Ben Shahn

Ben Shahn Original Hand Signed Litho WPA Artist Rilke Poem Lithograph Portfolio

1968

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray...

From The robbers. lithographs by George Grosz for the drama of the same name. photolithography on watermarked paper. 19 X 25.5 inches (sheet size). This is not hand signed or numbe...

SCARCE EARLY WORK. BEN SHAHN Levana and our Lady's Sorrows. lithograph printed in sepia on Papier Ancien, 1931. 13 1/8x9 7/8 inches (sheets), full margins, loose as issued. One of o...

SCARCE EARLY WORK. BEN SHAHN Levana and our Lady's Sorrows. lithograph printed in sepia on Papier Ancien, 1931. 13 1/8x9 7/8 inches (sheets), full margins, loose as issued. One of o...

SCARCE EARLY WORK. BEN SHAHN Levana and our Lady's Sorrows. lithograph printed in sepia on Papier Ancien, 1931. 13 1/8x9 7/8 inches (sheets), full margins, loose as issued. One of o...

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) signed lithograph. Pencil signed and dated "S. Simkhovitch 1933" lower center. Title "Island Beach," in pencil lower left of sheet. Numbered "44/50" in pencil lower right. (it is either Island Beach Wisconsin or New Jersey) Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...

This lithograph, as well as the 3 followings, has been done by Dutch artist Corneille, (1922-2016) who created lyrical, expressionist paintings bursting with color and who was one of...

This artwork titled "Sub Culture" c1972 is an original color lithograph on wove paper by noted New Orleans artist Caroline Spellman Wogan Durieux, 1896-1989. It is hand signed, titled, dated and numbered 5/10 in pencil by the artist. The image size is 17.75 x 13 inches, sheet size is 19.85 x 15 inches. It is in excellent condition, some hanging tape from previous framing remaining on the back. About the artist: As a Southern female satirist, Caroline Spellman Wogan Durieux was a rare phenomenon in the early twentieth century. Today, she is highly regarded for her stinging lithographs that touch on human foibles as well as some of the important issues of her day. Born to a family of Creole descent in New Orleans, young Caroline was precocious; she began drawing at age four and completed a portfolio of watercolors depicting her city by the time she was twelve. She took lessons from Mary Butler, a member of the art faculty at Sophie Newcomb College, and, beginning in 1912, matriculated at the school full-time, where her instructors included Ellsworth Woodward, chair of the art department. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in design in 1916 and one in education in 1917. Awarded a scholarship by the New Orleans Art Association, Durieux pursued further coursework at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1918 to 1920. Years later, she was encouraged to try lithography by Carl Zigrosser, an expert curator of prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who became her mentor. With her husband Pierre Durieux—an importer of Latin American goods and later the chief representative of General Motors for South America—Caroline Durieux spent time in Cuba during the early 1920s. The couple moved in 1926 to Mexico City, where she met the great muralist Diego Rivera and became involved in the local art community. Following a short interval in New York City, Durieux went back to Mexico in 1931 and enrolled at the Academy of San Carlos (now the National University of Mexico) to study lithography. She returned to New Orleans seven years later and was hired to teach at her alma mater, Newcomb College, from 1938 to 1943. Starting in 1939, Durieux served as the director of Louisiana’s Works Progress Administration program, and her division was the only one in the state not to practice racial discrimination. This was a matter she felt strongly about, stating: “I had a feeling that an artist is an artist and it doesn’t make any difference what color he or she is.” From 1943 until her retirement in 1964, Durieux was a member of the faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Durieux’s forte was lithography, a technique popular in the mid-nineteenth century and long associated with social commentary, and her prints proved no exception. Her work in the 1930s and 1940s coincided with a rise in art that dealt with poverty, racism, and totalitarianism. She often presented stereotyped social climbers...

Pamela Bianco, 'Fruit Piece', lithograph, c. 1925. Signed and titled in pencil. Signed in the stone, lower left. Annotated 'No. 8' in pencil, upper right...

Chelsea Rags. Chelsea Rags. 1888. Lithograph. Way 22, Levy 35, Tedeschi, Stratis and Spink 26. 7 1/8 x 6 5/16 (sheet 12 3/4 x 8). Printed on cream laid paper. Provenance: Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, Whistler's sister-in-law, her seal verso: (Lugt 405). Michael Parkin Fine Art, Ltd. from whom purchased in 1972. Christie's, King Street.Signed with the butterfly in the image. One of 13 impressions listed by Way, before the image was transferred to supplementary stones for the edition of 500-1,000 printed by Way and issued in the Albemarle, January, 1892. Signed with the butterfly in the stone and in pencil. Housed in an elegant silk mat with a silver liner, and in a 16 3/4 x 14 3/4-inch silver leaf frame decorated with fleur-de-lis decorations. "And his interest in London has not been restricted to the Thames. Seeing the beautiful, where other men might be discouraged by dullness, he has taken his subject, now in the little cheap shop opening a low window upon the street, now in the forgotten church hidden away in a lonely square. And Chelsea Rags, the Shops of Chelsea, the Drury Lane, as well as The Butcher's Dog, are impressions of vague Rembrandtesque interiors where figures, grim or graceful, peer from out deep shadows— shops as lovely in his prints as the halls of a Veronese, or the palaces of a Claude." Elizabeth Robins...

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) "Custer's Last Fight" Lithograph Ed. 54/75 Signed and Numbered Site Size: approx 22 x 30 inches Framed Size: approx. 35 x 41.5 inches Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder became a prominent Indian portrait, figure, and genre painter in Arizona. His father was part Indian, and Fritz Scholder chose to focus his art work on this part of his lineage and to express both an appreciation and disdain for Indian customs, traditions, and daily existence. He studied at the University of Kansas, Wisconsin State University, and with Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento College in California. He earned an Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona. A long-time resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, he has filled a number of artist-in-residence positions including Dartmouth College and the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. In his work, he frequently showed the harsh, realistic side of Indians' lives and deaths including the affects of alcohol and other dissipations, but some of his depictions are humorous such as Indians on horseback carrying umbrellas. His brush-work is generally swift, and the tone often sombre and surreal. A major influence on his work was the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon, from whom Scholder adapted ironic distortions into his canvases. In Scottsdale, he lived in an adobe-walled oasis of palm trees and oleander, amid skulls and skeletons. In the garden, several of Mr. Scholder's sculptures feature skull-like heads. In the library, an 18th-century skull engraved with witchcraft symbols shared shelf space with books printed before 1500. And the porch had been converted into a skull room, complete with Mexican Day of the Dead...

The Blue Bicycle, 1979 Will Barnet (American, 1911-2012) 26 x 25.5 inches 41 x 40 inches with frame Titled Lower Center Signed and Dated Lower Right Edition 41/300 Lower Left From B...