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Josef Levi
Op Art 1971 Kinetic Oil Painting Pop Art Artist

1971

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  • Op Art 1971 Kinetic Oil Painting Pop Art Artist
    By Josef Levi
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Josef Alan Levi (1938) is an American artist whose works range over a number of different styles, but which are unified by certain themes consistently present among them. Josef Levi began his artistic career in the 1960s and early '70s, producing highly abstract and very modernist pieces: these employing exotic materials such as light fixtures and metallic parts. By 1975, Levy had transitioned to painting and drawing still lifes. At first these were, traditionally, of mundane subjects. Later, he would depict images from art history, including figures originally created by the Old Masters. Around 1980, he made another important shift, this time toward creating highly precise, though subtly altered reproductions of pairs of female faces which were originally produced by other artists. It is perhaps this work for which he is most well known. Since around 2000, Josef Levi has changed the style of his work yet again: now he works entirely with computers, using digital techniques to abstract greatly from art history, and also from other sources. Levi's works of art in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the National Gallery of Art, and the Albright-Knox Museum, among many others. Levi's art has been featured on the cover of Harper's Magazine twice, once in June 1987, and once in May 1997. Josef Levi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 from the University of Connecticut, where he majored in fine arts and minored in literature. From 1959 to 1960, he served to a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and from 1960 through 1967 he was in the U.S. Army Reserves. In 1966, he received the Purchase Award from the University of Illinois in 1966, and he was featured in New Talent U.S.A. by Art in America. He was an artist in residence at Appalachian State University in 1969, taught at Farleigh Dickenson University in 1971 and was a visiting professor of art at Pennsylvania State University in 1977. From 1975 to 2007, Levi resided in New York City. He now lives in an apartment in Rome, where he is able to paint with natural light as he was unable in New York. From 1959 to 1960, Josef took some courses of Howard McParlin Davis and Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University which initiated him into the techniques of reproducing the works of the Old Masters. His first works, created in the 1960s, were wood and stone sculptures of women. His first mature works were abstract pieces, constructed of electric lights and steel. In 1970, Levi's materials included fluorescent light bulbs, Rust-Oleum and perforated metal in addition to paint and canvas. By 1980, Josef Levi's art had transformed into a very specific form: a combination of reproductions of female faces which were originally depicted by other artists. The faces which he reproduces may be derived from either portraits or from small portions of much larger works; they are taken from paintings of the Old Masters, Japanese ukiyo-e, and 20th-century art. Artists from whom he has borrowed include: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Piero della Francesca, Botero, Matisse, Utamaro, Correggio, Da Vinci, Picasso, Chuck Close, Max Beckmann, Pisanello, Lichtenstein. The creation of these works is informed by Levi's knowledge and study of art history. Josef Levi's paintings from this period are drawn, then painted on fine linen canvas on wooden stretchers. The canvas is coated with twenty-five layers of gesso in order to produce a smooth surface on which to work. The drawing phase takes at least one month. Levi seals the drawing with acrylic varnish, and then he may apply layers of transparent acrylic in order to approximate the look of old paintings. After the last paint is applied, another layer of acrylic varnish is sprayed on to protect the work. Most of the figures in his contemporary pieces are not paired with any others. SELECTED COLLECTIONS MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, NY ALBRIGHT- KNOX GALLERY, BUFFALO, NY ALDRICH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, RIDGEFIELD, CT NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART, BROOKLYN, NY SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, WASHINGTON, DC CORCORAN GALLERY, WASHINGTON, DC UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME ART...
    Category

    1970s Op Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Israeli 1970s OP Art Kabbala Painting "Jerusalem, 5732" (Star of David) Judaica
    By Yakov Kaszemacher
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Ya'acov Kaszemacher, well-known artist and photographer whose unique images of Hassidic festivities are fascinating to view, and offer one an opportunity to peek into the community...
    Category

    1970s Op Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Oil

  • 1970's Enamel Metal Vasarely Silkscreen Screenprint Axo Kinetic Op Art Sculpture
    By Victor Vasarely
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) Axo This piece is hand signed and numbered circa 1972-1977 I have seen it described as enamel on steel and enamel on aluminium. it is a serigraph on meta...
    Category

    1970s Op Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Metal, Enamel

  • Vintage Chokk Mini C Original Op Art Vasarely Collage Painting
    By Victor Vasarely
    Located in Surfside, FL
    VICTOR VASARELY (1908-1997) CHOKK-MINI C, 1988. Colored paper collage, signed in black ink lower right Titled, signed, dated and numbered 'VAS-440' on the verso; Frame: 24.75" x 18" ...
    Category

    20th Century Op Art Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Mixed Media

  • Large Scale Gestural Figurative Abstract Expressionist Surrealist Oil Painting
    By Matthew Carone
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Artist: Matt Carone, signed lower right Dated: 1995 Dimensions: 80.25"H x 56.25"L In a fine wooden black and gold gilded frame. Provenance: Freitas Revilla Gallery. Matt Carone (1930-) South Florida artist and gallerist. The Italian- American New Jersey native took up painting in the 1940s after Hans Hoffman asked him to model in a class in which Nicolas Carone, Matt's brother was a student. He has never stopped painting since that seminal experience in Abstract Expressionism. His work reveals a dynamic gestural vocabulary that’s confident, rich in color and texture, and charged with emotion. Matthew Carone opened his famous, influential gallery on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale in 1959, and in the following decades, he built a roster that included such artists as Wolf Kahn, Leon Kroll, Wifredo Lam, and the great Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta. Meanwhile, Carone quietly continued his own work as a painter, urged on by Matta on his many visits to the area. His works range from pure abstract expressionist painting to figurative expressionism to an almost Surrealist calligraphic abstraction. Carone lived with and posed for Hans Hoffman, and was friends with Roberto Matta, Conrad Marca-Relli, Paul Jenkins, Franz Kline and Wolf Kahn. His paintings, according to Palm Beach Post art critic Gary Schwan, “reveal a spontaneity that recalls the automatic writing of the surrealists. The figures radiate motion, tension and sexual heat in contained spatial constructions.” This painting depicts nude figures reminiscent of the nudes in the famous Pablo Picasso painting Demoiselle D'avignon. His later paintings, perhaps closer to Jackson Pollock or Cy Twombly than Matta’s animated stick figures and skeletal machines, step toward the path of patterned abstraction without venturing onto it. Like Pollock, whose lyrical loops carried the private rhythms of an artist enamored of dance, and Twombly, whose staccato, sketchy lines reflect a different temperament, Carone’s inspirations flow directly from a subconscious informed by a lifetime of association with some of the century’s most important artists and their works. Not only is Carone identified with the pioneer generation of Abstract Expressionists, but also critics have seen affinities with Surrealism in his work, as well as development parallel to those of the CoBrA group.” Earlier paintings by Carone, an accomplished musician and violinist, often suggest ensembles of musical instruments, particularly those with strings. Like the drip paintings of Pollock, these works, with their powerful sense of movement and lyrical compositions, sometimes seem like musical passages captured on canvas or paper. SELECT ONE PERSON SHOWS Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL Palazzo Panni Museum, Arco di Trento, Italy Fox-Martin Gallery, Housatonic, MA Lurie Galleries, Boca Raton, FL ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, Coral Gables (Miami), Florida Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky Schramm Galleries, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Granville Galleries, Coral Gables, Florida Coral Ridge Yacht Club, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida The Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Gallery 99, Bay Harbour Island, Florida Mercer University, Macon, Georgia P.N.Y.K. Gallery, Kent, Connecticut Simons Rock College of Bard, Great Barrington, Massachusetts Freites-Revilla Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida GROUP SHOWS Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida Schramm Galleries, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Roko Gallery, New York, New York Loft Gallery, Coral Gables Florida Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida Brandeis Art Festival, Palm Beach, Florida Drawing Exhibition, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Ute Stebich Gallery, Lenox, Massachusetts Florida Pavilion, New York World's Fair, 1965 The Lantern Gallery, Ann Arbor, Michigan The Little Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tampa Bay Art...
    Category

    1990s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Mixed Media Large Pop Art Painting Drawing Brian Kenny NYC Street Art 2015
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Brian Kenny, (German-American, 1982-) MIxed Media Painting with Drawing, Oil or Acrylic on Canvas. Hand signed On Verso and Dated 2015, NYC Dimensions: Sight- 30" x 24", Frame- 36" x 30" Brian Kenny (born 1982, Heidelberg, Germany) is a NYC-based American multidisciplinary artist exhibited in galleries, museums, theaters and alternative venues in the US, Canada, Russia, Israel and across Europe. In 2004 Brian began an ongoing collaboration with artist Slava Mogutin as SUPERM, and in 2016 with writer Rich Juzwiak as BOYFRIEND HOUSE. Using an array of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, textile, video and performance, Brian’s artwork is bright and vividly expressionistic; often autobiographical and reflective of his current states of mind which include themes of his queer identity, shifting societal perceptions about gender, sexuality and politics, urban living and free-associative wanderings of thought and creative experimentation. New York-based artist Brian Kenny’s work is a visually striking exploration of gender, sexuality, and politics in contemporary North America. Known for his experimental and expressionistic practice, Brian mixes mediums such as painting, illustration, collage, sculpture, and textiles – oftentimes all at once. Brian’s foundation in drawing is evident across his portfolio, with nearly every piece incorporating some signature scribblings from the artist. He has experimented with drawing, collage, photography, performance and, more recently, painting. “All the other mediums I’m exploring like, painting, textile art, and animation all branch out from drawing,” he explains. This focus is what makes Brian’s vast collection of work all feel so cohesive. "Both of my parents were in the US military and we moved around a lot in the US. But most of the places I lived were rural, far from big cities and art museums, so I had no idea who Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Chuck Close, David Hockney or Damien Hirst were. The few small art museums I visited as a child were full of old-school oil paintings; all life-like portraits, rural landscapes and historical recreations. It wasn’t until I met Slava Mogutin and moved to New York that I began to meet artists, see exhibitions at art galleries of living artists near my age, and tour lot of contemporary art museums like MoMA and begin learning about contemporary art history". Brian says. “I’m definitely not a minimalist and lean toward more narrative and figurative artwork than abstraction or decoration”. Minimalist, he is not: Brian’s work pops with vibrant colours, characters and shapes, evoking a Warholian play on pop art culture. Kenny’s signature line drawing style is reminiscent of Keith Haring and LA Ortiz and evokes comparisons to early Jean Michel Basquiat. Brian's commercial and fashion work includes art and design commissions and collaborations with Onitsuka Tiger (Japan...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Mixed Media, Oil, Acrylic, Permanent Marker

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