Stephany Cousins Art

Acrylic on masonite. This is a pivotal work in deep and radiant cobalt blue from 1950. It dipicts calligraphic and hieroglyph structures over a grid and pyramidal base by the first generation abstract expressionist. Provenance: Skinner: November 13, 1992 [Lot 00219}, The entry in the Skinner catalog indicates that the painting came directly from the artist to the family of the consignor to Skinner. Kaminsky Auctions. There is an unbroken paper trail that traces the ownership of the painting from the current owner, through two auction houses to the artist. Perfect unbroken provenance. Pousette-Dart was among the most inventive of the Abstract Expressionist generation, His uncanny talent was to expand the nature of abstraction and still make each mark each element very much his own; a reflection of what he called   "the concealed power of the spirit," he said, “not of the brute physical form."   His was not aiming for a singular, realized aesthetic formula but to expand the possibilities of painting; the transcendental in painting. Typical of such invention and exploration is this  painting  Untitled 1950 when the artist was only 34 years old and represented by one of the champions of the new American painting, Betty Parsons.  
A banner year for Pousette-Dart, the Museum of Modern Art acquired their first painting by the Minnesota born artist.  He worked on easel size works such as this painting an oil on masonite. At the same time Pousette-Dart was also working on larger scale works such as Path of the Hero, running over ten feet in length now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Both contain fields of color articulated by a highly sophisticated white hieroglyphic vocabulary. Rather than demonstrate an expressionist sensibility, Pousette-Dart harnesses his more cerebral ideas transforming thick areas of paint into a more refined composition of geometric forms akin to the pattern and forms of say a stained glass window. In a way he is looking back at Fugue, 1940 a black and white composition which makes use of a similar format of painting albeit smaller. Color and form are minimal, but what Pousette-Dart has maximized is the rhythmic and syncopated character of painting casting his ideas into purely symbolic terms that one might link to the pictograms of Adolph Gottlieb. Nonetheless, nature is always at the core of Pousette-Dart’s thinking and dreaming. Here he has transformed the local Ramapo Mountains—where he will eventually move with his family to live and work— into a complex series of articulated fragments linked by style, scale and color.  The painting’s imagery built on two large triangles and reduced to just two colors, cobalt blue and white all outlined in black.  Pousette-Dart symbols stacked in horizontal and vertical rows:  blue is ground, white is language, symbolic of light, consciousness and awareness . The painting maintains a mystical character images compounded that formulate a secret code and linked to the series of white paintings Pousette-Dart authored in the first half of the 1950s. Get up close to the picture and you discover images within images a kind of picture puzzle...

"Nineties Triangles and Swirls" is an abstract painting triptych by Spanish artist Natalia Roman. It is a beautiful combination of geometric shapes in a classy gamut of colors. The u...

This is a one-of-a-kind monoprint on archival paper from Deirdre Murphy's "Nest Alchemy" series, which explores the connection between neuron dendritic structures and songbird cup ne...

Robert Petrick's "Plan B" is a fusion of meticulous geometry and bold abstract expression. From the artist's Chromatic Collisions series, this piece i...

Artist: Alec Cumming Title: Forms Inside the Moment Medium: oil on paper Size: 69cm x 99cm (27” x 38”) Year: 2016 Alec Cumming Exhibited at Alec Cumming...

A rare small painting from contemporary Abstract Expressionist, Darius Yektai. Although titled "pink flowers" the hue of the painting is really more peach, or a light orange. A patte...

Robert Petrick's "Post Metro" is a fusion of meticulous geometry and bold abstract expression. From the artist's Ziggurat series, this piece is both timeless and contemporary, offeri...

This is an original painting on archival paper. It is signed lower right margin, and signed, titled, and dated on the back. It pairs well with "Nest Tower II" listed separately on 1...

Robert Petrick's "The Plan" is a fusion of meticulous geometry and bold abstract expression. From the artist's Chromatic Collisions series, this piece...

Oil on board painting by Paul Kauvar Smith (1893-1977) of a still life of flowers on a table in an interior scene with a mirror in the background. American Modernist still life painting with zinnias and abstract paintings in an artists studio. Presented framed, outer dimensions measure 27 ⅝ x 31 ¾ x 1 ⅛ inches. Image size is 19 ½ x 23 ½ inches. Painting is clean and in very good vintage condition - please contact us for a detailed condition report. Provenance: Private collection, Denver, Colorado Expedited and international shipping is available - please contact us for a quote. About the Artist: In 1915, Paul Kauver Smith studied commercial art and design at the St. Louis School of Fine Art for two years. His studies were interrupted by World War I during which he served as a corporal in the U.S. Army. After the war he returned to the School of Fine Art and also studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis with Fred G. Carpenter, himself a student of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Colarossi Academy in Paris. Carpenter was known as a marvelous colorist who "thought every inch of a painting should be fascinating…and should be as interesting close up as from a distance." His approach is reflected in many of Smith’s paintings, both representational and abstract in style, done later in Colorado. In 1921, Smith relocated to Denver where he studied for two years at the Denver Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, formerly located in Brinton Terrace on 18th Street in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. His teacher was John E. Thompson, another important influence as a pioneer of modernism in Denver. The Academy hired Smith as an instructor in 1923 and that same year the Denver Art Museum included his work for the first time in its 29th annual juried exhibition. He later had two solo shows at the museum, which added his work to its Anne Evans Collection. In 1959 the museum reproduced Houses at Victor, for its Western Heritage Exhibition catalog. During the year of 1928 he witnessed the Articles of Incorporation of the Denver Artists Guild, comprising most of the city’s professional artists. He also belonged to the American Artists Professional League, also organized in 1928 by fifteen members of the Salmagundi Club in New York to protect artists’ interest and promote traditional American art. He was one of some two dozen Colorado artists designated to participate in the Public Works of Art Program (PWAP, 1933-34), the first federally-sponsored program for artists during the Great Depression. Around 1928 Smith became the "Hermit of Stuart Street," and remained a life-long bachelor. One painting, View from My Window, depicts his immediate neighborhood. Living for more than thirty years at 1039 Stuart Street in West Denver, he gave up creature comforts that most people take for granted to have the freedom to devote his life to the pursuit of art. In the first twenty-five years of his career, his paintings focused on the Colorado landscape and its mining towns with their decaying buildings as relics of the past. His piece, Miner’s House at Victor, Colorado illustrates the description of his work in this genre as described by Denver artist and art writer, Arneill Downs, "The jewel-like shapes and colors the artist uses gives the most decrepit objects style. The decaying buildings of ghost towns, grouped together on canvas, glow like a patchwork quilt." Smith described his technique as "I start lean and finish fat." He worked first with turpentine as a medium and ended up with pure pigment put on with a palette knife. In addition to Colorado scenes...

Sophie DUMONT's abstract is not a concept, it is an approach where each canvas is built around graphics put into perspective by color. The drawing can recall the shape of a body or ...

Artist: Alec Cumming Title: It Overfloweth Medium: oil on paper Size: 99 x 63 cm (39 x 25") Year: 2016 Alec Cumming Exhibited at Alec Cumming, Stripped ...