Oil on board; 24 x 32 cm.

Esphyr Slobodkina was born in Siberia in 1908. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, her family fled to Vladivostok before settling in Harbin, Manchuria. In 1928 Slobodkina immigrated to New York City. She enrolled in the National Academy of Design the following year primarily to meet the requirements of her student visa. It was through a fellow student at the Academy that Slobodkina met her future husband Ilya Bolotowsky, the student's brother. A progressive thinker who had yet to experiment with abstraction in his own painting, Bolotowsky introduced Slobodkina to modern theories of art, particularly in relation to form, color and composition. Associations with Balcomb and Gertrude Greene, Byron Browne and Giorgio Cavallon further exposed Slobodkina to the ideas of these pioneer abstract artists and sparked a personal interest in the movement.

An invitation to the Yaddo artist colony brought Slobodkina and Bolotowsky to Saratoga Springs, New York in the early 1930s. It was during this visit that Slobodkina began tentative experimentation with abstraction, leading to her first Cubist-inspired work in 1934. Around this time Slobodkina's family moved to New York City, which temporarily sidelined her artistic progression as she was under great financial pressure to help support them. Alongside her mother, Slobodkina opened a dress shop, where she both designed and made the clothing. She also worked at a number of textile design firms throughout these years.

In 1935 Slobodkina separated from Ilya Bolotowsky and joined the Works Progress Administration. She also became very active in the Artists' Union, designing posters for them in paper collage. It was through the collage medium that she was able to develop her abstract style. By 1936 she had fully embraced abstraction as a means of artistic expression and her paintings reflected her interest in collage with their flat, layered forms and carefully constructed arrangements. In the mid-1930s Slobodkina created several Surrealist-inspired sculptures made of wood, wire, and found objects, in addition to her paintings. In 1937 she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists and went on to be the group's president in later years.

Upon meeting Margaret Wise Brown, the children's books author, in 1937, Slobodkina was inspired to try her hand at book illustration. She provided the illustrations for Brown's The Little Fireman before writing and illustrating her own books, most notably Caps for Sale, published in 1938. In the early 1940s Slobodkina found a patron in A. E. Gallatin who purchased two of her works for his Museum of Living Art. Slobodkina was asked to participate in the important exhibition Eight by Eight: Abstract Painting Since 1940 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945 which also featured Charles Green Shaw, George L.K. Morris, A.E. Gallatin, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Ilya Bolotowsky, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Ad Reinhardt. She was a regular exhibitor in the Whitney Museum of American Art's annuals through the 1950s. In 1957 Slobodkina was invited back to Yaddo and in 1958 she took her first of two trips to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Slobodkina's successes as an artist continued until her death in 2002.

Oil on canvas; 111.8 x 152.4 cm.

Ilya Bolotowsky was a leading early 20th-century painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and geometric abstraction and was much influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

Born to Jewish parents in St. Petersburg, Russia, Bolotowsky immigrated to America in 1923 via Constantinople, settling in New York City. He attended the National Academy of Design. He became associated with a group called "The Ten Whitney Dissenters," or simply "The Ten," artists, including Louis Schanker, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko and Joseph Solman, who rebelled against the strictures of the Academy and held independent exhibitions.

During this period, Bolotowsky came under the influence of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and the tenets of neoplasticism, a movement that advocated the possibility of ideal order in the visual arts. Bolotowsky adopted his mentor's use of horizontal and vertical geometric pattern and a palette restricted to primary colors and neutrals.

In 1936, having turned to geometric abstractions, he was one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists, a cooperative formed to promote the interests of abstract painters and to increase understanding between themselves and the public.

He taught at Black Mountain College during the period 1946-1948, Kenneth Noland was among his students.

Bolotowsky's mural for the Williamsburg Housing Project in Brooklyn, was one of the first abstract murals done under the Federal Art Project. Despite Bolotowsky's clear, precise control of his images, he emphasized the role of intuition over formula in determining his compositions.

In the 1960s, he began making three-dimensional forms, usually vertical and straight-sided. He taught humanities and fine arts at the Southampton, New York campus of Long Island University.

Last spring I rented a booth at a community yard sale held once yearly on the big lawn of one of Louisville's historic homes. A fellow who set up near me had a painting I admired with a price tag of only $10. I was a little put off by one thing though. The frame -- made of curvaceous cove molding and painted fire-engine red -- was all wrong. I told the guy I'd think it over. At the end of the day he wandered over to my booth and told me he still had the painting and asked if I wanted it. I said I was still unsure. He asked if I'd consider a trade. I said sure, and asked what he wanted. I had a small collection of dental molds that caught his eye. You got a deal, I told him.

First thing I did when I got home was discard the frame. Then I got busy googling. The guy I swapped with didn't know anything about the painting, so all I had was the artist's name: Theo Daniels. My Google results were slim. Very slim. The only hit of consequence was an obituary.

On June 1, 2010, Theodore Edward Daniels of Lake Tomahawk, WI, passed away gently at Howard Young Medical Center in Minocqua, WI. He was 86.

Ted loved art, fishing, sailing, gardening, family and friends and loved to tell a good story. He was like a father to many. He will be greatly missed.

I then knew a little about Theo Daniels, but a new mystery appeared. How did my painting wind up on a yard sale table in Louisville, Kentucky?

There was one clue among the memories left on the funeral home's website. There was a short message left by a niece living in Louisville. I found her name in the phone book and gave her a call. She told me she didn't know how the painting could have found its way to a yard sale, but vaguely spoke of some chaos following Daniels' death. She suggested I call Daniels' daughter Julie to learn more. Julie was very glad to hear from me and spoke lovingly of her father. She even provided a photo of him for me. But she couldn't tell me how the painting wound up with a $10 price tag on it.

In any event, I built a new frame for it, as you see, and I'm very glad to have it.

Gouache on board; 53.3 58.1 cm.

Brazilian painter and performance artist. In 1954 he began studies with Ivan Serpa at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro. He immediately devoted himself to a geometric vocabulary and joined the new Frente group (1954–6) and later the Neo-Concrete movement (1959–61). From 1964 to 1969 he made environmental, participatory events—among them Parangolé (1964), Tropicália (1967) and Apocalipopótesis (1968)—either in art centres or in the street. He was one of the leading exhibitors in the exhibition Nova objetividade brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1967), which reactivated the country’s avant-garde. In 1969 he exhibited an installation at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and the following year his work was included in the show Information (New York, MOMA). A Guggenheim Fellowship took him in 1970 to New York, where he lived until 1978. During that period he prepared various multi-media projects in the form of texts, performances, films and environmental events. The 25 successive years of his Metaschemes, Bilaterals, Spatial Reliefs, Nucleii, Penetrables, Meteors, Parangolés, installations, sensory and conceptual projects from 1954 onwards showed a clear transition from modern to post-modern and represent his most finished achievements. Working with oppositions such as balance/effusion, contemplation/celebration and visual art/body art, he retained a radical stance. In 1981 in Rio de Janeiro his family created the H. O. Project, intended to care for, preserve, analyse and disseminate the work that he left.

Roberto Pontual

From Grove Art Online

© 2009 Oxford University Press

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9lio_Oiticica

Acrylic on gessoed linen; 172.4 x 101.4 cm.

Ilya Bolotowsky was a leading early 20th-century painter in abstract styles in New York City. His work, a search for philosophical order through visual expression, embraced cubism and geometric abstraction and was much influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

Born to Jewish parents in St. Petersburg, Russia, Bolotowsky immigrated to America in 1923 via Constantinople, settling in New York City. He attended the National Academy of Design. He became associated with a group called "The Ten Whitney Dissenters," or simply "The Ten," artists, including Louis Schanker, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko and Joseph Solman, who rebelled against the strictures of the Academy and held independent exhibitions.

During this period, Bolotowsky came under the influence of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and the tenets of neoplasticism, a movement that advocated the possibility of ideal order in the visual arts. Bolotowsky adopted his mentor's use of horizontal and vertical geometric pattern and a palette restricted to primary colors and neutrals.

In 1936, having turned to geometric abstractions, he was one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists, a cooperative formed to promote the interests of abstract painters and to increase understanding between themselves and the public.

He taught at Black Mountain College during the period 1946-1948, Kenneth Noland was among his students.

Bolotowsky's mural for the Williamsburg Housing Project in Brooklyn, was one of the first abstract murals done under the Federal Art Project. Despite Bolotowsky's clear, precise control of his images, he emphasized the role of intuition over formula in determining his compositions.

In the 1960s, he began making three-dimensional forms, usually vertical and straight-sided. He taught humanities and fine arts at the Southampton, New York campus of Long Island University.

Oil on 5 Masonite panels; 17.6 x 22.6 in.

Esphyr Slobodkina was born in Siberia in 1908. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, her family fled to Vladivostok before settling in Harbin, Manchuria. In 1928 Slobodkina immigrated to New York City. She enrolled in the National Academy of Design the following year primarily to meet the requirements of her student visa. It was through a fellow student at the Academy that Slobodkina met her future husband Ilya Bolotowsky, the student's brother. A progressive thinker who had yet to experiment with abstraction in his own painting, Bolotowsky introduced Slobodkina to modern theories of art, particularly in relation to form, color and composition. Associations with Balcomb and Gertrude Greene, Byron Browne and Giorgio Cavallon further exposed Slobodkina to the ideas of these pioneer abstract artists and sparked a personal interest in the movement.

An invitation to the Yaddo artist colony brought Slobodkina and Bolotowsky to Saratoga Springs, New York in the early 1930s. It was during this visit that Slobodkina began tentative experimentation with abstraction, leading to her first Cubist-inspired work in 1934. Around this time Slobodkina's family moved to New York City, which temporarily sidelined her artistic progression as she was under great financial pressure to help support them. Alongside her mother, Slobodkina opened a dress shop, where she both designed and made the clothing. She also worked at a number of textile design firms throughout these years.

In 1935 Slobodkina separated from Ilya Bolotowsky and joined the Works Progress Administration. She also became very active in the Artists' Union, designing posters for them in paper collage. It was through the collage medium that she was able to develop her abstract style. By 1936 she had fully embraced abstraction as a means of artistic expression and her paintings reflected her interest in collage with their flat, layered forms and carefully constructed arrangements. In the mid-1930s Slobodkina created several Surrealist-inspired sculptures made of wood, wire, and found objects, in addition to her paintings. In 1937 she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists and went on to be the group's president in later years.

Upon meeting Margaret Wise Brown, the children's books author, in 1937, Slobodkina was inspired to try her hand at book illustration. She provided the illustrations for Brown's The Little Fireman before writing and illustrating her own books, most notably Caps for Sale, published in 1938. In the early 1940s Slobodkina found a patron in A. E. Gallatin who purchased two of her works for his Museum of Living Art. Slobodkina was asked to participate in the important exhibition Eight by Eight: Abstract Painting Since 1940 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945 which also featured Charles Green Shaw, George L.K. Morris, A.E. Gallatin, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Ilya Bolotowsky, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Ad Reinhardt. She was a regular exhibitor in the Whitney Museum of American Art's annuals through the 1950s. In 1957 Slobodkina was invited back to Yaddo and in 1958 she took her first of two trips to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Slobodkina's successes as an artist continued until her death in 2002.

Victor Vasarely (I906-1997) is was an acknowledged leader of the Op Art movement, and his innovations in color and optical illusion have had a strong influence on many modern artists. He was born in Pecs, Hungary in 1906. After receiving his baccalaureate degree in 1925,, he transferred to the Muhely Academy, also known as the Budapest Bauhaus, where he studied with Alexander Bortnijik. At the Academy, he became familiar with the contemporary research in color and optics by Jaohannes ltten, Josef Albers, and the Constructivists Malevich and Kandinsky. In 1947, Vasarely discovered his place in abstract art. He concluded that "internal geometry" could be seen below the surface of the entire world. He conceived that form and color are inseparable. "Every form is a base for color, every color is the attribute of a form." Forms from nature were thus transposed into purely abstract elements in his paintings.

After his first one-man show in 1930, at the Kovacs Akos Gallery in Budapest, Vasarely moved to Paris. For the next thirteen years, he devoted himself to graphic studies. His lifelong fascination with linear patterning led him to draw figurative and abstract patterned sub .ects, such as his series of harlequins, checkers, tigers, and

zebras. During this period, Vasarely also created multi-dimensional works of art by super-imposing patterned layers on one another to attain the illusion of depth. In 1943, Vasarely began to work extensively in oils, creating both abstract and figurative canvases. His first Parisian exhibition was the following year at the Galerie Denise Rene that he helped found. Vasarely became the recognized leader of the avant-garde group of artists affiliated with the gallery.

Oil on canvas; 123 x 126 cm.

Emilio Vedova was born on August 9, 1919, in Venice. Self-taught as an artist he attended for a short period the evening decoration classes at the Carmini school. About 1942 he joined the group Corrente, which also included Renato Birolli, Renato Guttuso, Ennio Morlotti, and Umberto Vittorini. Vedova participated in the Resistance movement from 1943. In 1946 he collaborated with Morlotti on the manifesto Oltre Guernica in Milan and was a founding member of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti in Venice. In this period he began his Geometrie nere series, black and white paintings influenced by Cubist spatiality.

Vedova’s first solo show in the United States was held at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York in 1951. In the same year he was awarded the prize for young painters at the first São Paulo Bienal. In 1952 he participated in the Gruppo degli Otto. Vedova was represented at the first Documenta exhibition in Kassel in 1955 and won a Guggenheim International Award in 1956. He executed his first lithographs in 1958. In 1959 he created large L-shaped canvases, called Scontri di situazioni, which were exhibited in a black environment created by Carlo Scarpa for the exhibition Vitalità nell’arte, which opened at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, and traveled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Vedova was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the 1960 Venice Biennale, the year in which he created moving light sets and costumes for Luigi Nono’s opera Intolleranza ’60. This led to the first Plurimi in 1961–63: freestanding, hinged, and painted sculpture/paintings made of wood and metal. From 1963 to 1965, Vedova worked in Berlin, at the Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and created his best known Plurimi, the Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ‘64, presented at Documenta III, Kassel. From 1965 to 1969 (and in 1988), he succeeded Oskar Kokoschka as Director of the Internationale Sommerakademie in Salzburg. In 1965 and 1983 he traveled in the United States, where he lectured extensively. For the Italian Pavilion at Expo ’67, Montreal, he created a light-collage using glass plates to project mobile images across a large asymmetric space. Vedova taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice, from 1975 to 1986. Since the late 1970s, he has experimented with a variety of new techniques and formats such as the Plurimi-Binari (mobile works on steel rails), monotypes, double-sided circular panels (Dischi), and large-scale glass engraving. In 1995 he began a new series of multifaceted and manipulable painted objects called Disco-Plurimo. Vedova died in October 25, 2006, in Venice.

Oil on canvas; 229 x 160.5 cm.

Pablo Palazuelo was a Spanish painter and sculptor.

Pablo Palazuelo was born in Madrid in 1916. In 1933 he studied architecture at the School of Arts and Crafts at Oxford University. Upon returning to Madrid in 1939, he began to devote all of his time to painting. During these early years, reflecting the influence of Picasso and Cézanne, his figurative art became progressively more abstract, simplified and transformed.

Palazuelo was attracted to, and later influenced by, the work of Paul Klee, which he saw for the first time in 1947. It was in this year that Palazuelo's first abstract art appeared. The following year he was awarded a grant by the French Institute in Madrid to pursue his art in Paris. In the same year, 1948, he was selected to exhibit at the Salon de Mai, which led to an invitation to join the prestigious Galérie Maeght (currently Galérie Lelong), an association of nearly fifty years that continues to this day. Palazuelo went on to receive the coveted Kandinsky Prize in 1952.

His attention became focused on the nature of "form" itself rather than on what it represented. In 1953 his investigation into form led to his discovery: Trans-geometría-the rhythms of nature translated into plastic art. This new way of seeing was initially expressed in his Solitudes series shown in his first solo exhibition in 1955.

"Ascendente no. 2", his first sculpture, appeared in 1954. However, it was not until 1962 that his exploration of the qualities of space through his metal sculpture began in earnest, and his two-dimensional drawings became transformed into their three-dimensional counterparts. Conflict between large, flat, colorful forms characterized the series entitled Onda, Onfalo and Tierra, exhibited in 1963, and indicated a significant change in the direction of his art. In 1969 Pablo Palazuelo returned to Spain, where he continued to probe the mysteries of form through his paintings, sculptures, writings and research. He began to work in a 14th-century castle in Monroy, near Cáceres in 1974. During this time he captured the phenomenon of transformation, from its origin to its cyclic end, in his Monroy series.

The surprising appearance of "signs" in his El número y las aguas series in 1978 marked another level of his inquiry into "the moment of formation." Palazuelo's Yanta paintings, exhibited in 1985, represented diagrams of two-dimensional force and structures of three-dimensional force, which constituted figures of conception. Constantly changing lineal rhythms characterized his Nigredo, Anamne and Sinesis series, which were exhibited at the Galería Soledad Lorenzo in Madrid in 1991.

Since 1955 Palazuelo has shared his relentless journey of formal discovery in twenty-three solo exhibitions, as well as in numerous group exhibitions in France, Spain and throughout Europe. Palazuelo continued the realization of the endless potentialities of form through his Sydus series.

In order to appreciate fully the unique nature of Pablo Palazuelo's art, one must trace his ongoing investigation of "form."

'Chromatic Accelerator' (1967) by Montreal artist Claude Tousignant at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Claude Tousignant is a Canadian abstract painter and sculptor who lives and works in Montreal.

Tousignant was born on December 23, 1932 in Montreal, Quebec. He attended the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1948 to 1951.

Oil on canvas; 129.2 x 194.3 cm.

Born in Moscow in 1866, Kandinsky spent his early childhood in Odessa. His parents played the piano and the zither and Kandinsky himself learned the piano and cello at an early age. The influence of music in his paintings cannot be overstated, down to the names of his paintings Improvisations, Impressions, and Compositions. In 1886, he enrolled at the University of Moscow, chose to study law and economics, and after passing his examinations, lectured at the Moscow Faculty of Law. He enjoyed success not only as a teacher but also wrote extensively on spirituality, a subject that remained of great interest and ultimately exerted substantial influence in his work. In 1895 Kandinsky attended a French Impressionist exhibition where he saw Monet's Haystacks at Giverny. He stated, "It was from the catalog I learned this was a haystack. I was upset I had not recognized it. I also thought the painter had no right to paint in such an imprecise fashion. Dimly I was aware too that the object did not appear in the picture..." Soon thereafter, at the age of thirty, Kandinsky left Moscow and went to Munich to study life-drawing, sketching and anatomy, regarded then as basic for an artistic education.

Ironically, Kandinsky's work moved in a direction that was of much greater abstraction than that which was pioneered by the Impressionists. It was not long before his talent surpassed the constraints of art school and he began exploring his own ideas of painting - "I applied streaks and blobs of colors onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could..." Now considered to be the founder of abstract art, his work was exhibited throughout Europe from 1903 onwards, and often caused controversy among the public, the art critics, and his contemporaries. An active participant in several of the most influential and controversial art movements of the 20th century, among them the Blue Rider which he founded along with Franz Marc and the Bauhaus which also attracted Klee, Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), and Schonberg, Kandinsky continued to further express and define his form of art, both on canvas and in his theoretical writings. His reputation became firmly established in the United State s through numerous exhbitions and his work was introduced to Solomon Guggenheim, who became one of his most enthusiastic supporters.

In 1933, Kandinsky left Germany and settled near Paris, in Neuilly. The paintings from these later years were again the subject of controversy. Though out of favor with many of the patriarchs of Paris's artistic community, younger artists admired Kandinsky. His studio was visited regularly by Miro, Arp, Magnelli and Sophie Tauber.

Kandinsky continued painting almost until his death in June, 1944. his unrelenting quest for new forms which carried him to the very extremes of geometric abstraction have provided us with an unparalleled collection of abstract art.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky

Oil on canvas; 100 x 81 cm.

Alberto Magnelli was an Italian modern painter who was a significant figure in the post war Concrete art movement. Born in Florence he started painting and, despite lacking formal art education, by 1909 he was established enough to be included in the Venice Biennale. His initial works were in a Fauvist style. Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde befriending artists including Ardengo Soffici and Gino Severini. He also visited Paris where he met Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko. By 1915 had adopted an abstract style incorporating cubist and futurist elements.

Over the next few years Magnelli returned to figurative work and drifted away from the Italian avant-garde, which was becoming more supportive of Fascism, which he opposed. By 1931 he had returned to abstraction in the form of concrete art featuring geometric shapes and overlapping planes. He moved to Paris, where he joined the Abstraction-Création group and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber. Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse with several other artists including the Arps. Some of the group, including Gerson, were Jewish so they were forced to hide. Despite this, the group was able to produce a number of collaborative works.

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris which was to be his home for the rest of his life. He became a major figure in the post war concrete art movement and influenced artists such as Victor Vasarely, Nicolas de Staël as well as the concrete artists in South America such as Hélio Oiticica. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale, this time with a whole room. Major galleries organized retrospectives of his work

Adolf Fleischmann

German

(1892 – 1969)

Untitled 1962 color serigraph

edition of 40

Blattmaß: 83.5 x 60 cm

Acquired at Ketter Kunst, Germany – April 2014

Alexander Calder

(American, 1898-1976)

Bird’s Nest, 1975

Color lithograph

Pencil signed lower left

Edition 39/95

Sheet: 29″h x 43″w,

Framed: 40.5″h x 53″w

Acquired at auction, California in April, 2014

My entire collection can be found at www.modernisticon.com

Constant attended the Kunstnijverheidsschool and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. He met Asger Jorn in Paris in 1946. After this meeting fantastic beasts and frightening animal and human figures appeared in his paintings. He held his first one-man exhibition in Amsterdam in 1947. In the following year he was co-founder of the Dutch Experimental Group and also of CoBrA. Together with Christian Dotremont he was the leading theoretician of CoBrA. In the work that he produced during the CoBrA years we see the same sort of figures derived from children's drawings as with Karel Appel, in rough lines and deliberately clumsy forms.

In 1950 Constant settled in Paris. In this period he produced his "war paintings," filled by the remains of a destroyed world in which helpless people stretch out their hands to heaven. In the late 1950s Constant developed his ideas about the ideal city, "New Babylon," in which people freed from work, "homo ludens," would be able to develop their creativity. He took part in the 1956 conference "Mouvement pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste" and in 1957 he was one of the co-founders of the "Situationist International." From the 1970s onwards he concentrated more on painting, water colors and drawings, with the work of the old masters forming a source of inspiration. Constant is remembered as one of the best post-war painters The Netherlands produced.

Oil on canvas; 97 x 44.5 cm.

Kazimir Malevich was born near Kiev in the Russian Empire. His parents were ethnic Poles. It remains a mystery of 20th century art, how, while leading a comfortable career, during which he just followed all the latest trends in art, in 1915 Malevich suddenly came up with the idea of Suprematism. The fact that Malevich throughout all his life was signing and re-signing his works using earlier dates makes this u-turn in his artistic career even more ambiguous.

In 1915 he published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. In 1915-1916 he worked with other Suprematist artists in a peasant/artisan co-operative in Skoptsi and Verbovka village. In 1916-1917 he participated in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow together with Nathan Altman, David Burliuk and A. Ekster. Famous examples of his Suprematist works include Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich

Oil on canvas; 91 x 73 cm.

Born in 1899 in Aabenraa, Denmark, Clausen received an extensive artistic education. She started her studies at the Weimar Grossherzogliche Kunstschule and went on to the women’s academy. She returned home to enrol at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1920. Clausen then studied under Hans Hoffmann at the Hoffmann Schule für Moderne Kunst in Munich from 1921-2, before travelling to Berlin to study with Alexander Archipenko. In Berlin her work became detailed and precise, as Archipenko´s pure geometry demanded. When she moved onto Paris to learn from Fernand Léger in 1924, she became acquainted with Cubism and became part of the Parisian avant-garde. Her painting style began to reflect late Cubism’s geometric edge, grounded in Léger’s mechanical forms. Léger and Clausen had a personal relationship and co-habited in Paris for three years. She started painting objects and architectural forms, executed with a tight line. Léger continued to be an influence on her work, although she formed an interest in several other modern movements throughout her career, including Surrealism, Neo-plasticism and Purism. When she returned to Denmark in 1932 her direct contact with modern European art may have ceased, but her work retained an international style that was dismissed by Danish critics. She taught at the Drawing and Applied Arts School for Women in Copenhagen in 1933. Clausen completed a number of portraits towards the end of her life and designed a mosaic square in Bytorvet, near Copenhagen. She died in Aabenraa, her birthplace, in March 1986.

ambientgoo.myportfolio.com

buttertwang presents: Frequência Modulada

GRÁFICA ÓPTICA

mosaïque disque géométrique optique

estación: ESPACIO saudade pelo futuro incarnata muse lives life alive in illicit harmony experience love organic architecture whole new way of looking and seeing immersed in light painting now with no filter only 100% real organic naturally occurring analog physical geometric mathematical motion blur un poco loco algoRhythmic ambient guru perfection liquid flow god's dj jet set design graffiti urb scribble urban bright chaos fractal iteration mad busy hectic highway freeway traffic strobing neon signs contemporary abstract expressionism vs. the representational and objective expression and communication of movement and light exploration by means of the rich language of film movies and music thru the fluent use of the vocabulary of moire patterns bokeh and high speed blurry light trails kinetic street art of photography long exposure multiple time distortion compression shooting dtla while driving fast smooth inspired by film noir Ridley Scott Blade Runner, Roman Coppola movie CQ, Ghost in the Shell, etc…

modern, abstraction, sublime, minimal, subliminal, disque, optique, moiré, orb, sun, star, planet, ambient, atmosphere, atmospheric, sci-fi, movie, cinematic, style, video, azulejos, mosaïque, mosaico, mosaic, retro, futuristic, poster

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Animated Blend Cymatics

Resonance Made Visible

Hard-as-Math Psichromatic Hipgnosis

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Oil on canvas; 64.3 x 63 cm.

Ejler Bille was a Danish artist. Born in Odder, Denmark, he studied at the Kunsthåndværkerskolen in Copenhagen, with Bizzie Høyer 1930-1932 and the Royal Danish Academy of Art, 1933. In 1934 he joined Linien, Corner in 1940 and CoBrA in 1949. He had concentrated on small sculptures, but moved into painting after joining CoBrA. In 1969 he was Guest Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Art.

Bille made his début as a sculptor at the Kunstnernes Efterårsundstilling (Artists’ Autumn Exhibition) in Copenhagen in 1931. He became interested in abstract art very early in his career; in 1933, with the artist Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen, he was one of the first artists in Denmark to exhibit abstract sculptures and paintings. In 1934 Bille was a founder-member with Richard Mortensen and Bjerke-Petersen of the artists’ group Linien (The Line), whose journal of the same name he also co-edited. During Bille’s many trips abroad in the 1930s he was particularly stimulated by the work of Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and Max Ernst. His originality was nevertheless clearly apparent in the early sculptures, which often used animals as subjects, for example Marten (1931) and Walking Form (1933–6; both Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst).

Untitled Composition #31

Acrylic, Soapstone, Solid HDF Construction

23.75″ x 8.25″ x 9.75″

Base: 1.25″ x 12″ x 12″ – Black Soapstone

2013

Total Height with Base: approx: 25″

Note: A very heavy piece.

Signed “Bryce Hudson ’13″ on lower right of one side.

As always, the work can be found on www.brycehudson.com ;-)

Acrylic on canvas board, 16 x 12"

Italian painter and writer. He was born into a family of artists and artisans and began his training at the Scuola Libera di Pittura in Rome and later in the workshop of the Italian painter and restorer Giovanni Capranesi (1852-1921). During this period he also cultivated his personal interests, studying above all the work of Correggio, Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Cezanne. These influences are apparent in early works such as Self-portrait with Hat (1914; Verona, Pal. Forti). In 1915 he showed his work at the third exhibition of the Rome Secession. His first important success, after several years of financial difficulty, came in 1924 when he exhibited The Tram (1923; Rome, G.N.A. Mod.), a masterpiece of this first Roman period, at the Venice Biennale. He participated in La prima mostra del novecento italiano at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan in 1926, also contributing to the second exhibition there in 1929. In 1927 he moved to Venice to take up a teaching post at the Accademia di Belle Arti.

Licini's abstract work is singularly distinct from other Italians of his time. His abstract painting and poetry are both powerfully lyrical. His work was freed from the cage of the geometric rationalism through color, imagination and an indication of a coming climate of the Expressionism. In this way his work can be said to parallel that of Paul Klee.

The 1940s marked his abandonment of dogma as his art morphed into a sui generis surreal fantasy, marked by Northern influences (his wife was Swedish) and post-symbolist poetry that foreshadowed work of extraordinary intensity in the 1950s that manifested his total immersion in a dream world.

wall

sites.google.com/view/fabioomero/surfaces

Oil on canvas; 35 x 50 cm.

Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. The paintings and graphics of Rufino Tamayo have acquired a decisive importance in contemporary art in terms both of its high quality, maintained throughout a long, intense life, and its special significance. He was very clearly one of the greatest of American creators and, at the same time, one of the artists who managed to penetrate deepest into the reality of today's Man, going beyond his historical dimension. His knowledge of the great pre-Columbian cultures allowed him to make an extraordinary synthesis which forms part of a universalist conception of art. Tamayo sought the essential, which he expressed through a deliberately limited range of colours in order to give the freest possible rein to tonal interplay. His subject matter tends to be simple - figures of men and women, animals -, almost sketchy, although charged with content.

Tamayo occupied a privileged situation. He was a modern man, one who had a complete knowledge of a cultural environment - our cultural environment - which he had helped to shape, and at the same time he had a past which in him was present. In that other world of his there were none of the usual clear-cut distinctions between time left behind, present and future. In all the ancient cultures the community was composed of the living and the dead. Nor was there the modern categorical break between men, animals and trees or plants.

One might say, writes Jacques Lassaigne, that, in the same way as pre-Columbian art, Tamayo's painting is at the same time metaphor, geometry and transfiguration. Octavio Paz comments: This is painting as a double of the universe: not its symbol but its projection on the canvas. The picture is not a representation or an ensemble of signs: it is a constellation of forces. Through this double approach, that of the prestigious French critic and that of the great Mexican poet and essayist, the viewer is better able to unravel the mysteries of one of the great artistic creations of our era.

ivanffyuhler.com/rufinotamayo.html

Acrylic on canvas board, 20 x 16"

Tempera on paper mounted on canvas; 101x 70 cm.

Mirko Basaldella (born September 28, 1910 in Udine, Italy; † 24 November 1969 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an Italian-American sculptor, painter and draftsman.

Mirko Basaldella named with artist's name usually only "Mirko". He comes from an artistic family, his brothers and Afro Dino Basaldella were also artists of international standing.

Mirko Basaldella studied art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze "and the" Scuola di arti applicate di Monza "by Arturo Martini. Martini, he works with at Monza in 1930 together until 1932. Between 1932 and 1934, both brothers are working in Milan in Afro and Mirko Arturo Martini's studio.

His first important exhibition was Mirko but already in October 1928, where he participated with his two brothers Dino and Afro Basaldella and Alessandro Filipponi at the Scuola della I ° Mostra d'friulana avanguardia (I ° exhibition of avant-garde school Friuli).

In 1934, Mirko moved to Rome. In Rome he is with his brother and other artists in the gallery "Comet" from. Also in 1934, his work is exhibited in the "Galleria Sabatello" in Rome. He made primarily bronze sculptures. In 1936, his first solo exhibition follows in the gallery "Comet". Also in 1936 Mirko participants of the Venice Biennale and is in the same year with his brother in the Afro Gallery "Mint" in Turin. In the following years, Mirko including exhibitions in Rome and New York.

In the years 1946-1947 Mirko picturesque experimented with post-cubist and a style similar to the Metaphysical painting imagery.

In the years 1948 to 1954, Mirko numerous solo exhibitions in New York, Rome and Milan, and creates a number of monumental sculptures. Mirko is a participant of documenta 1 (1955) and Documenta II in Kassel in 1959.

Mirko 1957 draws in the U.S. and is there until his death in 1969, director of design workshops (sculpture) at Harvard University in Boston.

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Untitled Composition #19

Oil and Acrylic on 300 GSM Arches Watercolor Paper

30" x 22"

2012

The rest of the work can be foound at www.brycehudson.com

Oil on board; 67.6 x 100.0 cm.

Winifred Nicholson was an English painter and colorist who developed a personalized impressionistic style that concentrated on domestic subjects and landscapes. In her work, the two motifs are often combined in a view out of a window, featuring flowers in a vase or a jug.

Nicholson was born in Oxford. Her parents were Charles Henry Roberts and Lady Cecilia, daughter of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. Her interest in painting started early in life. George Howard was an accomplished painter as well as a friend and patron of many distinguished artists. Nicholson began painting with Howard around age 11. She attended the Byam Shaw Art School.

Nicholson married the artist Ben Nicholson in 1920. There were three children; Kate Nicholson also became an artist. In the 1920s Winifred became a Christian Scientist, an allegiance that lasted for the rest of her life. Although it is sometimes said incorrectly that with Ben, Winifred formed part of the artist colony at St Ives, Cornwall, she was never permanently living there. Although she painted less in the abstract style than in the representational, she did experiment with her own form of abstraction in the 1930s. Influences between her and Ben were mutual, Ben often admitting he learned much about color from his first wife. After they separated, she lived half of each year during the 1930s in Paris.

After her divorce from Ben Nicholson in 1938, she spent most of the rest of her life in Cumberland, at Boothby and at Bankshead. She painted prolifically throughout her life, largely at home but also on trips to Greece and Scotland, among other places. Many of her works are still in private collections, but a number are in the Kettle's Yard art gallery, Cambridge, and several key works belong to Tate. One painting is believed to have hung at 10 Downing Street. She had a lifelong fascination for rainbow and spectrum colors and in the 1970s she made particularly strong, innovative use of such colors in many of her paintings.

Oil on canvas; 60.5 x 59.5 cm.

Ben Nicholson was an English artist whose austere geometric paintings and reliefs were among the most influential abstract works in British art. The son of the painter Sir William Nicholson, he briefly attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1910–11, but he was largely self-taught. He traveled extensively in Europe between 1911 and 1914, and in 1917 he visited California, keeping a detailed record in sketches of architecture and landscape. About 1920 he began to paint seriously, creating still lifes and landscapes in a conventionally realistic style. During a trip to Paris in 1921, Nicholson saw Cubist works, which influenced his first semi-abstract still lifes; in 1924 he executed his first completely abstract painting.

During the 1920s, along with the sculptors Barbara Hepworth (who became his second wife) and Henry Moore, Nicholson was instrumental in introducing Continental Modernism into English art. In 1933 he and Hepworth joined the Paris-based Abstraction-Création group, an artists’ association that advocated purely abstract art. He also met the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, under whose influence Nicholson’s work took on a greatly simplified geometry; typical of this period are his low reliefs of whitewashed circles and rectangles, such as White Relief (1937–38). He was co-editor with the artist Naum Gabo and the architect Sir Leslie Martin of Circle, a manifesto published in 1937 to promote Constructivism and other modern art styles in England.

In the 1940s Nicholson returned to landscape and still-life themes, often painting simplified representations of still-life motifs within otherwise largely abstract compositions. In his later work he continued to shift between modes of abstraction and representation.

Acrylic on canvas; 243.1 x 212.1 cm.

Olav Christopher Jenssen (born in Sortland, Norway, in 1954) studied from 1976 to 1979 at the Statens Håndverks- og Kunstindustrieskole in Oslo, and from 1980 to 1981 at the Statens Kunstakademie in Oslo. He continued his studies abroad, first in New York and then in Berlin until 1983. Now living and working both in Berlin and in Lya, Sweden, Jenssen was in 1996 appointed Professor of painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg as a successor to Sigmar Polke. He first participated in exhibitions in 1977. In 1992 Jenssen participated in the Documenta IX in Kassel, where the Lack of Memory series was exhibited together with works by Bruce Marden and Jonathan Lasker. An exhibition of Jenssen's works was held at Studio N at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki in 1993. He has also had solo shows in Finland, for instance in Galerie Artek in 1988, 1991, and 1995, and at the Nordic Art Centre in 1993.

Olav Christopher Jenssen's paintings may evoke a trace of a romantic-mystical landscape painting, combining the artist's experience of nature and his inner landscape, the landscape of the soul. This interpretation has its origin in the strong Scandinavian tradition represented by the landscape painters of the 1800s and artists such as Carl Fredrik Hill and Edvard Munch. The romantic depiction of nature with religious undertones is often supported by the artist's own strong, expressive interpretation of the subject. Nevertheless, taking into account the sign language associated with the paintings, Jenssen's misty and hazy landscapes can be regarded from a novel point of view.

In Jenssen's paintings the border between the figurative and non-figurative is blurred. In his early works he used recognisable forms as part of a composition. Later in the 1980s the shapes used by the artist suggested the smallest particles of living nature, such as plant tissue and protozoa. In his works Jenssen uses signs and texts improvised by the free movement of a hand. Their origin refers to subconscious automatic writing, which was used as a method of surrealist art. Indeed, Jenssen admits to being influenced by Paul Klee. He maintains his spontaneous working method by drawing constantly, even when he is travelling. By marking down in the drawing the time and place of its creation he connects the work with the present. For Jenssen, drawing is a way of clearing and analysing the relationship between forms and objects, which he claims not to be able do to by thinking alone. He finds all his paintings and drawings to be of equal importance and worth preserving. A past subject or form may resurface, as a stimulus for a new theme.

The 1980s saw an increased interest in painting. Paintings emphasised figurativeness, expressiveness, and an airy picturesqueness. The post-modern trend also toyed with elements and subject matter connected with earlier trends. During his stay in New York in 1981 Olav Christopher Jenssen became acquainted with the abstract impressionism of the 1950s, representative of an informal and non-figurative style. This contributed to Jenssen's understanding of an abstract form language. These ideas he combined with the tradition of romantic landscape painting. Jenssen was also interested in decorative, ornamentally-shaped details, accentuating the surface of the painting, and the strong vertical or horizontal divisions, which find a softer interpretation in his works.

His move to Berlin in 1982 took Jenssen into the very heart of a vigorous and emotionally appealing painting centre. The politically sensitive phase in the still divided Germany was reflected in the artists' expressive and fierce way of painting; their works dealt with grand, mythological stories or depicted the frenzied, urban lifestyle. Jenssen, however, finds his own range of subjects in quiet and inconspicuous everyday life, which in his productions is transformed into an uplifting and insightful experience.

After an intensive 2-year painting session Jenssen completed in 1992 a group of forty large paintings entitled Lack of Memory. The paintings Aphasia, 1990-91, Lapidary, 1991-92, and Serpentine, 1992. The name of a work is an important part of the painting process. The name provides the work with a finishing touch, its ultimate meaning. For Jenssen the concept of Lack of Memory means the absence of memory as distinct from a 'lock of memory', the loss of memory. This general concept refers to a moment of standstill, an emotion here and now which is isolated from the ballast of memory, the past, or the future.

The Lack of Memory series proved an important turning point in Jenssen's career. The long painting process allowed him to experiment with various working methods. He used different techniques in different paintings, such as spreading the paint on the canvas with a brush, by hand, or with a palette knife. Colour schemes were chosen both from the sensitive dark shades and from an expressive palette, non-primary colours such as green, purple, and orange. Instead of the basic forms of a triangle, square, or a circle, Jenssen used free forms which could be associated with nature. The painting does not let on whether the subject depicted is microscopically small or whether the spirals refer to something larger such as the stellar system, for example.

Eija Aarnio

2011 (#10)

Acrylic and Oil on Arches Water Color Paper

22" x 30"

2011

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Bryce Hudson

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I am very much influenced by geometric abstraction and the Neoplasticism movement from the early and mid 20th century.

Cloudy day, not good light, practicing with camera settings and discovering that the very best is to have great light!

Oil on canvas; 54 x 54 in.

TWORKOV, JACK (1900–1982), U.S. educator, printmaker, painter. Tworkov was born in Biala, Poland and immigrated to the U.S. in 1913. He studied at Columbia University, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. Tworkov worked as an artist for the Works Project Administration's Federal Art Project in 1935, where he met Willem de Kooning. Both men emerged as forces in the Abstract Expressionist movement. Tworkov was also one of the founders of The Club, a loose New York association of Abstract Expressionists which met to discuss matters relating to art making. Like many other Abstract Expressionists, Tworkov's early work consisted of figures and still-lifes. He also rendered images in a cubist style before adopting the visual aspects of Abstract Expressionism. As to be expected, his early work shared many stylistic characteristics with that of de Kooning. As Tworkov gained eminence along with his colleagues in the New York School representational subject matter became subsumed in abundantly textured long, dashing, diagonal brush strokes, as in his painting Blue Note from 1959. Among other influences, Tworkov also turned to the art of the marginalized Expressionist painter Chaim Soutine as a source of inspiration; in fact, Tworkov wrote an article on Soutine during the latter's 1950 show at MOMA. Tworkov achieved the illusion of vibrating and multiple fields or screens of color from a cool, restricted palette and subtle nuances of tone. Likely influenced by the Minimalists, Tworkov integrated grids and other ordering systems into his images from the 1960s onward, such as Shield (1961) and Variables II (1964–65). One of his major series of paintings, House of the Sun, refers to Ulysses, whose epic adventures suggested a variety of themes to the artist. Tworkov taught at numerous institutions: the American University, Black Mountain College (other luminaries of this period such as John Cage, Franz Kline, and Lyonel Feininger also taught here during the 1940s), Queens College, the Pratt Institute, and Yale University, where he functioned as chairman of the art department. He was a recipient of a Corcoran Gold Medal in 1963. Tworkov's art has been exhibited at numerous major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the Whitney Museum, among other venues. His work is in the collections of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

Oil on canvas; 130 x 195 cm.

Alberto Magnelli was an Italian modern painter who was a significant figure in the post war Concrete art movement. Born in Florence he started painting and, despite lacking formal art education, by 1909 he was established enough to be included in the Venice Biennale. His initial works were in a Fauvist style. Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde befriending artists including Ardengo Soffici and Gino Severini. He also visited Paris where he met Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko. By 1915 had adopted an abstract style incorporating cubist and futurist elements.

Over the next few years Magnelli returned to figurative work and drifted away from the Italian avant-garde, which was becoming more supportive of Fascism, which he opposed. By 1931 he had returned to abstraction in the form of concrete art featuring geometric shapes and overlapping planes. He moved to Paris, where he joined the Abstraction-Création group and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber. Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse with several other artists including the Arps. Some of the group, including Gerson, were Jewish so they were forced to hide. Despite this, the group was able to produce a number of collaborative works.

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris which was to be his home for the rest of his life. He became a major figure in the post war concrete art movement and influenced artists such as Victor Vasarely, Nicolas de Staël as well as the concrete artists in South America such as Hélio Oiticica. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale, this time with a whole room. Major galleries organized retrospectives of his work.

Oil on canvas; 57 x 45 cm.

Born in Zdolbunowo in Wolhynia in 1922. In 1944-45 Fijalkowski was deported to Königsberg (presently Kaliningrad), where he was pressed into forced labor. It was during Poland's occupation, a particularly difficult time in Fijalkowski's life, that he undertook his first creative explorations as an artist. These efforts were entirely independent, unguided by anyone. He did not find time for systematic study in painting until after the war. Between 1946 and 1951 he attended the State Higher School of the Fine Arts in Lodz, where he was a student of Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Stefan Wegner, though he had Ludwik Tyrowicz as his thesis promoter. From among his teachers, Fijalkowski most readily names Strzeminski as an influence, perhaps because he later worked under him as an assistant (the artist taught at his alma mater from 1947-1993, becoming a full professor in 1983). He was an important presence within the group of educators who shaped the school in Lodz (known today as the Academy of Fine Arts). He also guest lectured for brief periods at a series of foreign art schools, among them the schools in Mons (1978, 1982) and Marburg (1990). He taught classes at Geissen University throughout the 1989/90 academic year.

Fijalkowski began his career as an independent artist by rebelling against his master, creating works that possess a clear link to those of the Impressionists. He made an effort to delineate his own, individual creative path by taking a clear position towards tradition and the achievements of the masters, particularly Strzeminski. Towards the end of the 1950s he proceeded along a course typical of Polish painters fascinated with Informel, taking an interest in the symbolic meanings inherent in abstract expressive means. He believed that "unreal" shapes are justified in paintings when they are saturated with meaning. Years later, in writing a brief curriculum vitae, the artist added that it was approximately at this time that "...apart from interpreting reality within an esoteric dimension, there appeared [in his paintings] the need to organize the esoteric meanings inherent in form." Fijalkowski admits that the shape of his art was to a significant degree determined by the writings of Kandinsky (whose "Über das Geistige in der Kunst" Fijalkowski translated and published in Poland) and Mondrian, and by his interest in Surrealism. These two branches of 20th century art unexpectedly combined in Fijalkowski's art to produce surprising results. At the turn of the 1950s and 60s Fijalkowski continued to search and experiment, using the canvas as a plane on which to juxtapose the essentials of Strzeminski's ordering principles with something within the realm of Surrealism that was stripped of direct metaphorical meanings and allusions.

The change that occurred in his paintings consisted primarily of a gradual abandonment of pure, literally allusive form. In the painter's own words, during this time of reflection, "I attempted more boldly to create forms that did not impose a single meaning, leaving viewers fully free to access the ingredients of their personalities, that may be unconscious or repressed but are absolutely truthful. I sought, and continue to strive, to create form that is only the beginning of the work as generated by the viewer, each time in a new shape..." In Fijalkowski's works, "form" is more open the more it is modest, efficient, insinuated. Most of his compositions are constructed based on a simple set of principles whereby an almost uniformly colored background is filled in with elements that resemble geometric figures but have rounded corners and soft edges, generating a poetic mood. The decisive hues used for the backgrounds of these canvasses, however, decidedly modifies their function and meaning - at times, the background dominates the entirety of the image, becoming an abyss, a void that draws into its interior large, spinning wheels, ellipsoidal forms, or diagonal lines that cut across the painting. One could expect this repetition of forms to render both Fijalkowski's painted works and his graphic art pieces tiring (the artist has been equally active in both areas, working in cycles, though the subjects undertaken often appeared in compositions created in various techniques). This impression is only reinforced by the artist's palette, which was restricted; he willingly used "undecided colors" that were muted, cool, and only at times broken up with ribbons of categorical black. But Fijalkowski was able to extract a tension out of this monotony and uniformity, in a manner that usually remains unfathomable to the viewer. Likewise, the meanings the artist assigns to these puzzling arrangements remain largely a mystery. In the end, it is the erudition of viewers, their rooting in culture and awareness of contemporary art, finally their intuition that determine their ability to enter into a dialogue with the artist and his work. This dialogue is easier to establish in the case of pieces that contain "objective" suggestions and clear references, for instance to Christian iconography. It is more difficult in the case of abstract compositions like WAWOZY / RAVINES, WARIACJE NA TEMAT LICZBY CZTERY / VARIATIONS ON THE NUMBER FOUR, STUDIA TALMUDYCZNE / TALMUDIC STUDIES, or works like AUTOSTRADY / HIGHWAYS that derive from the artist's personal experiences. Nevertheless, Fijalkowski's paintings are charming, even to the uninitiated viewer, for the ascetic painting techniques used, for a compactness deriving from the skillful balancing of emotions and intellect, intuition and conscious thought, individual expression and universal meanings - something very much in line with the artist's own expectations. The parallel existence and synthesis of the concrete forms of the works with the mystery of their message - a synthesis of that which is external to the works with that which is internal - prevents his oeuvre from being perceived as over-aestheticized. In the end, his work seems to be the result of a search for harmony, for a principle that would impose order on the lack of direction felt by contemporary man. The artist achieves this aim through a distinct painterly language that sets his art apart from that of other artists, rendering it exceptional and original, not only, it seems, when compared to the work of other Polish artists.

Stanislaw Fijalkowski is chairman of the Polish section of the XYLON International Association of Wood-Engravers and has been a vice president of this body's International Board since 1990. Between 1974 and 1979 he was the vice president of the Polish AIAP Committee (Association Internationale des Arts Plastiques). He is a member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences in Salzburg and the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, Literature, and Fine Arts in Brussels. He represented Poland at the biennales in Sao Paulo (1969) and Venice (1972). He has received numerous domestic and international awards at a number of exhibitions.

Malgorzata Kitowska-Lysiak, Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin.

Gouache; 40 x 40 cm.

Born in 1899 in Aabenraa, Denmark, Clausen received an extensive artistic education. She started her studies at the Weimar Grossherzogliche Kunstschule and went on to the women’s academy. She returned home to enrol at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1920. Clausen then studied under Hans Hoffmann at the Hoffmann Schule für Moderne Kunst in Munich from 1921-2, before travelling to Berlin to study with Alexander Archipenko. In Berlin her work became detailed and precise, as Archipenko´s pure geometry demanded. When she moved onto Paris to learn from Fernand Léger in 1924, she became acquainted with Cubism and became part of the Parisian avant-garde. Her painting style began to reflect late Cubism’s geometric edge, grounded in Léger’s mechanical forms. Léger and Clausen had a personal relationship and co-habited in Paris for three years. She started painting objects and architectural forms, executed with a tight line. Léger continued to be an influence on her work, although she formed an interest in several other modern movements throughout her career, including Surrealism, Neo-plasticism and Purism. When she returned to Denmark in 1932 her direct contact with modern European art may have ceased, but her work retained an international style that was dismissed by Danish critics. She taught at the Drawing and Applied Arts School for Women in Copenhagen in 1933. Clausen completed a number of portraits towards the end of her life and designed a mosaic square in Bytorvet, near Copenhagen. She died in Aabenraa, her birthplace, in March 1986.

Dutch painter, theorist and draughtsman. His work marks the transition at the start of the 20th century from the Hague school and Symbolism to Neo-Impressionism and Cubism. His key position within the international avant-garde is determined by works produced after 1920. He set out his theory in the periodical of DE STIJL, in a series of articles that were summarized in a separate booklet published in Paris in 1920 under the title NEO-PLASTICISM. The essence of Mondrian’s ideas is that painting, composed of the most fundamental aspects of line and color, must set an example to the other arts for achieving a society in which art as such has no place but belongs instead to the total realization of ‘beauty’. The representation of the universal, dynamic pulse of life, also expressed in modern jazz and the metropolis, was Mondrian’s point of departure. Even in his lifetime he was regarded as the founder of the most modern art. His artistic integrity caused him to be honored as a classical master by artists who were aligned with entirely different styles, as well as by musicians and architects. He was able to make a living from the sale of his works in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England and the USA.

18 x 30 inches

Fluid acrylics on canvas

2015

You can see more of my paintings at my blog, Exploring Geometric Abstraction.

Engraving on metal; 56 x 75 cm.

Piza was born in Sao Paulo, where he received his first training. He moved to Paris in 1955 and worked in the studio of the master of colour etching, Johnny Friedlaender. Piza soon became expert in all the techniques of etching and aquatint, using sugar-lift extensively, but he experimented in various ways to make his work more sculptural and three dimensional. He abandoned traditional etching techniques and, using very thick copper plates, he devised his unique "gouge" technique by incising his designs into his plates with hammers and various shaped chisels. The precision required is exact as his grooves need to be precisely deep and wide enough to hold his hand-made special inks. Because of the depths of the grooves, the direction of the wiping directly affects the final impression

. Each impression of his prints requires at least 30 minutes between colours in order for the plate to be re-inked and wiped, and he has to use cold plates in order for the inks not to dry out. The process of producing each impression is a time consuming and laborious process of collaboration between Piza and his printers. His work has met with great success and is shown in major public collections world-wide, including MOMA in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musée d’Art Nationale (Centre Pompidou) in Paris. He has been awarded numerous prizes, notably for etching, at the 1959 Sao Paolo Biennale and at Documenta Kassel in 1959.

From 1958, Piza devoted himself primarily to burin engraving. Starting from this period, the artist created reliefs and collages, as well as sculpted objects, porcelain and jewellery. During the 1960’s, Arthur Luiz Piza became known as one of the most compelling representatives of the art of engraving. His style is very personal: the plate is cut, gashed, gouged, hammered, sculpted in small, successive marks that, like scales, interlock and overlap; hollows become volumes. The artist works with the perception of matter, matter that is imaginary and poeticised. The colours used by the artist are often ochres, muted and subdued. Arthur Luiz Piza lives and works in Paris.

www.rogallery.com/Piza_Arthur-Luiz/Piza-bio.htm

Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952) - Kompozycja architektoniczna 1 [Architectural composition 1] (1926) In the collection of the Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź. Shown at the temporary exhibition "Kobro and Strzemiński. Art in Turbulent Times" at the Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, summer 2018.