First Look: New Acquisitions June 2014
Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
Angled Spiral Gouache and ink on paper 1969 29 1/8 x 43 inches Signed and dated lower right
Taking his inspiration from the circus, children’s toys, and the urban landscape, Calder’s work has always had a playful character. Calder studied engineering and technology before enrolling at the Art Student’s League in New York. As a young man, Calder lived in Paris, where he invented his famous kinetic sculptures made from wire, wood, metal, and cloth. These mobiles (from the French for “to move” and also “motive”) are a unique invention that earner Calder international success. Calder also created large-scale sculptures, called stabiles, as well as paintings.
Karl Benjamin (1925-2012)
Untitled, 1960
Oil on canvas 1960 20.5 x 14.5 inches Signed KB60 lower left
American painter Karl Benjamin was known for dazzling geometric abstractions that utilized vibrant color and often meticulous geometric layouts.
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Benjamin began to paint in the 1950s. Experimenting with oils leading him to Claremont Graduate University and a MFA degree. Benjamin joined the Pomona College faculty as artist-in-residence in 1979, following a 20-year career teaching in public elementary and middle school. He was appointed the Loren Babcock Miller Professor of Fine Arts in 1991. When he retired in 1994, he was granted emeritus status.
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Ray Parker (1924-207)
Untitled
ca. 1960 Oil on canvas 44.5 x 37.25 inches Signed verso
Ray Parker earned his MFA from University of Iowa in 1940. During the 1940s his paintings were heavily influenced by cubism. In the early 1950s, however, Parker became associated with the leading abstract expressionists of the day, including Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Parker soon began to simplify and refine his works realizing that through abstraction, and color his paintings could convey and express emotion.Like Piet Mondrian, Stuart Davis and Jackson Pollock, Parker was a fan of jazz music; and his interest in Jazz, combined with his interest in abstract expressionism, led to his improvised painting style.
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992)
Sunflower VI Etching on paper 1972 35 1/2 x 25 inches Signed and numbered 18/75 in pencil
Joan Mitchell was born and received her art education in Chicago. In 1948 she visited France for a year before moving to New York, where Mitchell became a young leader in the Abstract Expressionist scene. Mitchell was well connected with New York School artists and poets. She hosted many visitors at her house in the country outside of Paris, in the small town of Vétheuil. It was in Vétheuil that Mitchell spent her later years, continuously painting until her death in 1992. Klaus Kertess admiringly writes of Mitchell, “She transformed the gestural painterliness of Abstract Expressionism into a vocabulary so completely her own that it could become ours as well.” The artist’s legacy is preserved by the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Emil James Bisttram (1895-1976)
The Little King Oil on canvas 1940 35 3/4 x 48 inches 37 3/4 x 50 inches framed
Emil Bisttram was born in Hungary in 1895 and immigrated to America with his family in 1906. He began working with commercial art at a young age, first working as a lettering and cover designer for shops and catalogues before opening his own commercial art studio. Bisttram paid his first visit to Santa Fe in 1930. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to Mexico on a Guggenheim fellowship to study mural painting with Diego Rivera. In 1932, he settled in Taos. In 1938, Emil Bisttram and his close friend Raymond Jonson co-founded the Transcendental Painting Group, a group of artists whose shared vision was to transcend material reality and advance the expression of spirituality in art through the creation of non-representational work.
Karl Benjamin (1925-2012)
TG#24
Oil on canvas 1961 60 x 41.25 inches Signed KB60 lower right
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American painter Karl Benjamin was known for dazzling geometric abstractions that utilized vibrant color and often meticulous geometric layouts. Benjamin began to paint in the 1950s. Experimenting with oils leading him to Claremont Graduate University and a MFA degree. Benjamin joined the Pomona College faculty as artist-in-residence in 1979, following a 20-year career teaching in public elementary and middle school. He was appointed the Loren Babcock Miller Professor of Fine Arts in 1991.
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When he retired in 1994, he was granted emeritus status.
Esteban Vicente (1903-2001)
Untitled, 1982 Charcoal on paper 1982 29 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches
Known for his Abstract Expressionism and ColorField paintings in oil as well as collages, Esteban Vicente attended art school in Madrid at the Academy Belles Artes before moving to New York City in 1936. There he became affiliated with the Action Painters in the 1950s including Willem and Elaine De Kooning. In Art News magazine, 1952, Elaine De Kooning had an article published on Esteban Vicente titled “Vicente Paints a Collage� He had his first one-man show at the Ateneo de Madrid in 1928, and from that time entered many exhibitions in Spain, including Barcelona as well as Madrid, where his paintings are in the Reina Sofia Museum. In 1991 Vicente was honored by King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain with the Gold Medal for Fine Arts.