Irma Engel Grabhorn

'The Cote d'Azur', Paris, Salon d'Automne, Post-Impressionist California Artist

Circa 1965

Signed lower right, 'DeMartis' for James Joseph DeMartis (American, 1926-1996) and painted circa 1965. Born in Queens, New York, James Joseph DeMartis served with distinction in World War II and was decorated at the Battle of the Bulge. He subsequently attended painting classes at New York's Museum of Modern Art (1946-47) and, later, at the Art Students League of New York. He then enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts in Santa Monica, California until 1949, before leaving t study in Europe in 1950. He settled in Florence, Italy where he attended L’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (1950-54). While continuing to study painting, he participated in several group and one-man shows in Italy and Switzerland. In 1956, DeMartis returned to New York at the height of the American Abstract Expressionist movement. He settled with his new family in Brooklyn and, after participating in a series of grass-roots galleries opened with fellow artists, he opened the Armory Gallery and studio in Manhattan. He also exhibited in other Manhattan galleries and at the National Arts Club. In 1961, De Martis was awarded the prestigious Emily Lowe Award for Painting. This led to to shows at the Ward Egglestone, ROKO, Pierantonio and Artemis West galleries from 1962-68. He then returned to Europe to participate in a group show in Florence. Upon his return, he opened the Brownstone Gallery in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, where he exhibited his own and others’ works until 1988. James De Martis exhibited widely and with success including at one-man shows in Tokyo, Brooklyn, New York, Sarasota, Florida, San Francisco and Santa Fe. Select Exhibitions: 1953 Brodighera, Italy 1954 Galerie an der Reuss, Lucerne, Switzerland 1955 La Casa di Dante, Florence, Italy 1956 Walden School, New York, New York 1957 Bottega 57 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1960, 61 Hicks Street Gallery, Brooklyn New York 1960 Heights Casino, Brooklyn, New York 1961 Ward Eggleston Gallery, New York, New York 1962 Ray Gallery, Brooklyn New York 1962 Pietroantonio Gallery, New York, New York 1962,3,5,7 Armory Gallery, New York, New York 1965 Brooklyn Arts Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1966,9 Brooklyn Heights Association 1967 Roko Gallery, New York, New York 1970,3,4,5,8,9,83 Brownstone Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1972 Artemis East Gallery, New York, New York 1975 Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York 1977 Marcoleo Gallery, New York, New York 1978 Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York 1989,91,92 Gallery Gion Tokyo, Japan 1994 Private show, Sarasota, Florida 1995 Private show, San Francisco, California 1995 Private show, Copake, New York 1996 Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania May, 2018 Retrospective show, Ashawagh Hall...

Signed lower right, 'DeMartis' for James Joseph DeMartis (American, 1926-1996) and dated 1964. Born in Queens, New York, James Joseph DeMartis s...

Signed lower right, in graphite, 'Rainey Bennett' (American, 1907-1998) and dated 1958; titled, verso, 'Romantic Landscape' and accompanied by original ...

Signed lower left, 'C. Riter' for Carl Frederick Riter (American, born. 1915) and dated '6-'67'. Stamped verso with certification of authenticity...

Signed lower right, 'L. L. Rahm' for Laura Rahm (American, 20th century); accompanied by old exhibition label. Matted dimensions: 14.25 x .25 x 11.75 inches. Laura Rahm has exhibite...

French School; unsigned and painted circa 1950. A mid-twentieth century, Post Impressionist school pastel showing a group of bathers on a river bank. An elegant and accomplished wo...

Armand Nakache was the foremost champion of Expressionism in France, an area unfairly shunned by a society more attracted to the charms of classical painting, Impressionism, Post-Imp...

"Whew!" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece in the lower left. It depicts a man on a motorcycle doing a wheelie on a be...

Oil pastel and watercolor on paper. Signed and dated to lower right edge 'Vaclav Vytlacil 1953'. Signed and dated to lower left edge 'Vytlacil 1953'. It is also titled on reverse. Pa...

Dark tonal Italian landscape with hits of yellow greens and reds. The pastel image is framed in a natural wooden frame with a white matte. Artist signed the work in the bottom right ...

Miniature Landscape Provenance: Virginia Field, Arts administrator; New York, N.Y. Assistant director for Asia House gallery. (she was friends with John von Wicht and Andy Warhol) Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Influenced by Spinoza, Knut Hamsun, and Wladyslaw Reymont, as well as Hebrew literature, Ben-Zion wrote poetry and essays that, like his visual work, attempt to reveal the deep “connection between man and the divine, and between man and earth.” An emigrant from the Ukraine, he came to the US in 1920. He wrote fairy tales and poems in Hebrew under the name Benzion Weinman, but when he began painting he dropped his last name and hyphenated his first, saying an artist needed only one name. Ben-Zion was a founding member of “The Ten: An Independent Group” The Ten” a 1930’s avant-garde group, Painted on anything handy. Ben-Zion often used cabinet doors (panels) in his work. Other members of group included Ilya Bolotowsky, Lee Gatch, Adolf Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Yankel Kufeld, Marcus Rothkowitz (later known as Mark Rothko), Louis Schanker, and Joseph Solman. The Art of “The Ten” was generally described as expressionist, as this style offered the best link between modernism and social art. Their exhibition at the Mercury Gallery in New York held at the same time as the Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, included a manifesto concentrating on aesthetic questions and criticisms of the conservative definition of modern art imposed by the Whitney. Ben-Zion’s work was quickly noticed. The New York Sun said he painted “furiously” and called him “the farthest along of the lot.” And the triptych, “The Glory of War,” was described by Art News as “resounding.” By 1939, The Ten disbanded because most of the members found individual galleries to represent their work. Ben-Zion had his first one-man show at the Artist’s Gallery in Greenwich Village and J.B. Neumann, the highly esteemed European art dealer who introduced Paul Klee, (among others) to America, purchased several of Ben-Zion’s drawings. Curt Valentin, another well-known dealer, exhibited groups of his drawings and undertook the printing of four portfolios of etchings, each composed of Ben-Zion’s biblical themes. Ben-Zion’s work is represented in many museums throughout the country including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington. The Jewish Museum in New York opened in 1948 with a Ben-Zion exhibition. “Ben-Zion has his hands on the pulse of the common man and his natural world” As he emerged as an artist Ben-Zion never lost his gift for presenting the ordinary in ways that are vital, fresh and filled with emotions that are somber and exhilarating, joyous and thoughtful, and ultimately, filled with extraordinary poetic simplicity. Ben-Zion consistently threaded certain subject matter—nature, still life, the human figure, the Hebrew Bible, and the Jewish people—into his work throughout his life. "In all his work a profound human feeling remains. Sea and sky, even sheaves of wheat acquire a monolithic beauty and simplicity which delineates the transient as a reflection of the eternal. This sensitive inter- mingling of the physical and metaphysical is one of the most enduring features of Ben-Zion's works." (Excerpt from Stephen Kayser, “Biblical Paintings,” The Jewish Museum Catalogue, 1952). Along with ben Shahn, William Gropper, Chaim Gross and Abraham Rattner he was an influential mid century Jewish American...

Warm & Golden (2020), surreal abstract dream-like landscape, skyscape, garden, rainbow, flowers "Warm & Golden" by Shamona Stokes portrays a playful, ...