen, 1999, pg. 18)
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<br>On this particular corset, Kahlo painted a blood-red Hammer and Sickle, the symbolic configuration representing proletarian solidarity — a union between the peasantry and working-class expressing her lifelong political sympathies and below, a developing fetus entering perhaps its third trimester, a reminder of the still deeper insult of the accident, the one that added a layer of suffering and regret to Frida’s personal tragedy — her inability to bear children. Frida’s corsets hardened around her resolve as much as her body, but they also speak of her almost unbearable longing. They are ruminations on the power of creativity to heal as well as demonstrations of Frida Kahlo’s unbounded capacity for confronting the very bodily enclosures that imprisoned her, transforming them, taking them over as much as she could, and turning them into something beautiful and expressive.

FRIDA KAHLO

Emerging at the end of the Gilded Age, N.C. Wyeth was one of the most important American artists and illustrators. His paintings and illustrations brought life to classic literature from Treasure Island to The Boy’s King Arthur and more. He is most remembered for his ability to capture crucial moments in narratives, fleshing out just a few words into a visual representation of deep drama and tension. Patriarch of the Wyeth artistic dynasty which includes his son Andrew and grandson Jamie, his influence touched future illustrators and artists.
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<br>Perhaps his most important legacy is how he shaped American imagination – of America itself and of wild possibilities. Wyeth’s powerful paintings gave life to many of the stories America told of itself. His early paintings captured life of the American West and some of his most beloved illustrations were for novels such as The Last of the Mohicans or short stories like “Rip Van Winkle”. Despite this success, Wyeth struggled with the commercialism of illustrations and advertisements, seeking his work to be accepted as fine art. Throughout his career, he experimented with different styles shifting from Impressionism to Divisionism to Regionalism.
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<br>N.C. Wyeth produced over 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books. His illustrations for the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons were so popular they became known as Scribner’s Classics and remain in print to this day.
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<br>This quietly powerful painting of a Native American forms part of a quartet of paintings, inspired by and a metaphor for the four seasons. The paintings were used to illustrate George T. Marsh’s set of poems “The Moods”. Wyeth recognized that the series came at a crucial moment in his career in which the paintings go beyond realism to capture atmosphere and mood, an internal world of emotion made external. He even contemplated and attempted to write his own poems based on these paintings.
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<br>Summer, Hush is a striking example of Wyeth pulling from his imagination and melding it with careful observation of nature. As noted in a letter to his mother, Wyeth combined the fictional subject with natural effects as in the sky. Native Americans were a subject he returned to numerous times; these paintings reflect not only Wyeth’s fascination but also of America. As observed by art historian Krstine Ronan, Wyeth was part of a larger dialogue that developed around Native Americans, cementing a general Native American culture in the imagination of the United States. Thus, the painting operates on numerous levels simultaneously. How do we relate to this painting and its conception of the four seasons? How do we interpret Wyeth’s depiction of a Native American? What role do Native Americans play in America’s imagination?
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<br>We must also not forget that these works were first used to illustrate the poems of George T. Marsh. Marsh, a poet born in New York who often also wrote of the Canadian wilderness, provides subtle evocations of the seasons hinted at in the series title “The Moods”. This painting was used alongside “Hush,” which ends:
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<br>Are they runes of summers perished
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<br>That the fisher hears –and ceases—
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<br>Or the voice of one he cherished.
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<br>Within these few lines, Wyeth gives us a thoughtful and restrained painting that stirs from within. The poem and the painting avoid obvious clichés to represent the seasons. They develop a profound interpretation filled with sensitivity.
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<br>These paintings were important to Wyeth who hoped that “they may suggest to some architect the idea that such decorations would be appropriate in a library or capitol or some public building.” Summer, Hush demonstrates Wyeth’s control of color and composition so that small touches such as the ripples of water or the towering cloud that envelopes the figure are in service to sketch out the feeling of summer and of the poem. Through exploring this rich and complex painting, we are better able to appreciate NC Wyeth as an artist and the role this specific painting plays in the context of art history.

N.C. WYETH

The frame of reference for Irish American Sean Scully’s signature blocks and stripes is vast. From Malevich’s central premise that geometry can provide the means for universal understanding to Rothko’s impassioned approach to color and rendering of the dramatic sublime, Scully learned how to condense the splendor of the natural world into simple modes of color, light, and composition. Born in Dublin in 1945 and London-raised, Scully was well-schooled in figurative drawing when he decided to catch the spirit of his lodestar, Henri Matisse, by visiting Morocco in 1969. He was captivated by the dazzling tessellated mosaics and richly dyed fabrics and began to paint grids and stipes of color. Subsequent adventures provided further inspiration as the play of intense light on the reflective surfaces of Mayan ruins and the ancient slabs of stone at Stonehenge brought the sensation of light, space, and geometric movement to Scully’s paintings. The ability to trace the impact of Scully’s travels throughout his paintings reaffirms the value of abstract art as a touchstone for real-life experience.
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<br>Painted in rich, deep hues and layered, nuanced surfaces, Grey Red is both poetic and full of muscular formalism. Scully appropriately refers to these elemental forms as ‘bricks,’ suggesting the formal calculations of an architect. As he explained, “these relationships that I see in the street doorways, in windows between buildings, and in the traces of structures that were once full of life, I take for my work. I use these colors and forms and put them together in a way that perhaps reminds you of something, though you’re not sure of that” (David Carrier, Sean Scully, 2004, pg. 98). His approach is organic, less formulaic; intuitive painter’s choices are layering one color upon another so that contrasting hues and colors vibrate with subliminal energy. Diebenkorn comes to mind in his pursuit of radiant light. But here, the radiant bands of terracotta red, gray, taupe, and black of Grey Red resonate with deep, smoldering energy and evoke far more affecting passion than you would think it could impart. As his good friend, Bono wrote, “Sean approaches the canvas like a kickboxer, a plasterer, a builder. The quality of painting screams of a life being lived.”

SEAN SCULLY

Théo van Rysselberghe’s Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, painted in 1906, is a classic masterwork by one of the most refined and consistent portrait painters of his time. The color is harmonious, the brushwork vigorous and tailored to its material task, her body and countenance true and revealing. The sitter is the daughter of his good friend, the painter Georges Lacombe, who shared a close association with Gauguin, and was a member of Les Nabis with artists Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard, among others. We now know about Sylvie Lacombe because Van Rysselberghe is so skilled at rendering subtle facial expressions and through careful observation and attention to detail, provided insights into her inner world. He has chosen a direct gaze, her eyes to yours, an inescapable covenant between subject and viewer regardless of our physical relationship to the painting. Van Rysselberghe had largely abandoned the Pointillist technique when he painted this portrait. But he continued to apply color theory guidelines by using tints of red — pinks and mauves — against greens to create a harmonious ameliorated palette of complementary colors to which he added a strong accent to draw the eye – an intensely saturated, red bow asymmetrically laid to the side of her head.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

The Pop Art Movement is notable for its rewriting of Art History and the idea of what could be considered a work of art. Larry Rivers association with Pop-Art and the New York School set him aside as one of the great American painters of the Post-War period.
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<br>In addition to being a visual artist, Larry Rivers was a jazz saxophonist who studied at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945-1946. This painting's subject echoes the artists' interest in Jazz and the musical scene in New York City, particularly Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side.
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<br>“Untitled” (1958) is notable bas the same owner has held it since the work was acquired directly from the artist several decades ago. This work is from the apex of the artists' career in New York and could comfortably hang in a museum's permanent collection.

LARRY RIVERS

An undisputed master of the booming Belgian Neo-Impressionist movement from 1887 onward, Théo van Rysselberghe painted this portrait of his wife, Maria (née Monnom) during the first decade of the twentieth century. He had pressed onward from the influence of Whistler’s Tonalism, Impressionism, and the Pointillism of Seurat to perfect a highly refined understanding of color, its harmonic resonances, and a meticulous rendering of formal elements. An exemplary draftsman, optical impressions based on color interactions remained a principal concern for Van Rysselberghe. Here, short strokes of color replaced the small dots of a Pointillist, and the color scheme is not the homogenized, harmonious one for which the artist has a well-deserved reputation. Rather, this portrait advances color theory in an entirely different manner. Its visual interest rests with the dynamic contrasts of his wife’s silvered coiffure, her platinum-hued dress, and the stark-white fireplace mantle — all staged within the optical vibrancy of the surround dominated by complementary reds and greens. It is a visually stimulating demonstration by a painter who understood the dynamic impact of this unusual color scheme and who arranged the sitter with a strong accent on a diagonal and executed the formula with the craft and agility of a painter in full control of his painterly assets.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

The Pop Art movement elevated common, often commercial subjects- redefining them as Fine Art. James Rosenquist's work helped shape the trajectory of the Pop Art phenomenon, and he was one of the few artists from this group to live well into the 21st century.
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<br>"Where the Water Goes" (1988) is an oil painting on canvas related to a series of monumentally scaled pressed paper pulp pieces produced in partnership with master printer Kenneth Tyler. The series is based on collaged visual elements arranged on a monumental scale.
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<br>The works from the "Welcome to the Water Planet" series appear to share a celestial setting and could be inspired by the artist's knowledge of the space shuttle program of the 1980s. Rosenquist also demonstrated his fascination with modern technology in his early masterpiece F-111 (1964-65).

JAMES ROSENQUIST

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT - Untitled (Pigeon Anatomy) - oil, graphite, and chalk on paper - 22 x 30 in.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

DAMIEN HIRST - Forgotten Thoughts - butterflies and household gloss on canvas - 68 x 68 x 1 3/8 in. (point-to-point)

DAMIEN HIRST

PIERRE BONNARD - Soleil Couchant - oil on canvas - 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

PIERRE BONNARD

JEAN ARP - Sculpture Mythique - bronze - 25 x 9 1/2 x 12 in.

JEAN ARP

A major figure in both the Abstract Expressionist and American Figurative Expressionist movements of the 1940s and 1950s, Elaine de Kooning's prolific output defied singular categorization. Her versatile styles explored the spectrum of realism to abstraction, resulting in a career characterized by intense expression and artistic boundary-pushing. A striking example of de Kooning's explosive creativity is Untitled (Totem Pole), an extremely rare sculptural painting by the artist that showcases her command of color.
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<br>She created this piece around 1960, the same period as her well-known bullfight paintings. She left New York in 1957 to begin teaching at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and from there would visit Ciudad Juárez, where she observed the bullfights that inspired her work. An avid traveler, de Kooning drew inspiration from various sources, resulting in a diverse and experimental body of work.

ELAINE DE KOONING

GEORGES ROUAULT - Carlotta - oil on canvas - 15 7/8 x 12 1/4 in.

GEORGES ROUAULT

ALFRED SISLEY - Vaches au paturage sur les bords de la Seine - pastel on paper - 11 1/4 x 15 1/2 in.

ALFRED SISLEY

Ruldof Bauer’s reputation as a forebear of non-objective abstraction is most often coupled with that of Wassily Kandinsky. That hallowed place within the greatest abstract artists is well deserved. But for better and worse, Bauer’s place in art history is inextricably linked to the ill-fated contract he signed with Soloman R. Guggenheim with the guidance of his former lover, Hilla Rebay. Presto 10 was created in 1917 when Bauer was a fixture at Galerie Der Sturm, the Berlin gallery and likely exhibited at one of the artist’s solo exhibitions in 1917, 1918, and 1920. It was also among the paintings chosen by Bauer and Hilla Rebay to be included at the New York World’s Fair “Art of Tomorrow” exhibition that opened 1 June 1939. It is listed in the fifth catalogue of the Solomon R. Guggenheim collection of non-objective paintings.

RUDOLF BAUER

CAMILLE PISSARRO - Paysage avec batteuse a Montfoucault - pastel on paper laid down on board - 10 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.

CAMILLE PISSARRO

FERNANDO BOTERO - Autoretrato a la manera de Velázquez - sanguine and crayon on cardboard - 60 1/2 x 47 1/2 in.

FERNANDO BOTERO

JOAN MIRO - L'Oiseau - bronze and cinderblock - 23 7/8 x 20 x 16 1/8 in.

JOAN MIRO

GERARD CURTIS DELANO - Navajo Camp - oil on panel - 23 1/2 x 29 1/2 in.

GERARD CURTIS DELANO

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON - Untitled (From Election Eve) - archival pigment print - 32 1/2 x 48 1/4 in.

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON - Untitled (Blue Car, From Dust Bells, Vol. 11) - archival pigment print - 31 1/2 x 48 in.

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON

Andy Warhol is synonymous with American art in the second half of the 20th century and is known for his iconic portraits and consumer products, mixing popular culture and fine art, redefining what art could be and how we approach art. While many of Warhol’s works may not represent famed individuals, his depictions of inanimate objects elevate his subjects to a level of celebrity. Warhol first depicted shoes early in his career when he worked as a fashion illustrator and returned to the theme in the 1980s, combining his fascination with consumerism and glamour. With his constant desire to fuse high and low culture, Warhol chose to highlight something that is so ubiquitous as shoes. The subject can denote poverty or wealth, function, or fashion. Warhol glamorizes the pile of footwear, covering them with a patina of glitzy diamond dust, further blurring the meaning between utilitarian need and stylized statement piece.

ANDY WARHOL

RODOLFO MORALES - Untitled - oil on canvas - 37 1/4 x 39 1/4 in.

RODOLFO MORALES

ANDY WARHOL - Shoes - screenprint in colors with diamond dust on Arches Aquarelle - 39 3/4 x 59 1/2 in.

ANDY WARHOL

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON - Untitled (From Democratic Forest) - archival pigment print - 31 1/2 x 48 in.

WILLIAM B. EGGLESTON

ANSEL ADAMS - Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine - gelatin silver print - 18 3/4 x 22 3/4 in.

ANSEL ADAMS

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE - Navajos at Rest - oil on canvas - 19 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE

ANDY WARHOL - Ford car - graphite on paper - 11 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANSEL ADAMS - Aspens, Northern New Mexico - gelatin silver print - 15 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.

ANSEL ADAMS

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE - Venetian Boats at Sotto Marino - oil on panel - 23 3/8 x 26 1/4 in.

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE

ANDY WARHOL - Pepper Pot from Campbell's Soup - screenprint in colors - 35 x 23 in.

ANDY WARHOL

The essential and dramatic declaration “Let there be light” of Genesis is not so far removed from Mary Corse’s recollection of the moment in 1968 when the late afternoon sun electrified the reflective road markings of Malibu as she drove east. In an instant, the glowing asphalt markings provided the oracle she needed to realize she could ‘put light in the painting and not just make a picture of light’. Using the same glass microbeads utilized by road maintenance services, she layers and embeds the prismatic material in bands and geometric configurations creating nuanced glimmering abstract fields which shift as the viewer moves in relationship to the work. Move to one side and dimness brightens to light. Walk back and forth and you might feel a rippling effect from its shimmering, prismatic effects.
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<br>A photographic image of a Mary Corse microsphere painting is not only a dull representation, but it also misses the point – it is experience dependent art that requires participation to ‘be’. Of course, “Untitled” (1975) defies that one-point static perspective and instead, depends upon a real time, interactive art experience which heightens awareness of the body in space as the viewer experiences shifts of retinal stimulation, sensation and feeling. It is a rare bird. Unusually petite at two-foot square, its design, geometry and color belie her earlier revelation that led to a devotion to her usual reductive palette. Instead, it is a bold statement in sequined color, its center field bounded at the corners by a sparkling red stepped motif that separates it from its starry night sky corner spandrels. It may not include a star motif, but it has the glamour and presence that belongs along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

MARY CORSE

CARLOS LUNA - La Mia (1225 OC) - oil on canvas - 47 x 58 in.

CARLOS LUNA

OLAF WIEGHORST - Apaches - oil on canvas - 20 x 24 in.

OLAF WIEGHORST

HASSEL SMITH - 9000 and 9 Nights - acrylic and graphite on canvas - 68 x 68 1/8 in.

HASSEL SMITH

ROBERTO MATTA - L'epreuve - oil on canvas - 29 1/2 x 25 1/2 in.

ROBERTO MATTA

ROBERT NATKIN - Bern Series - acrylic on canvas - 48 x 53 in.

ROBERT NATKIN

ANDY WARHOL - Electric Chair - screenprint in colors on woven paper - 35 3/8 x 47 3/4 in.

ANDY WARHOL

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM - The Unmade Bed - silver gelatin print - 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 in.

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS - Untitled - oil on canvas - 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 in.

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS

KARL BENJAMIN - Untitled (#13) - oil on canvas - 50 1/4 x 50 in.

KARL BENJAMIN

EDWARD WESTON - Charis, Santa Monica - gelatin silver print - 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.

EDWARD WESTON

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS - Untitled - oil on canvas - 29 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS

ANDY WARHOL - Cow, 1976 - screenprint on wallpaper - 42 7/8 x 27 7/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL

ANDY WARHOL - Jimmy Carter III - screenprint on J. Green paper - 28 x 20 3/4 in.

ANDY WARHOL

Born in 1866 and trained at the National Academy of Design under William Merritt Chase, Parsons was among Santa Fe's earliest resident painters when he arrived in 1913. Parson had contracted tuberculosis the prior year, and the desert climate suited his health, but it was the intense desert light and its dramatic landscape that aroused his aesthetic sensibilities. An accomplished New York portraitist, he was thrilled to replace those former soft, dark tones with high-keyed hues that conveyed the warmth and color of the Southwest landscape. Parsons was not a modernist, but as curator of the newly established Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, he welcomed modernists, including Robert Henri, Stuart Davis, Marsden Harley, John Sloan, and others, to show at the museum. His stance brought a firestorm of condemnation leading to his dismissal in 1922.
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<br>Parsons painted the Grand Canyon on several occasions. Immortalized in paint by artists from Thomas Moran to the Taos founders and innumerable contemporary artists, Parsons' earliest known example, Morning in the Canyon, is dated 1916.

SHELDON ORRIN PARSONS

CARLOS LUNA - Untitled - mixed media on paper - 30 x 22 1/2 in.

CARLOS LUNA

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS - Untitled - oil on canvas - 8 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.

KIM DOUGLAS WIGGINS

Aspevig is a native Montanan, born in 1951, whose obvious talent as a realistic landscape painter brought recognition and prestigious awards, including the Frederick Remington Award and the Robert M. Lougheed Memorial Award given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. His paintings are welcomed additions at all major auction houses specializing in Western art and have sold for more than $100,000. Largely self-taught, Aspevig has adopted a varied approach to detail, vantage points, palette subtleties, and composition. He revels in painting en plein air and 'the immediacy of being in the landscape, absorbing its uniqueness, light, terrain, coloration.' This painting, a deep-set, resplendent view of the Grand Canyon, is a large painting on a small canvas panel, beautifully rendered, conveying the earth's deep structure and the marvel of its expanses.

CLYDE ASPEVIG

In 1995, Duncan Martin left full-time teaching at the Principia College Studio Art facility to focus on painting and lived in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Although he later returned to serve as a Professor of Art and Chair of the Art and Art History Department, he is retired and entirely devoted to en plein air landscape painting today. Martin usually begins with long, bold strokes using a palette knife or brush and adjusts with strokes that become smaller, more controlled, and more detailed. He continues to observe, making visual assessments and incremental finishing touches using both ends of the brush. As a painter, Martin is interested in something other than creating facile representational paintings. Instead, he hopes to understand some essential truth not necessarily revealed in its physical details.

DUNCAN MARTIN

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