John Little

Imbrium

1958

Oil and enamel on masonite The Pinajian story is one of near loss, discovery and posthumous success. A compatriot of De Kooning and friend of fellow Armenian-American Gorky, Pinajia...

One of the "Women of Abstract Expressionism" Amaranth Ehrenhalt was long interested in patter and the idea of decoration in her work. Indeed, in the mid-60s, before Miriam Schapiro...

We are pleased to present this vivid, modernist work by Marcel Janco, one of the founders of Dada. It is housed in a stunning House of Heydenryk frame. Marcel Janco was a Romanian-Israeli-Jewish painter who was one of the founders of Dadaism and a noted modernist architect. His career evinced the modern artist's interest in the primitive in art. In its earliest years, the Romanian avant-garde flourished mainly outside of Romania, thanks to the conservative and nationalistic mood of that country during the post-World War I era. Dada, the anti-art movement, was hatched by a group of Romanian expatriate artists, Tristan Tzara (born Sami Rosenstein), Marcel Janco and other intellectuals working in Zurich in 1915. The Dada movement, which later took root in other centers in Europe and the United States, fostered an abandonment of traditional artistic methods and forms and urged an approach to art without preconceived ideas. A manifesto by Tristan Tzara said that Dada meant nothing, that ''we want works, straightforward, strong, accurate and forever not understood, logic is always wrong.'' Janco built the scenery for Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich that was the first Dadaist meeting place, and he was one of the most energetic members of the Zurich group. At the cabaret the members of the group put on shows and performances that were alien to and completely different from anything to which the bourgeois society of Zurich was accustomed. Marcel Janco was a full partner in all the group's activities - he created the masks they wore during stage performances, and took part in the shows that evoked great rage and indignant responses from the audience. A Dada construction of his was reproduced on the cover of Dada, the group's magazine, published in 1917. His best known Dadaist works were abstract, architectonic plaster reliefs, one of which is in the collection of the MOMA. Janco had his first exhibition at Cafe Voltaire in 1916. In 1917, Janco exhibited at the first Dada show in Zurich at the Dada gallery together with Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Klee, and Tzara. In 1918, he became a member of Das Neue Leben, a group of artists in Basel that included Arp, Fritz Baumann, Augusto Giacometti...

Oil on masonite. Like many of his compatriots in the New York School, Ben Wilson (1913-2001) began his career painting figuratively before transitioning to abstraction after WWII (and somewhat later than his compatriots.) However, because he started in a different place than they did, he ended up in a different place. His starting place was the cubism of Picasso, Braque and Leger, and their influence never left him. A critic in the Princeton Review in 1987 wrote: "Ben Wilson's canvases, while still within the abstract expressionist mode, retain echoes of Picasso, Braque and even mechanistic elements of Fernand Leger." Another critic writes: "The expressive abstractions of Ben Wilson belong among the best work created by New York artists in the 20th century; but they stand outside the critical labels applied to Abstract Expressionism..." Ben Wilson had more than 30 one-man shows during his lifetime, first starting to show in the early 1930s. As early as 1942, he was singled out by the New York Times art critic Edward Alden...

Brodsky was a "romantic" painter, although he painted abstractly, and a master colorist. His abstract works are not "action paintings" in the sense of De Kooning or Pollock, but expl...

Amaranth Ehrenhalt was a multifaceted artist best known for her paintings. She was part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, working first in New York in the early 19...

Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...

Fritz Bultman (1919-1985) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter, sculptor, and collagist and a member of the New York School of artists. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and moved to Germany to join the Bauhaus at the age of 16. There, he was acquainted with Maria Hofmann, the wife of Hans Hofmann, which initiated a move to New York to study under his guidance. Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core practice. In 1950, Fritz Bultman and 27 other distinguished artists signed a letter protesting the conservative nature of the work selected for a forthcoming national exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The signees of this historic letter were identified as, the “Irascibles,” resulting in the majority achieving international acclaim as Abstract Expressionist artists including Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, among others. Throughout his life Fritz Bultman received several awards including Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a founding member of the Long Point...

Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...

Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...

Floated on archival white mat with wood frame. Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculp...

Fritz Bultman set himself apart from other Abstract Expressionists with his meticulously organized abstract compositions, use of sculpture, and the adoption of collage as a core prac...