Désert de palmier

EXPOSITIONS ŒUVRES D'ART EXPOSÉES ACTUALITES SERVICES

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Notre galerie à Palm Desert est située au centre de la région de Palm Springs en Californie, à côté de la zone commerçante et salle à manger populaire d'El Paseo. Notre clientèle apprécie notre sélection d'art d'après-guerre, moderne et contemporain. Le temps magnifique pendant les mois d'hiver attire les visiteurs de partout dans le monde pour voir notre beau désert, et s'arrêter à notre galerie. Le paysage désertique montagneux à l'extérieur offre la toile de fond panoramique parfaite à la fête visuelle qui vous attend à l'intérieur.

45188, avenue Portola
Palm Desert, Californie 92260
(760) 346-8926

Heures d'ouverture :
Du lundi au samedi : 9h00 - 17h00

Expositions

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Hans Hofmann
COURANT

Hans Hofmann

14 août 2024 - 28 février 2025
Ansel Adams : Affirmation de la vie
COURANT

Ansel Adams : Affirmation de la vie

1er décembre 2023 - 31 mars 2025
Alexander Calder : Façonner un univers primaire
COURANT

Alexander Calder : Façonner un univers primaire

23 août 2023 - 30 avril 2025
Rencontre avec la vie : N.C. Wyeth et les fresques de MetLife
COURANT

Rencontre avec la vie : N.C. Wyeth et les fresques de MetLife

18 juillet 2022 - 31 mars 2025
Polaroïds d
COURANT

Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Merveilles de la vie

13 décembre 2021 - 31 mars 2025
L
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L'art à moins de 100 000

25 juillet 2024 - 31 janvier 2025
Georgia O
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Georgia O'Keeffe et Ansel Adams : Art moderne, amitié moderne

13 juillet 2023 - 31 janvier 2025
No Other Land : Un siècle de paysages américains
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No Other Land : Un siècle de paysages américains

21 septembre 2023 - 31 décembre 2024
Le sang de votre cœur : Intersections de l
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Le sang de votre cœur : Intersections de l'art et de la littérature

12 septembre 2022 - 31 décembre 2024
Des fleurs pour le printemps, un coup de pied dans la fourmilière
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Des fleurs pour le printemps, un coup de pied dans la fourmilière

8 mai 2023 - 31 août 2024
Art de l
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Art de l'Ouest américain : Une collection de premier plan

24 août 2023 - 31 août 2024
Premier cercle : Les cercles dans l
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Premier cercle : Les cercles dans l'art

14 février 2023 - 31 août 2024
Peintures de Dorothy Hood
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Peintures de Dorothy Hood

18 mars - 19 juillet 2024
Irving Norman : Matière noire
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Irving Norman : Matière noire

27 novembre 2019 - 30 juin 2024
Picasso : au-delà de la toile
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Picasso : au-delà de la toile

4 octobre 2023 - 30 avril 2024
Papier découpé : Œuvres uniques sur papier
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Papier découpé : Œuvres uniques sur papier

27 avril 2022 - 31 octobre 2023
Andy Warhol : le glamour à fleur de peau
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Andy Warhol : le glamour à fleur de peau

27 octobre 2021 - 30 septembre 2023
Alexander Calder : Un univers de peinture
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Alexander Calder : Un univers de peinture

10 août 2022 - 31 août 2023
Une belle époque : l
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Une belle époque : l'art américain à l'âge d'or

24 juin 2021 - 31 août 2023
C
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C'était acceptable dans les années 80

27 avril 2021 - 31 août 2023
N.C. Wyeth : Une décennie de peinture
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N.C. Wyeth : Une décennie de peinture

29 septembre 2022 - 31 mars 2023
Paul Jenkins : Colorer le phénomène
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Paul Jenkins : Colorer le phénomène

27 décembre 2019 - 31 mars 2023
Norman Zammitt : La progression de la couleur
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Norman Zammitt : La progression de la couleur

19 mars 2020 - 28 février 2023
Georgia O
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Georgia O'Keeffe et Marsden Hartley : Esprits modernes

1er février 2022 - 28 février 2023
Maîtres figuratifs des Amériques
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Maîtres figuratifs des Amériques

Du 4 janvier au 12 février 2023
James Rosenquist : une explosion de puissance
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James Rosenquist : une explosion de puissance

7 juin 2021 - 31 janvier 2023
Expressionnisme abstrait : Transcender le radical
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Expressionnisme abstrait : Transcender le radical

12 janvier 2022 - 31 janvier 2023
Ma propre peau : Frida Kahlo et Diego Rivera
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Ma propre peau : Frida Kahlo et Diego Rivera

Du 16 juin au 31 décembre 2022
Josef Albers : Le cœur de la peinture
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Josef Albers : Le cœur de la peinture

12 mai - 30 novembre 2022
Expressionnisme abstrait : Les femmes persistantes
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Expressionnisme abstrait : Les femmes persistantes

1er novembre 2021 - 31 août 2022
Alexander Calder : Peindre le cosmos
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Alexander Calder : Peindre le cosmos

Du 2 mars au 12 août 2022
La matière Mercedes : Une qualité miraculeuse
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La matière Mercedes : Une qualité miraculeuse

22 mars 2021 - 30 juin 2022
Moore ! Moore ! Moore ! Henry Moore et la sculpture
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Moore ! Moore ! Moore ! Henry Moore et la sculpture

3 mars 2021 - 30 avril 2022
Elaine et Willem de Kooning : Peindre dans la lumière
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Elaine et Willem de Kooning : Peindre dans la lumière

3 août 2021 - 31 janvier 2022
Le modernisme juif - Partie 2 : La figuration de Chagall à Norman
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Le modernisme juif - Partie 2 : La figuration de Chagall à Norman

30 avril 2020 - 31 décembre 2021
Polaroïds d
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Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Apportez-le sur la piste

10 décembre 2020 - 31 décembre 2021
Polaroïds d
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Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Tout ce qui brille

10 décembre 2020 - 31 décembre 2021
Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Moi, moi et moi
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Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Moi, moi et moi

10 décembre 2020 - 31 décembre 2021
Polaroïds d
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Polaroïds d'Andy Warhol : Ars Longa

10 décembre 2020 - 31 décembre 2021
American Eye : Sélections de la collection Pardee
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American Eye : Sélections de la collection Pardee

28 février - 31 décembre 2021
La collection Gloria Luria
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La collection Gloria Luria

16 mars 2020 - 31 octobre 2021
Pop Figures : Mel Ramos et Tom Wesselmann
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Pop Figures : Mel Ramos et Tom Wesselmann

26 mars 2020 - 30 avril 2021
Les joyaux de l
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Les joyaux de l'impressionnisme et de l'art moderne

19 février - 31 octobre 2020
Cool Britannia : Les jeunes artistes britanniques
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Cool Britannia : Les jeunes artistes britanniques

2 avril - 30 septembre 2020
Les Californiens
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Les Californiens

1er novembre 2019 - 14 février 2020
Sam Francis: Du crépuscule à l
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Sam Francis: Du crépuscule à l'aube

15 novembre 2018 - 29 avril 2019
N.C. Wyeth: Peintures et illustrations
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N.C. Wyeth: Peintures et illustrations

1er février - 31 mai 2018
Les peintures de Sir Winston Churchill
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Les peintures de Sir Winston Churchill

21 mars - 30 mai 2018
Ferrari et Futuristes : Un regard italien sur la vitesse
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Ferrari et Futuristes : Un regard italien sur la vitesse

21 novembre 2016 - 30 janvier 2017
Alexandre Calder
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Alexandre Calder

21 novembre 2015 - 28 mai 2016
Maîtres de l
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Maîtres de l'impressionnisme californien

22 novembre 2014 - 23 mai 2015
Painterly Abstraction : Sphères d
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Painterly Abstraction : Sphères d'AbEx

25 novembre 2011 - 31 mai 2012
Maîtres de l
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Maîtres de l'impressionnisme et de l'art moderne

Du 20 novembre 2010 au 25 septembre 2011
Picasso
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Picasso

Du 20 novembre 2009 au 25 mai 2010

OEUVRED-ŒUVRE SUR LA VUE

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<div><font face=Lato> </font><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Diebenkorn’s path to the “<em>Ocean Park”</em> series was as layered and nuanced as his canvases. Born in Portland, Oregon in 1922, he found his artistic footing in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he absorbed the Abstract Expressionism of figures like Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning. Yet even in his early abstractions, such as those inspired by the aerial views of the Southwestern landscape during flights to New Mexico, Diebenkorn’s work displayed a grounding in the tangible world. His shift to figuration in the mid-1950s, influenced by Bay Area peers like David Park and Elmer Bischoff, was met with surprise but underscored his belief in continuity rather than rupture. “I was never throwing things away,” he reflected. This ethos carried him back to abstraction in 1967 when the “<em>Ocean Park”</em> series began—a natural and revelatory return.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black><em>“Ocean Park #108”</em> (1978) showcases the spirit of Diebenkorn’s remarkable ability to translate the visual world into a meditative abstraction laden with intellectual rigor and personal resonance. Part of his acclaimed “<em>Ocean Park”</em> series, which spanned over two decades and more than 140 works, this painting captures the essence of Diebenkorn’s artistic philosophy: a fusion of restraint and spontaneity, where light, geometry, and color converge in perfect equipoise. Birthed in his Santa Monica studio overlooking this coastal neighborhood, the vantage point—framed by urban grids, oceanic expanses, and the shimmering Southern California light—shaped the language of these paintings. Yet <em>“Ocean Park #108,”</em> like its siblings, transcends a specific locality; it is less a depiction of a specific place and more a dialogue with the landscape of memory, perception, and art history.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>In this work, the coral-hued arch hovers above turquoise, ochre, and alabaster bands, evoking the interplay of horizon and sky. Below, an expansive blue-gray plane is bisected by a diagonal line, lending the composition a quiet dynamism. This scaffold of lines and planes—Diebenkorn’s signature vocabulary—draws on his early admiration for Cezanne’s structured landscapes and Mondrian’s architectonic grids but with a distinct California sensibility. The work’s veiled layers and pentimenti reveal the artist’s process: a cycle of addition and erasure, as though the painting itself is a record of thought in motion. “Indecision, conflict, and tinkering” were, as Diebenkorn once noted, essential to his practice, and here, they coalesce into a harmony that feels earned rather than imposed.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>What distinguishes <em>“Ocean Park #108” </em>within this celebrated series is its quiet confidence, a quality Diebenkorn achieved through rigorous exploration rather than easy fluency. While influenced by Matisse—whose luminous color and spatial tension left an indelible mark on his work—Diebenkorn resisted prettiness, instead striving for what he called “tension beneath calm.” In “<em>Ocean Park #108</em>,” this tension is palpable in the interplay between the precision of its linear framework and the softness of its painted surface. The visible corrections and reworkings imbue the painting with a human quality, a sense that it is not merely an object but an ongoing conversation.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>In the context of American abstraction, “<em>Ocean Park #108”</em> is a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance. Its interplay of horizon and sky geometry recalls earlier the desert roads Diebenkorn once photographed from an airplane, while its luminous palette evokes the marine light of the Pacific. But the painting’s emotional resonance—its “breadth of reference,” as one critic noted—elevates it. To stand before “<em>Ocean Park #108” </em>is to be enveloped in a space that feels both constructed and organic, abstract and deeply familiar. It is a testament to Diebenkorn’s lifelong inquiry into what painting could be: not a conclusion, but a possibility, ever unfolding.</font></div>

RICHARD DIEBENKORN

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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

GÉORGIE O'KEEFFE

Led by a triumvirate of painters of the American Scene, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood took on the task of exploring, defining, and celebrating the Midwest as a credible entity within the geographical, political, and mythological landscape of the United States. Their populist works were figurative and narrative-driven, and they gained widespread popularity among a Depression-weary American public. The landscapes Grant Wood painted, and the lithographs marketed by Associated American Artists were comforting reminders of traditional Midwestern values and the simplicity of country life. Yet, Wood's most iconic works, including American Gothic, were to be viewed through the lens of elusive narratives and witty ironies that reflect an artist who delighted in sharing his charming and humorous perspective on farm life. <br><br>In 1930, Wood achieved national fame and recognition with American Gothic, a fictionalized depiction of his sister, Nan, and his family dentist. Frequently regarded as the most famous American painting of the twentieth century, to fully grasp American Gothic's essential nature, one must recognize Wood's profound connection to his Iowan roots, a bond that borders on a singular fixation and the often-brutal confrontation between the moral and cultural rigidity of Midwest isolationism and the standards that prevailed elsewhere in America. This war of values and morality became dominant throughout Wood's oeuvre. Their fascination with American Gothic may have mystified the public, but the story, told in the attitude of a farmer and his wife, is as lean and brittle as the pitchfork he carries. Their attitude, as defiant as it is confrontational, is an unflinching dare to uppity gallery-goers to judge their immaculate well-scrubbed farm. American Gothic became an overnight sensation, an ambiguous national icon often interpreted as a self-effacing parody of midwestern life. Yet it also served as an unflinching mirror to urban elite attitudes and their often-derisive view of heartland values and way of life. In Grant Wood's hands, the people of the Midwest have stiffened and soured, their rectitude implacable.<br> <br>Portrait of Nan is Grant Wood's most intimate work. He may have been motivated to paint it to make amends for the significant scrutiny and harsh treatment his sister received as American Gothic's sternly posed female. Grant poured his heart into it as a sign of sibling love. Intent upon painting her as straightforward and simply as possible so as not to invite unintended interpretations, Wood's deep attachment to the portrait was significant enough for him to think of it as having irreplaceable value. When he moved from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City in 1935, he designed his entire living room around the work. It occupied the place of honor above the fireplace and was the only painting he refused to sell. <br> <br>The lithograph July Fifteenth, issued in 1938, proves his mystical vision of the Iowan heartland is anything but a pitchfork approach. Drawings assumed central importance in Wood's output, and this work is executed in meticulous detail, proving his drawings were at least as complex, if not more so, than his paintings. The surface of the present work takes on an elaborate, decorative rhythm, echoed throughout the land that is soft, verdant, and fertile. Structurally, it alludes in equal measure to the geometry of modern art and the decorative patterning of folk-art traditions. This is a magical place, a fulsome display of an idealized version of an eternal, lovely, and benign heartland. <br><br>The Young Artist, an en plein air sketch, may have been produced during, or slightly after, what Wood called his "palette-knife stage" that consumed him in 1925. Having not yet traveled to Munich where, in 1928, he worked on a stain-glass window commission and came under the influence of the Northern Renaissance painters that sparked his interest in the compositional severity and detailed technique associated with his mature works, here, he worked quickly, and decisively. The view is from a hilltop at Kenwood Park that overlooks the Cedar River Valley near Cedar Rapids, where he built a house for his sister, Nan.

GRANT WOOD

<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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

RIVERA DIEGO

Selon le catalogue raisonné compilé par le Brandywine River Museum of Art, le dessin préliminaire pour Puritan Cod Fishers a été achevé par N. C Wyeth avant sa mort en octobre 1945. L'entrée présente une image de l'esquisse ainsi que les inscriptions de l'artiste et son titre, Puritan Cod Fishers, qualifié par le catalogue d'"alternate" (alternatif). Quoi qu'il en soit, cette grande toile est une œuvre unique dont Andrew Wyeth a rappelé plus tard qu'elle avait été peinte uniquement de sa main, une collaboration délimitée de la conception et de la composition du père, concrétisée par l'exécution remarquable du fils. Pour Andrew, cela a dû être une expérience profondément ressentie et émouvante. Compte tenu de l'attention portée par son père aux détails et à l'authenticité, les lignes de la petite embarcation à voile représentent une échalote, utilisée au XVIe siècle. D'un autre côté, Andrew a probablement approfondi les teintes de la mer agitée plus que ne l'aurait fait son père, un choix qui accentue de manière appropriée la nature périlleuse de la tâche.

Andrew Wyeth & N. C. Wyeth

WILLEM DE KOONING - Femme dans une barque - huile sur papier couché sur masonite - 47 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.

WILLEM DE KOONING

N.C. Wyeth’s extraordinary skills as an illustrator were borne of impeccable draftsmanship and as a painter, his warmly rich, harmonious sense of color, and ability to capture the quality of light itself. But it is his unmatched artistry in vivifying story and character with a powerful sense of mood that we admire most of all — the ability to transport himself to the world and time of his creation and to convey it with a beguiling sense of conviction. That ability is as apparent in the compositional complexities of Treasure Island’s “One More Step, Mr. Hands!” as it is here, in the summary account of a square-rigged, seventeenth-century merchant ship tossed upon the seas. The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 is a simple statement of observable facts, yet Wyeth’s impeccable genius as an illustrator imbues it with the bracing salt air and taste that captures the adventuresome spirit of the men and women who are largely credited with the founding of America. That spirit is carried on the wind and tautly billowed sails, the jaunty heeling of the ship at the nose of a stiff gale, the thrusting, streamed-limned clouds, and the gulls jauntily arranged to celebrate an arrival as they are the feathered angels of providence guiding it to safe harbor.<br><br>The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 was based on two studies, a composition drawing in graphite and a small presentation painting. The finished mural appears to have been installed in 1941.

N.C. WYETH

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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

ALEXANDRE CALDER

<div>Having unwittingly inserted himself into the Pop Art conversation with his Great American Nude series, Tom Wesselmann spent the rest of his career explaining that his motivation was not to focus excessively on a subject matter or to generate social commentary but instead, to give form to what titillated him most as beautiful and exciting. His disembodied Mouth series of 1965 established that an image did not have to rely on extraneous elements to communicate meaning. But it was his follow-up performances with the Smoker series and its seductive, fetish allure that raised his standing among true sybarites everywhere. Apart from perceiving smoking as cool and chic, a painting such as Smoker #21 is the consummate celebration of Wesselmann’s abilities as a painter. Enticed by the undulating smoke, Wesselmann took great pains to accurately depict its sinuous movements and observe the momentary pauses that heightened his appreciation of its sensual nature. Like all of Wesselmann’s prodigious scaled artworks, Smoker #21 has the commanding presence of an altarpiece. It was produced during long hours in his impressive Manhattan studio in Cooper Square, and the result is one of sultry dynamism — evocative, sensual, alluring, sleek, luscious, and perhaps, even sinister — a painting that flaunts his graphic supremacy and potent realism varnished with his patented sex appeal flair.<br><br><br><br>Tom Wesselmann expanded upon the success of his Great American Nudes by focusing on singular features of his subjects and began painting his Mouth series in 1965. In 1967, Wesselmann’s friend Peggy Sarno paused for a cigarette while modeling for Wesselmann’s Mouth series, inspiring his Smoker paintings. The whisps of smoke were challenging to paint and required Wesselmann to utilize photographs as source material to capture the smoke’s ephemeral nature properly. The images here show Wesselmann photographing his friend, the screenwriter Danièle Thompson, as she posed for some of Wesselmann’s source images.</div>

TOM WESSELMANN

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>From the earliest days of painting during the nineteenth century, which was precipitated by the advent of Impressionism, Renoir established a reputation as the finest portrait painter among the emerging landscapists. Works such as Lise with a Parasol (1867) demonstrated his ability to capture the essence of his subjects with a distinctive flair, setting him apart from his peers. Inspired by a transformative trip to Italy in 1882, Renoir shifted his approach, emphasizing modeling and contours with smooth, blended handling, integrating a new found rigor and clarity reminiscent of the old masters. Often referred to as Renoir’s “Ingres period,” he retained the reputation of the painter best suited to manage the traditional process of recording a sitter's likeness with the distinctive flair and vibrancy of an Impressionist. </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>By 1890, Renoir’s style evolved again. He thinned his pigments to achieve a jewel-like translucence, infusing his works with a tender, ethereal quality. This final phase reflects the physical limitations of encroaching rheumatoid arthritis but also a deeper, more reflective approach to his subjects, capturing their inner light and character with subtle, luminous strokes. </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>No longer obliged to rely upon society portrait commissions, by 1900, Renoir began to focus on portraits and studies of family, close friends, and neighbors. “Fillette à l’orange”, painted in 1911, extends our appreciation of his very personal, intimate style and reputation for imbuing his portraits of children with all the affectionate charm he could muster. It avoids the softer, generalized approach that prompted his son Jean’s remark that “we are all Renoir’s children, ”idealized versions of beauty and sensuality expressed in universal rather than with physiognomic specifics. We may never know her identity, but her likeness is vivid because Renoir concentrates on her face and expression. Nevertheless, the interplay of light and color highlights her features and brings to life the tender and affectionate nature characteristic of Renoir’s later portraits. An orange as an accessory is often included in portraiture as a symbol of fertility. Yet, here, it seems to serve as a formal element for the artist to demonstrate his skill at displaying its size, shape, and heft in this young girl's hand.</font></div>

RENOIR PIERRE-AUGUSTE

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.<br><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.<br><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

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.<br><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.<br><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.”<br><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.

ALEXANDRE CALDER

Au début des années 1870, Winslow Homer a souvent peint des scènes de la vie à la campagne près d'un petit hameau agricole réputé depuis des générations pour ses remarquables champs de blé, situé entre la rivière Hudson et les Catskills, dans l'État de New York. Aujourd'hui, Hurley est bien plus célèbre pour avoir inspiré l'une des plus grandes œuvres d'Homer, Snap the Whip, peinte au cours de l'été 1872. Parmi les nombreuses autres peintures inspirées par la région, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield est riche en sentiments, mais sans sentimentalisme excessif. Elle est directement liée à une étude peinte en France en 1866 et intitulée In the Wheatfields (Dans les champs de blé), ainsi qu'à une autre étude peinte l'année suivante, après son retour en Amérique. Mais Homère aurait sans doute été le plus fier de celle-ci. Il s'agit d'un portrait, d'une étude de costume, d'une peinture de genre dans la grande tradition de la peinture pastorale européenne, et d'un tour de force atmosphérique dramatiquement rétro-éclairé, imprégné de la lumière de l'heure qui s'estompe rapidement, avec des notes lambda et fleuries et des touches d'épis de blé. En 1874, Homer a envoyé quatre tableaux à l'exposition de la National Academy of Design. L'une d'entre elles était intitulée "Girl". Ne serait-ce pas celle-ci ?

WINSLOW HOMER

<div>In the mid-1920s, Rufino Tamayo embarked on the crucial development phase as a sophisticated, contemporary colorist. In New York, he encountered the groundbreaking works of Picasso, Braque, and Giorgio de Chirico, along with the enduring impact of Cubism. Exploring painterly and plastic values through subjects sourced from street scenes, popular culture, and the fabric of daily life, his unique approach to color and form began to take shape. It was a pivotal shift toward cosmopolitan aesthetics, setting him apart from the nationalist fervor championed by the politically charged narratives of the Mexican Muralist movement.  By focusing on the vitality of popular culture, he captured the essential Mexican identity that prioritized universal artistic values over explicit social and political commentary. The approach underscored his commitment to redefining Mexican art on the global stage and highlighted his innovative contributions to the modernist dialogue. </div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div>Like Cézanne, Tamayo elevated the still life genre to some of its most beautifully simple expressions. Yet high sophistication underlies the ease with which Tamayo melds vibrant Mexican motifs with the avant-garde influences of the School of Paris. As "Naturaleza Muerta" of 1935 reveals, Tamayo refused to lapse into the mere decoration that often characterizes the contemporary School of Paris art with which his work draws comparisons. Instead, his arrangement of watermelons, bottles, a coffee pot, and sundry items staged within a sobering, earthbound tonality and indeterminant, shallow space recalls Tamayo's early interest in Surrealism. An overlayed square matrix underscores the contrast between the organic subjects of the painting and the abstract, intellectualized structure imposed upon them, deepening the interpretation of the artist's exploration of visual perception and representation. In this way, the grid serves to navigate between the visible world and the underlying structures that inform our understanding of it, inviting viewers to consider the interplay between reality and abstraction, sensation and analysis.</div>

TAMAYO RUFINO

No artist bridged the gap between European Modernism and American Abstract Expressionism the same way Hans Hofmann did. The reason is simple. He was trained in Parisian academies prior to World War I and was friendly with Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and, most significantly, Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Conversely, his endeavors as a teacher and later, as a mature artist in full command of his abilities were stimulated — made possible even — by the exhilarating New York milieu that gave rise to Abstract Expressionism. So perhaps it is not surprising that unlike most of the Abstract Expressionists who pursued a single iconographic look — Rothko’s soft-edged rectangles, Franz Klein’s enlarged calligraphic strokes, Clyfford Still’s dark, ragged shapes — Hofmann was constantly reaching for different and contradictory effects. That meant his paintings were wildly varied and that they carved a wide swath toward the most exciting avenues available to contemporary abstraction. Hofmann proved to be a gallant experimenter, refusing to settle on a single style for long.<br><br>The Climb was painted in 1960 at a time when most American painters were pushing abstraction in new directions. Not surprisingly, as an outlier, it does not evoke Hofmann’s usual “push and pull’ technique. But it is very much a painting of its time, marked by a sensuousness and a deft, painterly touch. It suggests what Irving Sandler characterized as Hofmann’s hedonistic touch, an optimistic celebration of the lyrical abstraction that overcame the burning darkness of painting in the 40s and trumped even the lighter palette of Pollock or Pousette-Dart that emerged later. While the passages of The Climb are brushed rather than poured or stained, it reflects the delicate lyricism of his former student, Helen Frankenthaler who, since 1952 had experimented with floating areas of color, absorbed into the canvas with watercolor-like ease. She, in turn, had inspired a generation of Color Field painters including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. On the other hand, these short bands and prismatic slurries recall those halcyon days in Paris when Hofmann worked through color theory with his good friend Robert Delaunay and thought a lot about prisms. Hofmann not only retained elements of Synthetic Cubism, but the lessons he learned from the Fauves and the artists who verily invented abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Frantisek Kupka, and Piet Mondrian to name a few of the key players. The Climb is a glorious expression of a painter drawing from both the past and the present, painting in a playful, but not frivolous manner fully informed and prepared to express his abilities as a painter, simply, and with great conviction.<br><br>As New York City became the avant-garde’s global hub in the 1940s, radical, new approaches to art, such as action painting and abstraction, took root among the informally grouped New York School painters. By 1950, Abstract Expressionism was well underway, but the movement was often overlooked by institutions. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its plan to exhibit a survey of contemporary American painting, many of the New York School painters felt there was a bias against more “progressive” art in the museum’s selection process, prompting them to draft an open letter protesting the show.<br><br>The letter garnered attention, and Life magazine published an article on the protest in January 1951, “The Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show.” To accompany the article, Nina Lee photographed 15 of the 18 painters who signed the letter, including Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyford Still, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Today, this article is considered a turning point in the prominence of Abstract Expressionism, and the artists involved are often referred to as the “Irascibles.”

HOFMANN HANS

Le monde de Marc Chagall ne peut être contenu ou limité par les étiquettes que nous lui attachons. C'est un monde d'images et de significations qui forment leur propre discours splendidement mystique. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin a été entrepris alors que l'artiste entrait dans sa 90e année, un homme qui avait connu la tragédie et le conflit, mais qui n'avait jamais oublié les moments de plaisir de la vie. Ici, les délices rêveurs d'un mariage dans un village russe, avec ses arrangements de participants bien rodés, nous sont présentés avec un esprit si joyeux et une innocence si gaie qu'il est impossible de résister à son charme. En utilisant une émulsion dorée combinant l'huile et la gouache opaque à base d'eau, la chaleur, le bonheur et l'optimisme du positivisme habituel de Chagall sont enveloppés d'un éclat lumineux suggérant l'influence des icônes religieuses à feuilles d'or ou de la peinture du début de la Renaissance qui cherchait à donner l'impression d'une lumière divine ou d'une illumination spirituelle. L'utilisation d'une combinaison d'huile et de gouache peut s'avérer difficile. Mais ici, dans Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall l'utilise pour donner à la scène une qualité d'un autre monde, presque comme si elle venait de se matérialiser à partir de l'œil de son esprit. La finesse de sa texture donne l'impression que la lumière émane de l'œuvre elle-même et confère une qualité spectrale aux personnages qui flottent dans le ciel.

MARC CHAGALL

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Hans Hofmann's <em>Baal</em> channels the charged energy of its evocative title, rooted in ancient Semitic tradition. The name refers to a lord or master but also carries associations with primal forces of nature, chaos, and creation. Hofmann's work reflects this duality, blending structured design with the untamed vitality of gestural abstraction to create a composition oscillating between entropy and order.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Painted at age 65, <em>Baal</em> also showcases Hofmann's willingness to revisit earlier disciplines while addressing the challenges of mid-century abstraction. Its vibrant palette and bold use of complementary colors, particularly the juxtaposition of red and green, heightens the painting's dynamism. His muscular brushwork also reflects his lifelong experimentation with the tension between form and freedom; undulating lines and biomorphic forms evoke the surrealist influence of Miró and the spiritual resonance of Kandinsky's gestural abstractions. Like these predecessors, Hofmann sought to translate "inner necessity" into visual expression, guided by his fertile imagination. Yet the planal elements and curvilinear shapes of <em>Baal</em> also reflect the influence of improvisational painting, a hallmark of Abstract Expressionism as practiced by contemporaries like Arshile Gorky, among others. It is a composition that teems with movement and energy, suggesting a cosmos in flux—chaotic yet deliberate.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Exhibited the same year at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, <em>Baal</em> signals Hofmann's evolution as a master and innovator. With its vivid dynamism and symbolic title, the painting epitomizes Hofmann's ability to infuse abstraction with elemental power, crafting a deeply personal exploration of form and color.</font></div>

HOFMANN HANS

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Hans Hofmann's "<em>Astral Image #1"</em> of 1947 captures a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution as he wrestled with the competing forces of linearity and painterly abstraction. Exhibited in the same year at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York—Hofmann's first show with Parsons — the painting represents a phase of intense experimentation in which Cubist-inspired linear elements took center stage. Lines arc and stretch across the canvas, creating a dynamic framework that opens into areas filled with flatly applied alizarin crimson. These contrasting forces give the work a sense of tension and vitality.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>During this period, Hofmann's reliance on linearity provided a departure from the more fluid, painterly dynamism of his earlier works. From 1944 to 1951, this linear impulse permeated his practice, signaling a prolonged exploration of modes of expression in which he grappled with reconciling abstraction and structure. While some viewed this phase as a retreat from the energetic breakthroughs that defined American art's rise to global prominence, others recognized the distinctiveness of these paintings. <em>Astral Image #1</em> challenged the framework of Hofmann's singular vision, blending Cubist discipline with the vibrant, unruly energy that remained a hallmark of his oeuvre.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>The work's flat planes of bright alizarin crimson, contrasted with the angular momentum of the lines, evoke a cosmos of restless energy, hinting at the celestial themes suggested by its title. This painting reflects Hofmann's deliberate explorations during the late 1940s that underscore his unique ability to create works that resist easy categorization, standing apart as deeply personal explorations of form and color.</font></div><br><br><div> </div>

HOFMANN HANS

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Fernando Botero's legendary ascension as an international sensation began when Museum of Modern Art curator Dorothy Miller stumbled upon his Greenwich Village studio in 1961 and purchased "<em>Mona Lisa, Age Twelve</em>." His trademark portly figures and playful, lighthearted humor became known as "Boterismo." More importantly, the art leaving his easel revealed an unbridled respect for the Old Masters, the compelling chiaroscuro of a Zurbarán still life, the sfumato of da Vinci, and always the craftsmanship of van Eyck, Dürer, or Rubens. Botero continues that thread of technical mastery with "<em>L'Atelier de Sánchez Cotán</em>" even as he reshapes these classical themes through his unique lens. A mixed media collage and oil on canvas, the work pays homage to the Spanish Baroque still life painter Juan Sánchez Cotán by subverting and modernizing the traditional still life genre. Botero captures Cotán's hyperrealism with a surreal, almost whimsical aesthetic. An oversized apple suspended on a string dominates the composition, a nod to Cotán's meticulously arranged still life paintings, known for the striking suspended effect of fruit or vegetables. Botero's rendition, however, imbues the scene with a sense of playfulness and detachment from reality, as seen in the box-like contraption, resembling a stage or a viewing device containing miniature versions of objects within the painting. The stark, flat backdrop, devoid of Cotán's characteristic chiaroscuro, accentuates the sense of artifice.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Fernando Botero's death on September 15, 2023, was a significant loss for the art world. Although his roots are deeply Colombian, his appeal is global, coupling commercial success with critical acclaim—a balance few artists have achieved. Works such as “<em>L'Atelier de Sánchez Cotán</em>” are not just whimsical or aesthetic; they prompt the viewer to appreciate the enduring dialogue between tradition and innovation, showcasing an artist of great technical finesse and mastery.</font></div>

FERNANDO BOTERO

JULIAN SCHNABEL - Sans titre - huile et cire sur bâche - 120 x 96 in.

JULIAN SCHNABEL

Peint par le jeune Grant Wood peu après la deuxième des trois tournées européennes qu'il a effectuées dans les années 1920, The Young Artist prolonge l'intérêt de l'artiste pour la peinture en plein air, commencé dans le nord de la France. Le pointillisme de Seurat séduit Wood, et la peinture au couteau le passionne en 1925. Mais il ne s'est pas encore rendu à Munich où, en 1928, il subit l'influence des peintres de la Renaissance du Nord, ce qui éveille son intérêt pour la sévérité de la composition et la technique détaillée associées à ses œuvres de la maturité. Peignant rapidement et résolument, Wood réalise The Young Artist depuis le sommet d'une colline du parc Kenwood, qui surplombe la vallée de la rivière Cedar, près de Cedar Rapids, où il a construit une maison pour sa sœur Nan.

GRANT WOOD

PIERRE BONNARD - Soleil Couchant - huile sur toile - 14 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

PIERRE BONNARD

Wojciech Fangor is a Polish painter who became one of the nation’s more preeminent artists by experimenting with abstraction in the years following the end of World War II. Born in 1922, Fangor studied and taught art during the early years of his career, producing paintings inspired by various styles of the European avant-garde before shifting his artistic output to poster design and eventually works that relate to both Optical Art and Color Field painting.<br><br>Fangor’s first exhibitions in the United States took place in the 1960s, where he was included in two group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, including “15 Polish Painters” (1961) and “The Responsive Eye” (1965), the latter of which explored contemporary developments in Optical Art. Fangor received a major solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1970, returning to Poland in 1999 where he continued to work until his death in November 2015.<br><br>Maintaining that Contemporary painting should “radiate a force onto literal space which defines a zone of physical activity,” Fangor created captivating works such as “#29” from 1963. Here, the centrifugal force of the spiral prompts one to investigate the formal qualities of the work, actively engaging in what he called “a zone of physical activity” in front of the painting.

FANGOR WOJCIECH

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Camille Claudel's life story reflects an era when societal constraints often dimmed the brilliance of women; their genius was viewed as a threat to the male-dominated world. Most introductions to Claudel are steeped in misleading biographical details related to her as Rodin's assistant, mistress, or lover, associations that diminish her achievements as a first-rate sculptor whose work borrows little from Rodin in style or subject matter. Despite these challenges, Claudel's legacy has endured, celebrated through exhibitions, biographies, and films since her rediscovery in 1982. </font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black><em>“La Vague (The Wave),”</em> a remarkable sculpture of three women frolicking joyfully, embodies Claudel's passion for art and connection to nature. The women, their hair unruly like the sea, are depicted in a moment of freedom and abandon, yet the looming wave hints at the inevitable sorrow to come—a metaphor for Claudel's life, shadowed by fate. This piece, initially shown in plaster and later cast in bronze with an onyx marble wave, draws direct inspiration from Hokusai's <em>“The Great Wave,”</em> reflecting the Parisian fascination with Japanese art at the time. While <em>“La Vague”</em> showcases Claudel's technical mastery and the influence of Japanese aesthetics, it also poignantly symbolizes her acceptance of the overpowering forces of nature and the tragic course her life would ultimately take. This bronze, cast in 1997, is one of only two not held in a museum, further emphasizing the rarity of and reverence for Claudel's work.</font></div>

CAMILLE CLAUDEL

DAMIEN HIRST - Forgotten Thoughts - papillons et vernis ménager sur toile - 48 x 48 in.

DAMIEN HIRST

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Any analysis of Hans Hofmann’s oeuvre is incomplete without considering his small landscapes, which occupied him between 1940 and 1944. These works capture a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution, transitioning from Matisse-inspired figurative still lifes, portraits, and interiors to the pure abstraction that would later define his career. “Landscape #108” exemplifies this shift. Its compressed composition and severe clustering of intense colors prefigure the artist’s mature works, channeling the same ferocious dynamism that is the hallmark of our appreciation for the artist. The Fauvist palette and electric strokes vibrate with energy, their interplay of light and dark creating a rhythmic tension that feels almost musical. While modest in scale, the painting’s boldness and dynamism hint at the daring risks Hofmann would later embrace in his larger abstractions. Rooted in Fauvism and resonant with Kandinsky’s early work, “Landscape #108” remains a robust testament to Hofmann’s evolving visual language during this transformative period.</font></div>

HOFMANN HANS

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Hans Hofmann explored linearity and color with persistence during the late 1940s, creating a tension between Cubist structure and gestural abstraction. In this painting, <em>Fruit Bowl #1</em>, the linear impulse takes center stage, with dynamic black contours weaving and unspooling across the canvas, limning forms that merely hint at a still-life composition. Hofmann's approach is far from conventional; the traditional fruit bowl is fractured and reimagined into an abstract interplay of geometric and organic shapes. The addition of bright, flatly applied patches and demarcation of green, red, and yellow punctuates the composition, adding an energetic entropy and vitality. Hofmann's raw, alluring, yet slightly uncomfortable palette and gestural freedom elevate the piece beyond its Cubist origins, revealing an artist deeply engaged with the challenges of mid-20th-century abstraction. Hofmann's lines and color fields balance spontaneity with control, oscillating between chaos and structure.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black><em>Fruit Bowl #1</em> reflects Hofmann's ongoing dialogue with earlier European modernists while pushing toward the freer instincts of American Abstract Expressionism. Often criticized as misaligned with the rising dominance of gestural abstraction, paintings from this period in Hofmann's career remain his own—vibrant, exploratory, and unapologetically personal.</font></div>

HOFMANN HANS

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Hans Hofmann's <em>The Zoo</em> (1944) brims with playful energy, its abstract forms suggesting a whimsical exploration of animalistic shapes and gestures. Dominated by a vivid blue field punctuated by bold strokes of red, green, and yellow, the formal elements and composition provide a lively interplay of color. While the title invites the viewer to seek out zoo-like references, the forms are ambiguous yet evocative: sweeping red arcs might suggest the curve of a tail, while the triangular green shape evokes the profile of an enclosure or a cage. The painting captures not the literal essence of a zoo but the dynamism and movement one might associate with such a space.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Heavily influenced by Surrealist automatism and the biomorphic forms of Joan Miró, the organic shapes and bold colors seem to pulse with life, blurring the boundary between abstraction and figuration. Yet, unlike Miró's delicate dreamscapes, Hofmann's brushwork carries a muscular energy, grounding the composition in his signature gestural style.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black><em>The Zoo</em> reflects Hofmann's ability to balance spontaneity with deliberate compositional choices. The result is a vibrant, joy-filled work that celebrates the world's visual complexity and the boundless creative freedom of abstraction during this pivotal phase of his career.</font></div>

HOFMANN HANS

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Deeply influenced by his populist views and commitment to social realism, Thomas Hart Benton became an advocate for the common man, often depicting the struggles and resilience of ordinary Americans in his work. Coal strikes were frequent occurrences in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and <em>"Mine Strike"</em> is a visually compelling account of such an uprising, rich with social commentary. At the time, Benton traveled the nation seeking inspiration for a mural project and was particularly interested in social issues. In 1933, he illustrated the modern social history of the United States for <em>“We the People”,</em> published by Harper & Brothers, New York. <em>"Mine Strike"</em> is carefully constructed to highlight the chaos and human drama. </font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The figures are robust and grounded, reflecting Benton's signature style of muscular forms. The scene, though aggressive and violent, displays commitment and sacrifice. Two officers fire on the strikers, one of whom has fallen to the ground, shot. Set against the backdrop of an imposing mining complex, a towering black structure known as a 'tipple' looms ominously over the strikers. Its darkly sinister anthropomorphic shape contrasts sharply with the lighter, more organic human figures — an appearance intensified by its coal chutes resembling mechanical arms. This visual metaphor of industrial oppression underscores the pervasive threat posed by the coal mining industry and those paid to protect its interests.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Through <em>"Mine Strike,"</em> Benton not only documents a specific historical moment but also critiques the broader socio-economic conditions of his time. His depiction of the workers' plight is a powerful statement on the exploitation and struggles the working-class faces. Benton's political leanings towards advocating for social justice and his commitment to portraying the reality of American life are vividly encapsulated in this painting, making it a poignant and enduring piece of art.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Benton made two compositions about strike activities during this time: this painting and another, <em>“Strikebreakers”</em>, painted in 1931. Of the two, Benton used <em>"Mine Strike"</em> as the basis for a well-known lithograph issued in 1933. Benton described the scene as a "Strike battle" in the coal country. This is an imaginary reconstruction of a situation only too common in the late twenties and early thirties."</font></div>

THOMAS HART BENTON (EN)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT - Sans titre (Anatomie de pigeon) - huile, mine de plomb et craie sur papier - 22 x 30 in.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

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. <br><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

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI - Cariatide - crayon bleu sur papier chamois - 24 x 18 in.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Known for his ability to blend traditional Japanese techniques with modern aesthetics, Hiroshi Senju's sublime depictions of bands of cascading veils of paint evoke sensations of tranquility and awe. Senju began exploring waterfall imagery in the early 1990s, pouring translucent pigment onto mulberry paper mounted on board, creating cascading movement. In this work, "<em>Waterfall," </em>he masterfully bonds ribbons of cascading water into two curtain-like ethereal panels. Senju's interest in synesthesia is undeniable. "<em>Waterfall</em>" conjures sound, smell, and feel sensations as much as the rushing water's appearance. In the present work, he placed these dynamic elements in a context that grounds the viewer's sense of place within the natural world. A wedge of blue in the upper left corner contrasts the otherwise monochromatic palette, providing a sky association bounded by a hillside or cliff (for which Senju is known). Additionally, as the cascading water descends, it reaches a destination expanse at the bottom of the picture plane, where the force of the water disperses into a fine mist at the point of contact, serving as a visual anchor. </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Senju's finesse is evident throughout. He uses mulberry paper, a traditional Japanese material known for its delicate texture and strength. The paper's natural fibers absorb pigments in ways that create subtle gradients and fluidity, enhancing the visual effect of the cascading water. He employs traditional Nihonga techniques, such as layering washes to build depth and movement and utilizing varied brush strokes to achieve different effects. Additionally, he incorporates modern methods like the airbrush to apply fine mists of pigment, creating smooth and seamless gradients that mimic the delicate spray and vapor associated with cascading water.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Hiroshi Senju pays homage to the traditional art forms of his heritage while pushing the boundaries of contemporary art. His ability to convey the sublime through simplicity and abstraction makes this artwork a testament to his unique vision and artistic mastery. It stands as a serene reminder of nature's timeless beauty, captured through the ability of a master painter and artist.  </font></div>

HIROSHI SENJU

FRANZ KLINE - Sans titre, No. 7246 - huile sur papier posé sur carton - 18 1/8 x 23 1/4 in.

FRANZ KLINE

HANS HOFMANN - Sans titre - huile sur toile - 25 x 30 1/4 in.

HOFMANN HANS

HERB ALPERT - Arrowhead - bronze - 201 x 48 x 48 po.

ALPERT HERB

ANDREW WYETH - Quart and a Half - aquarelle sur papier - 21 x 29 1/4 in.

WYETH ANDREW

CAMILLE PISSARRO - Paysage avec batteuse a Montfoucault - pastel sur papier posé sur carton - 10 3/8 x 14 3/4 in.

PISSARRO CAMILLE

Mel Ramos is best known for his paintings of superheroes and female nudes juxtaposed with pop culture imagery. Many of the subjects in his paintings emerge from iconic brands or cultural touchstones like Chiquita bananas, M&M bags, or Snickers. In these works, visual delight is combined with suggested edible and commercial indulgence.<br><br>Leta and the Hill Myna diverges from some of Ramos’ other nudes. Here Ramos depicts his wife, whom he spoke of as his greatest muse. Like his works depicting superheroes, Leta and the Hill Myna is imbued with mythos and lore. Myna birds are native to South Asia where some are taught to speak, often to recite religious. Furthermore, playing on his wife’s name and the avian theme, Ramos is referencing the famous tale of Leda and the Swan in which Zeus embodies a bird to rape Leda. The story has been reinterpreted throughout history, including by great artists such as Paul Cezanne, Cy Twombly and Fernando Botero. With this depiction, Ramos places himself in that same art historical lineage.

MEL RAMOS

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Standing at an impressive 103 inches, this elegantly spare “Sonambient” sculpture by Harry Bertoia allows us to marvel at one of the finest artisans of his generation. This piece, the tallest in the series currently available here at Heather James Fine Art, features a precise arrangement of 36 slender tines in a 6 x 6 grid. This arrangement's uniformity and symmetry are visually captivating and crucial for the sculpture's acoustic properties. The rods, austere and uncapped by finials, have an aged patina with copper undertones, suggesting Bertoia's use of copper or a similar alloy known for its resonant qualities and distinctive coloration. Given the outstanding length of these rods, the attachment method is particularly noteworthy. Bertoia meticulously inserted each rod into individual holes in the base plate using precision drilling and securing techniques such as welding that ensured the rods were firmly anchored and stable, maintaining the structural integrity essential for consistent acoustic performance.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Beyond his uncompromising nature, Bertoia's work draws significant inspiration from natural elements. This sculpture's tall, slender rods evoke images of reeds or tall grasses swaying gently in the wind. This dynamic interaction between the sculpture and its environment mirrors the movement of plants, creating an immersive, naturalistic experience. Yet when activated or moved by air currents, the rods of this monumental work initiate metallic undertones that confirm its materiality without betraying its profound connection to the natural world.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Integrating technical precision and natural inspiration depends on exacting construction that ensures durability and acoustic consistency, while its kinetic and auditory nature imbues the piece with a sense of vitality. This fusion invites viewers to engage with the sculpture on multiple sensory levels, appreciating its robust craftsmanship and evocative, naturalistic qualities. Bertoia's ability to blend these elements results in a work that is both a technical marvel and a tribute to the beauty of the natural world.</font></div>

BERTOIA HARRY

Max Weber s’installe à Paris en 1905, alors que la ville est l’épicentre de l’innovation artistique. Ses premières œuvres démontrent l’influence contemporaine de la palette de couleurs audacieuses du fauvisme et de la représentation fragmentée de la réalité du cubisme. Cependant, Weber ne s’est pas contenté d’imiter ces styles ; Il les a intégrées et réinterprétées pour créer quelque chose qui lui appartient. L’importance de Weber ne réside pas seulement dans ses œuvres abstraites, mais aussi dans son rôle de vecteur d’idées modernistes. Weber a joué un rôle crucial dans le dialogue transatlantique qui a contribué à façonner le cours de l’art américain au XXe siècle. Ses représentations de figures féminines présentent une synthèse de l’abstrait et du figuratif, capturant l’essence de ses sujets tout en rompant avec les œuvres figuratives traditionnelles.

MAX WEBER

Dans « Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 », Mel Ramos entremêle de manière ludique l’héritage du chef-d’œuvre moderniste de Marcel Duchamp avec l’esthétique vibrante du Pop Art, créant une réinterprétation intelligente et visuellement stimulante. En associant le mouvement abstrait de Duchamp à son style pin-up caractéristique, Ramos crée un dialogue dynamique entre les traditions vénérées des beaux-arts et les qualités graphiques audacieuses de l’imagerie commerciale. Cette œuvre illustre l’habileté de Ramos à naviguer dans l’histoire de l’art et la culture contemporaine, en utilisant l’attrait de la nudité féminine pour explorer et satiriser les obsessions sociétales de la beauté, du désir et de la marchandisation. Ce faisant, l’œuvre de Ramos devient une concoction Pop Art par excellence, se délectant de son association ludique avec Duchamp tout en critiquant et en célébrant simultanément la culture visuelle de son époque.

MEL RAMOS

Francisco Zúñiga a créé de la sculpture lorsqu’il était enfant lorsqu’il assistait son père, un sculpteur local de santos en bois. Il s’est résolument tourné vers la sculpture après son arrivée au Mexique de son Costa Rica natal en 1936 et a développé un vaste corpus d’œuvres basé sur la figure qui s’étend de la sculpture directe sur bois, du modelage dans l’argile, de la sculpture directement sur pierre dure et de la fonte du bronze. « Desnundo Reclinado de Dolores » est un changement en ce sens qu’il ne reflète ni son intérêt pour l’art précolombien ni sa persistance à représenter des femmes d’apparence indigène avec des hanches et un ventre exagérés. Au lieu de cela, il s’agit d’un tour de force classique d’une femme agenouillée à la hanche et soutenue par l’avant-bras que Rodin aurait été fier de revendiquer comme la sienne.

ZUNIGA FRANCISCO

After disappointing sales at Weyhe Gallery in 1928, Calder turned from sculpted wire portraits and figures to the more conventional medium of wood. On the advice of sculptor Chaim Gross, he purchased small blocks of wood from Monteath, a Brooklyn supplier of tropical woods. He spent much of that summer on a Peekskill, New York farm carving. In each case, the woodblock suggested how he might preserve its overall shape and character as he subsumed those attributes in a single form. There was a directness about working in wood that appealed to him. Carved from a single block of wood, Woman with Square Umbrella is not very different from the subjects of his wire sculptures except that he supplanted the ethereal nature of using wire with a more corporeal medium.<br>© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDRE CALDER

Roger Brown est connu pour son imagerie personnelle et souvent fantastique et ses peintures très stylisées avec des figures et des objets qui reflètent son intérêt pour les expériences quotidiennes. Acid Rain explore des thèmes de la vie moderne et des commentaires sociaux qui reflètent le rôle de l'artiste dans la société et le potentiel de l'art à susciter le changement. D'un point de vue plus personnel, le thème des pluies acides peut symboliser des états émotionnels ou psychologiques corrosifs, tels que la dépression, l'anxiété ou le sentiment d'être dépassé par des circonstances indépendantes de sa volonté. Tout comme les pluies acides étaient un problème environnemental largement invisible mais dévastateur, la crise de l'épidémie émergente de VIH/SIDA a probablement motivé Brown à créer l'œuvre pour traiter son chagrin personnel, critiquer la réponse inadéquate des dirigeants politiques et plaider en faveur de la compassion, de la compréhension et de la recherche médicale.

ROGER BROWN

Parmi les nombreux totems spirituels d'Herb Albert, coulés en bronze et patinés d'un noir soyeux, rares sont ceux qui ont le caractère distinctement masculin de Warrior. Surmonté d'une couronne descendante dentelée qui pourrait aussi bien faire référence à la crête d'un oiseau de proie qu'à la coiffe d'un chef indien des Plaines, le titre de "guerrier" est une description appropriée qui évoque les attributs de la force, du courage et de l'esprit inébranlable, entre autres. À l'instar de l'œuvre d'Henry Moore, ces associations dépendent, en partie, de l'espace négatif pour créer l'impression dynamique et forte que dégage cette formidable sculpture.

ALPERT HERB

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Executed in mixed media on paper, <em>The Indian</em> from 1944 showcases Hofmann’s ability to offer a powerful interplay between abstraction and figuration. Surrounded by an atmospheric expanse of deep blues and punctuated by vivid accents of red and yellow, the central form suggests the stylized head of a Native American. Shaped not by direct detailing techniques but subtractive reduction, Hofmann shaped the figure by enclosing it with dynamic strokes of the deep blue surround, punctuated by vivid reds and yellows, as if carving the form out of the surrounding space. This approach emphasizes the figure’s presence while allowing it to remain enigmatic, suspended within an atmospheric mélange of bold, gestural marks.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>The tension between the central form and its vibrant background exemplifies Hofmann’s transition during the 1940s from Cubist rigor to more unrestricted, expressionistic techniques. <em>The Indian</em> captures the energy of this pivotal period, with its layered abstraction and symbolic undertones reflecting Hofmann’s ability to unite gestural spontaneity with deliberate compositional balance.</font></div>

HOFMANN HANS

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN - ASARABACA - feuille d'aluminium de poids industriel avec laque acrylique et résine de polyester - 20 x 23 x 22 po.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN (EN)

GEORGE RICKEY - Space Churn with Squares - sculpture cinétique en acier inoxydable - 35 1/2 x 20 x 13 in.

GEORGE RICKEY

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDRE CALDER

Andy Warhol est synonyme de l'art américain de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Il est connu pour ses portraits iconiques et ses produits de consommation, mêlant culture populaire et beaux-arts, redéfinissant ainsi ce que l'art pouvait être et la manière dont nous l'abordons. Si de nombreuses œuvres de Warhol ne représentent pas des personnes célèbres, ses représentations d'objets inanimés élèvent ses sujets à un niveau de célébrité. Warhol a représenté des chaussures pour la première fois au début de sa carrière, alors qu'il travaillait comme illustrateur de mode. Il est revenu à ce thème dans les années 1980, combinant sa fascination pour le consumérisme et le glamour. Dans son désir constant de fusionner la haute et la basse culture, Warhol a choisi de mettre en avant un objet aussi omniprésent que les chaussures. Le sujet peut dénoter la pauvreté ou la richesse, la fonction ou la mode. Warhol donne un aspect glamour à la pile de chaussures, en les recouvrant d'une patine de poussière de diamant brillante, brouillant encore plus le sens entre besoin utilitaire et pièce de style.

ANDY WARHOL (EN)

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

JOAN MIRO (EN)

Genieve Figgis est une figure notable de la scène artistique irlandaise contemporaine, reconnue pour ses portraits de groupe intelligents et critiques qui se moquent souvent de conventions sociales anciennes. Elle a attiré l'attention de l'artiste américain Richard Prince sur Twitter, qui a acheté l'une de ses œuvres et l'a introduite dans les cercles influents de la communauté artistique new-yorkaise. Le travail de Figgis critique de manière ludique les habitudes de consommation de la classe moyenne aisée et les modes de vie luxueux, immortalisés par les artistes du passé, et ramène fermement ces sujets dans le présent avec un mélange de satire et de représentations brutes et authentiques de la vie. Pour Figgis, il s'agit de remonter le temps jusqu'à Daumier ou Hogarth, dont les œuvres portaient souvent un regard satirique sur la société contemporaine, en rejoignant des artistes engagés dans la satire sociale et connus pour leur sens aigu de l'observation.

GENIEVE FIGGIS

"Wigwam rouge et jaune", une captivante peinture à la gouache d'Alexander Calder, est une exploration vibrante du design et de la couleur. Dominée par un treillis de lignes diagonales se croisant près de leur point culminant, la composition dégage un équilibre dynamique. Calder introduit un élément de fantaisie avec des losanges rouges et jaunes, qui confèrent à l'œuvre un caractère ludique et créent une atmosphère de fête. Les boules rouges au sommet des lignes de droite évoquent une impression de fantaisie, tandis que les petites sphères grises au sommet des lignes de gauche offrent un contraste et un équilibre. La fusion magistrale de la simplicité et des éléments de conception essentiels de Calder fait de Wigwam rouge et jaune un délice visuel.

ALEXANDRE CALDER

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Richard Prince's "<em>Untitled</em>" from 2009 is a provocative and multilayered piece that engages with the themes of censorship, appropriation, and the boundaries of art. Prince uses a photographic montage of naked, intertwined bodies—imagery that evokes the explicit nature of an orgy and obscures its tawdry nature with a pattern of pink, egg-shaped acrylic elements covering much of the underlying image. The placement of these shapes is seemingly arbitrary, yet they play a crucial role in how the viewer perceives the piece. This obscuring overlay can be interpreted as a visual metaphor for censorship, alluding to how society imposes restrictions on what is deemed acceptable for public consumption. By covering parts of the bodies, Prince draws attention to the act of censorship itself rather than merely the content being censored. The viewer is left to imagine what lies beneath, heightening the sense of curiosity and the taboo.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Prince's work often critiques mass media and the commercialization of culture, and this piece is no exception. By altering found images, he questions the ownership and authorship of visual culture. The "censorship" elements in this work might also reference the commodification of sex and how the media sanitizes or obscures the raw, human aspects of such imagery to make it more palatable for the public.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>In "<em>Untitled</em>," Prince challenges viewers to confront their perceptions of morality, art, and the power dynamics inherent in censorship. The work serves as a commentary on how images are manipulated and controlled in society, pushing the boundaries of what is considered art and what is considered obscene. Through this layered approach, Prince continues his exploration of the intersections between art, culture, and societal norms.</font></div>

RICHARD PRINCE

Fille du sculpteur minimaliste Tony Smith, l'art de Kiki ne se limite pas à un seul médium ou à une seule technique, et son travail invite souvent à de multiples interprétations. Club incarne la forme et les dimensions d'une jambe humaine, élément essentiel du mouvement et de la stabilité. Le titre de Smith invite le spectateur à réimaginer une jambe comme une arme et à réfléchir à la fragilité de la condition humaine, à la dynamique de pouvoir de l'autonomie corporelle et à l'interaction complexe entre la force et la vulnérabilité. Cette transformation d'une partie du corps en objet véhicule à la fois la protection et l'agression et réfléchit à la manière dont les corps sexués naviguent dans notre environnement social et personnel. Club illustre la capacité de Smith à créer des œuvres riches en symboles, ouvertes à l'interprétation, et à susciter une réflexion sur l'expérience humaine.

KIKI SMITH

Lorsqu’un cheval se couche, c’est parce qu’il se sent en sécurité, ce qui, pour Deborah Butterfield, est une façon de dire qu’il est normal de se rendre vulnérable. « Echo », construit de manière à respecter ses compétences en matière de recherche de nourriture et sa capacité à souder le métal, n’adhère pas à une représentation traditionnelle d’un cheval, mais révèle plutôt quelque chose de sa nature essentielle. Construite à partir de tôles d’acier assemblées, certaines ondulées, d’autres pliées ou serties, c’est une pièce qui porte la marque du temps, vieillie jusqu’à une patine brun rouille, des imperfections célébrées plutôt que dissimulées. Le choix délibéré des matériaux et de leur traitement par Butterfield ajoute de la profondeur et du caractère, transformant Untitled, Echo en plus d’une simple représentation équine - il reflète la beauté sauvage et la résilience de l’animal qu’il représente.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD (EN)

<div><font face=Aptos size=3 color=black>Born in 1881, the same year as fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso, María Blanchard carved her distinct path within modernist art, blending Cubist influences with emotional depth. <em>"La Comida" </em>demonstrates Blanchard's evolution towards a more figurative style while retaining explicit Cubist references. This shift aligns her work with the “<em>Retour à l'ordre”</em> movement, a tendency many fellow artists embraced at the time. Thematically, “<em>La  Comida</em>” recalls van Gogh's early works, particularly "<em>The Potato Eaters</em>" (1885), in both palette and subject matter. Like van Gogh, Blanchard draws attention to the simplicity of rural life, using muted tones of browns, reds, and ochres to convey the grounded, almost austere nature of the figures around the table.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Aptos size=3 color=black>Blanchard’s work after 1921 progressively bridged the gap between the rigid forms of early Cubism and a more emotive, personal representation of her subjects. Geometric rigors are present, but the scene's naturalistic light and volumetric composition echo Cézanne's influence. The sharp brushstrokes and angular figures evoke a sense of protection, reflecting Blanchard's intention to shield the inner spirit of her characters from the gaze of others. Yet, her sensitive portrayal invites viewers to connect emotionally with her work, engendering a sense of intimacy and quiet communion. Despite the somber palette, there is a subtle warmth, with the figures' inner spirit shielded from judgment, much like those in van Gogh's painting. Yet in synthesizing elements of Cubism, Blanchard added emotional complexity to the rural themes van Gogh explored, making her contribution distinct yet reflective of earlier artistic traditions.</font></div>

MARIA BLANCHARD

<div><font face=Aptos size=3 color=black>María Blanchard, born in 1881, initially emerged as a committed Cubist painter, heavily influenced by her friendships with Juan Gris and other avant-garde figures. Her work in the 1910s showcased rigorous geometric abstraction, yet by the early 1920s, she began to transition toward a more figurative style. This shift aligned her with the “<em>Retour à l'ordre”</em> movement, in which many artists returned to more classical forms after the upheavals of war and early avant-garde experimentation. Blanchard's increasing focus on emotional depth and human subjects became a defining feature of these later works, culminating in pieces like "<em>Fillette à la pomme</em>."</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Aptos size=3 color=black>Blanchard's Cubist roots, prominent in the angular treatment of the hands and apple, are softened throughout the girl's modest attire, suggesting a spiritual or religious significance. The model's pious countenance and the muted palette of browns, grays, and blues further reinforce that the painting continues a thread of religious themes, as seen in Picasso's early masterwork, "<em>The First Communion</em>," and Blanchard's own "<em>Girl at her First Communion</em>." The apple held in hand introduces layers of symbolism, often representing knowledge, innocence, or temptation, an association that suggests an emotional transition, bridging childhood and deeper awareness.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Aptos size=3 color=black>Blanchard's ability to fuse Cubist form with symbolic narrative and emotional complexity makes this painting a poignant reflection of her evolution as an artist. She humanizes the rigid forms of Cubism while imbuing her subjects with depth and inner life.</font></div>

MARIA BLANCHARD

Les premières œuvres en papier mâché de Manuel Neri ont ouvert la voie à la technique sculpturale, et son approche de la peinture de ses sculptures reflète son profond engagement dans le potentiel expressif de la couleur et de la forme. Le choix et la disposition des couleurs dans Hombre Colorado II créent une réponse particulièrement viscérale qui reflète sa compréhension nuancée de la dimension psychologique et émotionnelle de la couleur. Conçu et produit en 1958, Hombre Colorado II reflète une époque où Neri et sa femme Joan Brown étaient engagés dans un riche échange artistique et contribuaient de manière significative à l'évolution de leurs styles respectifs et du mouvement figuratif de la Bay Area, dans lequel ils jouaient un rôle essentiel.

NERI MANUEL

"A Dream Within a Dream" est une importante série de peintures et de sérigraphies de Ryan McGinnes qui tire son nom d'un célèbre poème d'Edgar Allan Poe. Explorant les thèmes de la perception, de la réalité et du subconscient, McGinnes incorpore une variété de symboles et de motifs, notamment des formes géométriques, des éléments botaniques et des motifs figuratifs, qu'il organise en motifs complexes qui semblent se déplacer et se transformer sous les yeux du spectateur. Le titre suggère un sentiment d'ambiguïté et d'incertitude, reflétant la nature insaisissable de la réalité et la qualité de fuite de l'expérience humaine. En abordant les thèmes de la perception et de l'illusion, McGinnes encourage les spectateurs à remettre en question leurs hypothèses sur le monde et à envisager la possibilité que la réalité soit plus fluide et subjective qu'il n'y paraît.

RYAN MCGINNESS

Deborah Butterfield est une sculptrice américaine, surtout connue pour ses sculptures de chevaux faites d'objets en bois, en métal et autres objets trouvés. La pièce de 1981, Untitled (Cheval), est composée de bâtons et de papier sur armature métallique. L'échelle impressionnante de cette pièce crée un effet remarquable en personne, présentant un exemple frappant du célèbre sujet de Butterfield. À l'origine, Butterfield a créé les chevaux à partir du bois et d'autres matériaux trouvés sur sa propriété à Bozeman, au Montana, et a vu les chevaux comme un autoportrait métaphorique, exploitant la résonance émotionnelle de ces formes.

DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD (EN)

HERB ALPERT - Vibrato - bronze - 93 x 14 in.

ALPERT HERB

HERB ALPERT - Inspiré - bronze - 108 x 30 x 26 in.

ALPERT HERB

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>The monotype holds a distinctive place within Gauguin's oeuvre, offering a window into the artist's innovative process and his quest to reconcile the challenge of unifying painting and drawing. This medium became the foundation of an impressive corpus that evolved from his innovative Brittany woodcuts and, later, as the means to reimagine the boundaries between printmaking, drawing, and painting during his years in Tahiti and the Marquesas. </font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>“<em>Bathers”</em> belongs to Gauguin's 1899–1903 series of "traced monotypes," a technique where the artist drew or pressed on the back of paper placed over an inked or painted surface, resulting in a single reversed impression. This process introduced subtle textures and a sense of immediacy while allowing Gauguin to explore the interplay of positive and negative forms. By late 1902, the artist had begun keying the drawings on the versos of these monotypes to the direction of his paintings, resulting in a deliberate reversal of themes. The reversed orientation of this monotype, for example, is associated with the painting "<em>Famille tahitienne</em>" (W.618, Stephen A. Cohen collection, a.k.a., “<em>A Walk by the Sea</em>”), and it exemplifies this practice, raising intriguing questions about the creation sequence.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>The reversed orientation offers a compelling argument for understanding the monotype as a concurrent experiment rather than a preparatory study. Rather than serving as a preliminary blueprint, the monotype served as a dynamic tool for experimentation, allowing Gauguin to analyze and retest compositional ideas, color harmonies, and spatial relationships in real-time. The act of transferring the image introduced an element of unpredictability—textures softened, colors became more fluid, and linear forms took on painterly qualities. This spontaneity enabled Gauguin to step outside the constraints of oil painting, offering him fresh insights into how elements of the composition could evolve. Through this iterative process, the monotype would have informed adjustments to “<em>Famille tahitienne</em>,” enriching the painting's vibrancy, depth, and compositional balance. The interplay between the two mediums underscores Gauguin's innovative approach, treating the monotype not as a secondary exercise but as an integral part of his artistic vision.</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>While the monotype lacks the polished refinement of the painting, its raw immediacy and formal sensitivity reveal Gauguin's fascination with experimentation and spontaneity. Far from being a preparatory study, “<em>Bathers”</em> likely enabled Gauguin to deconstruct and reimagine <em>“Famille tahitienne” </em>as he worked. This creative interplay underscores Gauguin's broader artistic quest during his later years: to distill the essence of life and nature into forms that combine immediacy with timeless resonance.</font></div>

PAUL GAUGUIN

Manuel Neri était une figure centrale du Bay Area Figurative Movement dans les années 1960. Au lieu de formes abstraites, le groupe mettait l'accent sur l'émotion à travers la puissance de la forme humaine. La présente œuvre, "Sans titre" (1982), explore la forme féminine à l'échelle réelle. Tout au long de ses 60 ans de carrière, Neri a préféré travailler avec un seul modèle, Maria Julia Klimenko. L'absence de visage dans de nombreuses sculptures ajoute un élément de mystère et d'ambiguïté. Dans "Sans titre", la composition est axée sur la structure et la forme de la figure. Manuel Neri est représenté dans de nombreuses collections de musées à travers le monde, notamment à la Addison Gallery/Phillips Academy, à la Anderson Collection de l'université de Stanford, à l'Art Institute of Chicago, au Cantor Arts Center de l'université de Stanford, au Cincinnati Art Museum, au Crocker Art Museum de Sacramento, en Californie, au Denver Art Museum, au El Paso Museum of Art, au Texas, aux Fine Arts Museums de San Francisco, aux Harvard University Art Museums, au Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden de Washington, D. C., au Honolulu Museum of Art, à l'Université de Californie du Sud, à l'Université de Californie du Sud et à l'Université de Californie du Sud.C. ; Honolulu Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York et la National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

NERI MANUEL

Connu pour sa fascination pour la gloire, la célébrité et les icônes culturelles, Andy Warhol a parfois dépassé le cadre de ses contemporains pour s'intéresser à des personnages historiques. Les théories de Goethe sur la couleur mettent l'accent sur la manière dont les couleurs sont perçues et sur leur impact psychologique, ce qui contraste avec la compréhension de la couleur en tant que phénomène scientifique, basée sur la physique newtonienne. Bien qu'il n'y ait pas de lien direct entre la théorie des couleurs de Goethe et le fait que Warhol l'ait choisi comme sujet, cela met en évidence la façon dont nous considérons l'art de Warhol comme s'engageant dans des traditions historiques pour symboliser un lien entre leurs domaines et leurs époques respectives. En ce sens, l'œuvre constitue un hommage et une collaboration intertemporelle, reliant le langage visuel de Warhol à la conscience qu'avait Goethe de la couleur en tant qu'élément puissant et stimulant de la perception.

ANDY WARHOL (EN)

À la fin des années 1990, Manuel Neri a commencé à transformer de nombreuses sculptures en plâtre en bronze, revenant souvent à des œuvres antérieures pour produire de nouvelles interprétations imaginées de chaque pièce. Ces séries, presque indiscernables en termes de forme et de détails de surface, explorent l'impact de différentes combinaisons de couleurs et de marquages qui impliquent diverses actions, notamment l'incision, le brossage, le grattage ou la superposition de matériaux. En expérimentant différentes techniques de marquage, Neri a pu explorer l'interaction entre la forme, la couleur, la texture et la lumière. Dans le contexte de la Figure debout n° 3, Neri a limité sa palette à une palette de couleurs analogues, en diluant la peinture pour créer des gradations subtiles qui mettent en valeur l'extérieur lisse et raffiné de la sculpture.

NERI MANUEL

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia was an authentic visionary in art, and they are rare. Of those whose métier is sculpture, Alexander Calder and Harry Bertoia are the twentieth-century American standouts. They are engineers of beauty; their creative currency is feats of invention and pure artistry that honor our experience of them (if we are willing to quiet our mind) as if a sacred event. It was Duchamp who suggested Calder call his kinetic works “mobiles”, but it was up to Bertoia himself to coin a word to describe something for which there was little precedent. Visually precise, kinetic, and offering resonant, vibratory sound, a “Sonambient” sculpture is at once a metaphor for our sentient experience in the world yet capable of inducing an aura of transcendent experience. Given that insight, it is easy to understand Bertoia’s view that “I don’t hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning.”</font></div><br><br><div> </div><br><br><div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>The present “Sonambient” sculpture is a forty-eight-inch-tall curtain of thin-gauged tines. Once activated, it becomes a 15 3/4 inch long, 8 inches deep wall of sound. Five rows of narrow tines are staggered in number, alternating between 30 and 29 tines that, when activated, present as an undulating wall of sound. When touched or moved by air currents, the rods produce a sound that, while metallic, does not betray its source of inspiration: the serene connection Bertoia felt in observing the gentle undulating movement of desert grasses. As always, this is a Bertoia sculpture that invites participation in the experience of changing shapes and sounds, a participatory work that asks us to be present in the moment, to connect across time with the object and its creator.</font></div>

BERTOIA HARRY

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was a prosperous cultural period that helped shape Chinese history's foundations for future centuries. This era was marked by notable technological and cultural advances, including gunpowder and printing. Among artistic advances during this period was the perfection of the sancai glaze technique, which was a prominent attribute of sculpture during this period. Sancai (tri-colored) glazing; the three glaze-colors used were ochre or brown, green and clear. Glazed wares where much more costly to produce than other terracotta wares, and were therefore only reserved for the wealthiest patrons. <br><br>The Sancai-Glazed Earth Spirit offered here depicts a "Zhenmushou." These are mythical hybrid creatures whose bodies are a combination of dogs, lions, boars and other animals. These fierce looking beasts would be found in pairs guarding the entrance of Tang Dynasty tombs.

CHINOIS

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was a prosperous period that helped shape Chinese history's foundations for future centuries. This era was marked by notable technological and cultural advances, including gunpowder and printing. Among artistic advances during this period was the perfection of the sancai glaze technique, which was a prominent attribute of sculpture during this period. Sancai (tri-colored) glazing used the three glaze-colors were ochre or brown, green and clear. Glazed wares were much more costly to produce than other terracotta wares, and were therefore only reserved for the wealthiest patrons. <br><br>This Sancai-Glazed Horse would have been an incredible status symbol for its owner and many have been lost to time. This sculpture is comparable to examples held in museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CHINOIS

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>In Harry Bertoia's oeuvre, "<em>Willow</em>" stands apart as an extraordinary synthesis of natural inspiration and innovative metalwork. Its cascading strands of stainless-steel capture the weeping elegance of a willow tree's drooping branches while introducing a dynamic, interactive quality through its shimmering surface and subtle responsiveness to movement. The strands—whether referred to as "tinsels," "filaments," or "tendrils"—reflect the delicacy of natural forms, blending artistry with technical mastery.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Bertoia, a visionary sculptor with an unparalleled ability to transform industrial materials into organic beauty, likely employed meticulous processes to create "<em>Willow,</em>" cutting thin sheets of stainless steel into fine strips and expertly attaching them to a central core, positioning each strand to flow like water or sway like leaves in the breeze. The tactile quality of the strands, which respond to air currents or touch, invites the viewer into a contemplative engagement with the work, much like one might feel beneath the canopy of a willow tree.</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>This piece epitomizes Bertoia's lifelong fascination with nature, stemming from his early years in the rural village of San Lorenzo, Italy. His sensitivity to the organic world continually informed his artistic practice, from his celebrated Sonambient sound sculptures to creations like “<em>Willow</em>, “which reimagine the relationship between form and environment. As he once said, "I no longer hold onto terms like music and sculpture. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning."</font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Once again , Bertoia captivates us by reaching beyond the traditional boundaries of sculpture, delivering a work that is as much a sensory experience as a visual one. It is a harmonious blend of natural inspiration and innovative artistry, a reminder of the sacred beauty found in the intersection of art and the natural world.</font></div>

BERTOIA HARRY

Façonné par son Italie natale et l’Amérique d’adoption, Joseph Stella a exploré une gamme extraordinaire de styles et de médiums dans des œuvres d’une diversité et d’une originalité étonnantes. En 1911, Stella surfe sur la vague avant-gardiste des tendances fauvistes, cubistes et futuristes, mais il est le seul moderniste américain à vivre au jour le jour avec les maîtres anciens italiens. La pose et le traitement de « Nu couché » sont liés à une série d’œuvres que Stella a peintes dans les années 1920 représentant des femmes séduisantes provenant de sources mythologiques ou fantastiques telles que « Léda et le cygne » et Ondine, une belle nymphe de l’eau d’un conte de fées allemand romantique populaire du XIXe siècle. Représenté sans imagerie florale ou symboliste, Nu couché, peint dans les années 1930, reflète mieux cette période qui donne à réfléchir.

JOSEPH STELLA

JESSIE ARMS BOTKE - Deux paons blancs - huile sur carton - 29 1/4 x 24 1/2 in.

JESSIE BRAS BOTKE

WILLIAM WENDT - Laguna Hills - huile sur toile - 25 x 30 in.

WILLIAM WENDT

ALEX KATZ - Peter - huile sur panneau de masonite - 15 7/8 x 7 1/8 in.

ALEX KATZ (EN)

Jaudon was one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration movement. With a foundation of feminist theory, Jaudon repositioned what were considered trivial art forms and minor visual images. These forms and symbols were relegated because of their association with the feminine or non-Western. <br><br>At the same time, Palmyra exemplifies the ability of Jaudon to create aesthetically beautiful works. Jaudon interweaves shades of red into ornate arabesques recalling gothic stonework, celtic knots, and Islamic calligraphy. The crispness of the lines against the impasto and the layering of red tones makes it appear that the lines are carved like stone.

VALERIE JAUDON

MARC QUINN - Lovebomb - photo laminée sur aluminium - 108 1/4 x 71 3/4 x 37 3/4 in.

MARC QUINN

<div><font size=3 color=black>Harry Bertoia's “Sonambient” sculptures are renowned for their meditative qualities, inviting viewers into a serene and contemplative state. Among the five “Sonambients” in our exhibition, even this most petite sculpture stands out with its remarkable sonic capabilities. This work, with its 64 tines, each capped with long, slender finials, produces a high-timbered sonority that is surprisingly robust. The delicate yet powerful sound offers an auditory experience that encourages reflection and heightened awareness.</font></div><br><br><div><font size=3> </font></div><br><br><div><font size=3 color=black>A pivotal aspect of the “Sonambient” sculptures' evolution was the involvement of Bertoia's brother, Oreste, whose expertise as a musician enabled him to help Harry reconceptualize these sculptures, not just as visual or kinetic art but as instruments capable of producing an immersive soundscape. This collaboration highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of Bertoia's work, merging the worlds of sculpture and music. Experimenting with rods and tines of different metals, varying in length and thickness, he discovered a wide range of tones and textural droning sounds. Exhilarated by their ethereal, otherworldly resonance and his brother's encouragement, Bertoia filled his historic barn in Bally, Pennsylvania, with more than sixty “Sonambient” sculptures. It became a kind of orchestral studio and laboratory where he recorded albums and held concerts, and the once lowly barn became a hallowed place—a chapel of sorts—where visitors experienced it as a pilgrimage and a place of profound inspiration and meditation.</font></div>

BERTOIA HARRY

<div><font face=Calibri size=3 color=black>In 1853, a twenty-three-year-old Bierstadt commenced study at the Düsseldorf Academy, the school primarily responsible for shaping the technical precision and atmospheric depth of the preeminent American landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century. Four years later, in the company of fellow artist Sanford Robinson Gifford, he painted <em>“Capri.”</em> Inscribed with the title and dated “June 11, 1857,” it is a striking example of the young artist’s early mastery, painted just two years before his watershed campaign in 1859 in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the United States government. It is a fully realized study emphasizing the precision, detailed observation, and careful glazing technique indicative of the academic tradition of gradually building up the surface. He would begin with a detailed drawing, followed by monochromatic underpainting and successive layers of thin, transparent color glazes that achieve depth and luminosity in the translucent hues of the seawater rarely matched in the annals of landscape painting. <em>“Capri”</em> is a lovely achievement that foreshadows the drama and grandeur that would define Bierstadt’s later work, illustrating how his time in Italy helped shape his approach to landscape painting.</font></div>

ALBERT BIERSTADT

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) was a prosperous cultural period that helped shape Chinese history's foundations for future centuries. This era was marked by notable technological and cultural advances, including gunpowder and printing. Among artistic advances during this period was the perfection of the sancai glaze technique, which was a prominent attribute of sculpture during this period. Sancai (tri-colored) glazing; the three glaze-colors used were ochre or brown, green and clear. Glazed wares where much more costly to produce than other terracotta wares, and were therefore only reserved for the wealthiest patrons. <br><br>The Sancai-Glazed Earth Spirit offered here depicts a "Zhenmushou." These are mythical hybrid creatures whose bodies are a combination of dogs, lions, boars and other animals. These fierce looking beasts would be found in pairs guarding the entrance of Tang Dynasty tombs.

CHINOIS

JOANNA POUSETTE-DART - Sans titre (Étude du désert rouge) - acrylique sur panneau de bois - 33 1/2 x 42 x 3/4 in.

JOANNA POUSETTE-DART

SETH KAUFMAN - Lignum Spire - bronze à patine verte - 103 1/2 x 22 x 17 in.

SETH KAUFMAN

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE - Bateaux vénitiens à Sotto Marino - huile sur panneau - 23 3/8 x 26 1/4 in.

EDGAR ALWIN PAYNE

LÉON AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE - Laveuses, le soir - pastel sur papier marouflé sur toile - 17 1/2 x 13 3/4 po.

LÉON AUGUSTIN LHERMITTE

FRANCISCO TOLEDO - Sans titre - Technique mixte sur papier - 8 x 10 1/4 po.

TOLÉO FRANCISCO

Hofmann painted "Yellow Vase" just two years before his first solo exhibition at Art of This Century gallery in New York in 1944. This vibrant work is an impromptu study that examines the breakdown of form, which in 1942 was an evolving principle of Abstract Expressionism. Hofmann was a prominent teacher at this time, and his students included Helen Frankenthaler, Allan Kaprow, Michael Goldberg, and dozens of others. <br><br>"Yellow Vase" captures the dynamism of Hofmann's unique approach to representation and abstraction. His works' energy and movement would prove to be among his most significant contributions to 20th Century American Art.

HOFMANN HANS

ROY LICHTENSTEIN - Nature morte, tirée du Geldzahler Portfolio (C. 310) - sérigraphie en couleurs - 30 x 22 1/4 in.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

DAVID HOCKNEY - Two Pembroke Studio Chairs - lithographie en couleurs - 18 3/4 x 21 7/8 in.

DAVID HOCKNEY (EN)

AI WEIWEI - Chaises "Fairytale" - bois - 49 x 45 x 17 1/2 in.

AI WEIWEI

HENRI MATISSE

Provenance: <br>Heather James, CA<br>Private collection, NV (acquired from above May, 2000)

CHINOIS

ANDY WARHOL - Cow, 1976 - sérigraphie sur papier peint - 42 7/8 x 27 7/8 in.

ANDY WARHOL (EN)

LOUISE NEVELSON - Série Canada - plexiglas avec attaches métalliques - 44 1/4 x 31 x 11 1/2 po.

LOUISE NEVELSON

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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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

GÉORGIE O'KEEFFE

Led by a triumvirate of painters of the American Scene, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood took on the task of exploring, defining, and celebrating the Midwest as a credible entity within the geographical, political, and mythological landscape of the United States. Their populist works were figurative and narrative-driven, and they gained widespread popularity among a Depression-weary American public. The landscapes Grant Wood painted, and the lithographs marketed by Associated American Artists were comforting reminders of traditional Midwestern values and the simplicity of country life. Yet, Wood's most iconic works, including American Gothic, were to be viewed through the lens of elusive narratives and witty ironies that reflect an artist who delighted in sharing his charming and humorous perspective on farm life. <br><br>In 1930, Wood achieved national fame and recognition with American Gothic, a fictionalized depiction of his sister, Nan, and his family dentist. Frequently regarded as the most famous American painting of the twentieth century, to fully grasp American Gothic's essential nature, one must recognize Wood's profound connection to his Iowan roots, a bond that borders on a singular fixation and the often-brutal confrontation between the moral and cultural rigidity of Midwest isolationism and the standards that prevailed elsewhere in America. This war of values and morality became dominant throughout Wood's oeuvre. Their fascination with American Gothic may have mystified the public, but the story, told in the attitude of a farmer and his wife, is as lean and brittle as the pitchfork he carries. Their attitude, as defiant as it is confrontational, is an unflinching dare to uppity gallery-goers to judge their immaculate well-scrubbed farm. American Gothic became an overnight sensation, an ambiguous national icon often interpreted as a self-effacing parody of midwestern life. Yet it also served as an unflinching mirror to urban elite attitudes and their often-derisive view of heartland values and way of life. In Grant Wood's hands, the people of the Midwest have stiffened and soured, their rectitude implacable.<br> <br>Portrait of Nan is Grant Wood's most intimate work. He may have been motivated to paint it to make amends for the significant scrutiny and harsh treatment his sister received as American Gothic's sternly posed female. Grant poured his heart into it as a sign of sibling love. Intent upon painting her as straightforward and simply as possible so as not to invite unintended interpretations, Wood's deep attachment to the portrait was significant enough for him to think of it as having irreplaceable value. When he moved from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City in 1935, he designed his entire living room around the work. It occupied the place of honor above the fireplace and was the only painting he refused to sell. <br> <br>The lithograph July Fifteenth, issued in 1938, proves his mystical vision of the Iowan heartland is anything but a pitchfork approach. Drawings assumed central importance in Wood's output, and this work is executed in meticulous detail, proving his drawings were at least as complex, if not more so, than his paintings. The surface of the present work takes on an elaborate, decorative rhythm, echoed throughout the land that is soft, verdant, and fertile. Structurally, it alludes in equal measure to the geometry of modern art and the decorative patterning of folk-art traditions. This is a magical place, a fulsome display of an idealized version of an eternal, lovely, and benign heartland. <br><br>The Young Artist, an en plein air sketch, may have been produced during, or slightly after, what Wood called his "palette-knife stage" that consumed him in 1925. Having not yet traveled to Munich where, in 1928, he worked on a stain-glass window commission and came under the influence of the Northern Renaissance painters that sparked his interest in the compositional severity and detailed technique associated with his mature works, here, he worked quickly, and decisively. The view is from a hilltop at Kenwood Park that overlooks the Cedar River Valley near Cedar Rapids, where he built a house for his sister, Nan.

GRANT WOOD

<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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

RIVERA DIEGO

Selon le catalogue raisonné compilé par le Brandywine River Museum of Art, le dessin préliminaire pour Puritan Cod Fishers a été achevé par N. C Wyeth avant sa mort en octobre 1945. L'entrée présente une image de l'esquisse ainsi que les inscriptions de l'artiste et son titre, Puritan Cod Fishers, qualifié par le catalogue d'"alternate" (alternatif). Quoi qu'il en soit, cette grande toile est une œuvre unique dont Andrew Wyeth a rappelé plus tard qu'elle avait été peinte uniquement de sa main, une collaboration délimitée de la conception et de la composition du père, concrétisée par l'exécution remarquable du fils. Pour Andrew, cela a dû être une expérience profondément ressentie et émouvante. Compte tenu de l'attention portée par son père aux détails et à l'authenticité, les lignes de la petite embarcation à voile représentent une échalote, utilisée au XVIe siècle. D'un autre côté, Andrew a probablement approfondi les teintes de la mer agitée plus que ne l'aurait fait son père, un choix qui accentue de manière appropriée la nature périlleuse de la tâche.

Andrew Wyeth & N. C. Wyeth

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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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.

ALEXANDRE CALDER

N.C. Wyeth’s extraordinary skills as an illustrator were borne of impeccable draftsmanship and as a painter, his warmly rich, harmonious sense of color, and ability to capture the quality of light itself. But it is his unmatched artistry in vivifying story and character with a powerful sense of mood that we admire most of all — the ability to transport himself to the world and time of his creation and to convey it with a beguiling sense of conviction. That ability is as apparent in the compositional complexities of Treasure Island’s “One More Step, Mr. Hands!” as it is here, in the summary account of a square-rigged, seventeenth-century merchant ship tossed upon the seas. The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 is a simple statement of observable facts, yet Wyeth’s impeccable genius as an illustrator imbues it with the bracing salt air and taste that captures the adventuresome spirit of the men and women who are largely credited with the founding of America. That spirit is carried on the wind and tautly billowed sails, the jaunty heeling of the ship at the nose of a stiff gale, the thrusting, streamed-limned clouds, and the gulls jauntily arranged to celebrate an arrival as they are the feathered angels of providence guiding it to safe harbor.<br><br>The Coming of the Mayflower in 1620 was based on two studies, a composition drawing in graphite and a small presentation painting. The finished mural appears to have been installed in 1941.

N.C. WYETH

WILLEM DE KOONING - Femme dans une barque - huile sur papier couché sur masonite - 47 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.

WILLEM DE KOONING

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.<br><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.<br><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.<br><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

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.<br><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.<br><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.”<br><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.

ALEXANDRE CALDER

Au début des années 1870, Winslow Homer a souvent peint des scènes de la vie à la campagne près d'un petit hameau agricole réputé depuis des générations pour ses remarquables champs de blé, situé entre la rivière Hudson et les Catskills, dans l'État de New York. Aujourd'hui, Hurley est bien plus célèbre pour avoir inspiré l'une des plus grandes œuvres d'Homer, Snap the Whip, peinte au cours de l'été 1872. Parmi les nombreuses autres peintures inspirées par la région, Girl Standing in the Wheatfield est riche en sentiments, mais sans sentimentalisme excessif. Elle est directement liée à une étude peinte en France en 1866 et intitulée In the Wheatfields (Dans les champs de blé), ainsi qu'à une autre étude peinte l'année suivante, après son retour en Amérique. Mais Homère aurait sans doute été le plus fier de celle-ci. Il s'agit d'un portrait, d'une étude de costume, d'une peinture de genre dans la grande tradition de la peinture pastorale européenne, et d'un tour de force atmosphérique dramatiquement rétro-éclairé, imprégné de la lumière de l'heure qui s'estompe rapidement, avec des notes lambda et fleuries et des touches d'épis de blé. En 1874, Homer a envoyé quatre tableaux à l'exposition de la National Academy of Design. L'une d'entre elles était intitulée "Girl". Ne serait-ce pas celle-ci ?

WINSLOW HOMER

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. <br><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. <br><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

Le monde de Marc Chagall ne peut être contenu ou limité par les étiquettes que nous lui attachons. C'est un monde d'images et de significations qui forment leur propre discours splendidement mystique. Les Mariés sous le baldaquin a été entrepris alors que l'artiste entrait dans sa 90e année, un homme qui avait connu la tragédie et le conflit, mais qui n'avait jamais oublié les moments de plaisir de la vie. Ici, les délices rêveurs d'un mariage dans un village russe, avec ses arrangements de participants bien rodés, nous sont présentés avec un esprit si joyeux et une innocence si gaie qu'il est impossible de résister à son charme. En utilisant une émulsion dorée combinant l'huile et la gouache opaque à base d'eau, la chaleur, le bonheur et l'optimisme du positivisme habituel de Chagall sont enveloppés d'un éclat lumineux suggérant l'influence des icônes religieuses à feuilles d'or ou de la peinture du début de la Renaissance qui cherchait à donner l'impression d'une lumière divine ou d'une illumination spirituelle. L'utilisation d'une combinaison d'huile et de gouache peut s'avérer difficile. Mais ici, dans Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, Chagall l'utilise pour donner à la scène une qualité d'un autre monde, presque comme si elle venait de se matérialiser à partir de l'œil de son esprit. La finesse de sa texture donne l'impression que la lumière émane de l'œuvre elle-même et confère une qualité spectrale aux personnages qui flottent dans le ciel.

MARC CHAGALL

Tom Wesselmann will undoubtedly be remembered for associating his erotic themes with the colors of the American flag. But Wesselmann had considerable gifts as a draftsman, and the line was his principal preoccupation, first as a cartoonist and later as an ardent admirer of Matisse. That he also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel wall reliefs proved a revelation. He began to focus ever more on drawing for the sake of drawing, enchanted that the new medium could be lifted and held: “It really is like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper.”<br><br>The Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring one of the ground-breaking works in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote Wesselmann wondering if it should be cataloged as a drawing or a sculpture. The work had caused such a stir that when Eric Fischl visited Wesselmann at his studio and saw steel-cut works for the first time, he remembered feeling jealous. He wanted to try it but dared not. It was clear: ‘Tom owned the technique completely.’<br><br>Wesselmann owed much of that technique to his year-long collaboration with metalwork fabricator Alfred Lippincott. Together, in 1984 they honed a method for cutting the steel with a laser that provided the precision he needed to show the spontaneity of his sketches. Wesselmann called it ‘the best year of my life’, elated at the results that he never fully achieved with aluminum that required each shape be hand-cut. “I anticipated how exciting it would be for me to get a drawing back in steel. I could hold it in my hands. I could pick it up by the lines…it was so exciting…a kind of near ecstasy, anyway, but there’s really been something about the new work that grabbed me.”<br><br>Bedroom Brunette with Irises is a Steel Drawing masterwork that despite its uber-generous scale, utilizes tight cropping to provide an unimposing intimacy while maintaining a free and spontaneous quality. The figure’s outstretched arms and limbs and body intertwine with the petals and the interior elements providing a flowing investigative foray of black lines and white ‘drop out’ shapes provided by the wall. It recalls Matisse and any number of his reclining odalisque paintings. Wesselmann often tested monochromatic values to discover the extent to which color would transform his hybrid objects into newly developed Steel Drawing works and, in this case, continued with a color steel-cut version of the composition Bedroom Blonde with Irises (1987) and later still, in 1993 with a large-scale drawing in charcoal and pastel on paper.

TOM WESSELMANN

Le Portrait de Sylvie Lacombe, peint par Théo van Rysselberghe en 1906, est un chef-d'œuvre classique réalisé par l'un des portraitistes les plus raffinés et les plus cohérents de son époque. La couleur est harmonieuse, le pinceau vigoureux et adapté à sa tâche matérielle, son corps et son visage sont vrais et révélateurs. La personne représentée est la fille de son grand ami, le peintre Georges Lacombe, qui a partagé une association étroite avec Gauguin et a été membre des Nabis avec les artistes Bonnard, Denis et Vuillard, entre autres. Si nous connaissons aujourd'hui Sylvie Lacombe, c'est grâce à l'habileté de Van Rysselberghe à rendre les subtiles expressions du visage et, par une observation minutieuse et un souci du détail, à donner un aperçu de son monde intérieur. Il a choisi un regard direct, ses yeux vers les vôtres, une alliance inéluctable entre le sujet et le spectateur, quelle que soit notre relation physique avec le tableau. Van Rysselberghe avait largement abandonné la technique pointilliste lorsqu'il a peint ce portrait. Mais il a continué à appliquer les principes de la théorie des couleurs en utilisant des teintes de rouge - roses et mauves - contre des verts pour créer une palette harmonieuse et améliorée de couleurs complémentaires à laquelle il a ajouté un accent fort pour attirer le regard - un nœud rouge intensément saturé posé de manière asymétrique sur le côté de sa tête.

THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN - Paysage de rivière avec un moulin à vent et une chapelle - huile sur panneau - 22 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.

JAN JOSEPHSZOON VAN GOYEN

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