Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 9

Ben-Zion Weinman
Ben ZIon Expressionist Judaica Rabbi Watercolor Painting Jewish Modernist WPA

c.1950's

About the Item

Frame measures 13.5 X 11.5 Paper measures 6.5 X 4 inches Hand signed lower right Watercolor painting of prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, and printmaker. Influenced by Spinoza, Knut Hamsun, and Wladyslaw Reymont, as well as Hebrew literature, Ben-Zion wrote poetry and essays that, like his visual work, attempt to reveal the deep “connection between man and the divine, and between man and earth.” An emigrant from the Ukraine, he came to the US in 1920. He wrote fairy tales and poems in Hebrew under the name Benzion Weinman, but when he began painting he dropped his last name and hyphenated his first, saying an artist needed only one name. Ben-Zion was a founding member of “The Ten: An Independent Group” The Ten” a 1930’s avant-garde group, Painted on anything handy. Ben-Zion often used cabinet doors (panels) in his work. Other members of group included Ilya Bolotowsky, Lee Gatch, Adolf Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Yankel Kufeld, Marcus Rothkowitz (later known as Mark Rothko), Louis Schanker, and Joseph Solman. The Art of “The Ten” was generally described as expressionist, as this style offered the best link between modernism and social art. Their exhibition at the Mercury Gallery in New York held at the same time as the Whitney Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, included a manifesto concentrating on aesthetic questions and criticisms of the conservative definition of modern art imposed by the Whitney. Ben-Zion’s work was quickly noticed. The New York Sun said he painted “furiously” and called him “the farthest along of the lot.” And the triptych, “The Glory of War,” was described by Art News as “resounding.” By 1939, The Ten disbanded because most of the members found individual galleries to represent their work. Ben-Zion had his first one-man show at the Artist’s Gallery in Greenwich Village and J.B. Neumann, the highly esteemed European art dealer who introduced Paul Klee, (among others) to America, purchased several of Ben-Zion’s drawings. Curt Valentin, another well-known dealer, exhibited groups of his drawings and undertook the printing of four portfolios of etchings, each composed of Ben-Zion’s biblical themes. Ben-Zion’s work is represented in many museums throughout the country including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington. The Jewish Museum in New York opened in 1948 with a Ben-Zion exhibition. Ben-Zion consistently threaded certain subject matter—nature, still life, the human figure, the Hebrew Bible, and the Jewish people—into his work throughout his life. "In all his work a profound human feeling remains. Sea and sky, even sheaves of wheat acquire a monolithic beauty and simplicity which delineates the transient as a reflection of the eternal. This sensitive inter- mingling of the physical and metaphysical is one of the most enduring features of Ben-Zion's works." (Excerpt from Stephen Kayser, “Biblical Paintings,” The Jewish Museum Catalogue, 1952). Mystical Imprints: Marc Chagall, Ben-Zion, and Ben Shahn presents the print work of three prominent 20th century Jewish artists born in the Russian Empire. Among these seventy pieces are etchings and lithographs from Chagall’s Bible series, Ben-Zion’s full 1980 portfolio The 36 Unknown, Shahn’s iconic The Alphabet of Creation, and more. Organized in partnership with the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library The tradition of Jewish mysticism as an inspiration for these artists is at the center of the exhibition, from Ben-Zion’s suffering prophets, to Shahn’s Kabbalah influences, to Chagall’s dreamlike images. A contemporary of Ben Shahn, William Gropper, and Abraham Rattner. Ben-Zion continued his style of representational painting based on the abstract, and is perhaps best known for his Biblical paintings and etchings. Ben-Zion received an American Jewish Congress award. In 1987, Ben-Zion died in his home in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. He was 90 years old.
  • Creator:
    Ben-Zion Weinman (1897 - 1987, American)
  • Creation Year:
    c.1950's
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 13.5 in (34.29 cm)Width: 11.5 in (29.21 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Good, moisture stain to bottom of mat werll away from image. needs new matting. Please see Photos.
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38214245252

More From This Seller

View All
Ben ZIon Expressionist Judaica Rabbi Watercolor Painting Jewish Modernist WPA
By Ben-Zion Weinman
Located in Surfside, FL
Frame measures 13.5 X 11.5 Paper measures 6.5 X 5 inches Hand signed lower right Watercolor painting of prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated h...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Abstract Expressionist Rabbi Watercolor Painting Jewish American Modernist WPA
By Ben-Zion Weinman
Located in Surfside, FL
Watercolor painting of standing prophet or Rabbi, Judaica artwork Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman celebrated his European Jewish heritage in his visual works as a sculptor, painter, ...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Abstract Drawing Watercolor Painting Totem Column Jewish American Modernist WPA
By Ben-Zion Weinman
Located in Surfside, FL
Miniature Abstract Totem. Signed with initials. Provenance: Virginia Field, Arts administrator; New York, N.Y. Assistant director for Asia House gallery. (she was friends with John v...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Watercolor

Vibrant Alan Davie Scottish Colorful Surrealist British Pop Art Village Painting
By Alan Davie
Located in Surfside, FL
Alan Davie, Scotland (1920-2014). Gouache painting with watercolor 'Village Myth' Hand signed ('with love') lower left, 1982 Dimensions: with frame 37.5"H x 30.25"W; image, 28"H x 22.5"W. James Alan Davie (1920 – 2014) was a Scottish painter and musician. Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1920, the son of Elizabeth (née Turnbull) and James William Davie, an art teacher and painter who exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1925. During this formative period Davie discovered the poetry of Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot, whose prose is echoed in letters home as well as his own verses. Alan Davie studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1937 to 1941. An early exhibition of his work came through the Society of Scottish Artists. After the Second World War, Davie played tenor saxophone in the Tommy Sampson Orchestra, which was based in Edinburgh and broadcast and toured in Europe. He also earned a living making jewellery during the postwar period. Davie began teaching basic design in the jewellery department at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts led by the Scottish artist William Johnstone, where colleagues included artists Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and Patrick Heron. In 1961, Davie’s jewellery was featured in The International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery at London’s Goldsmith’s Hall, a milestone in the history of jewellery making in Britain where an impressive roster of international and British artists including Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo, Victor Pasmore and John McHale...
Category

1980s Pop Art Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

Modernist Watercolor Painting Peter Goldman American Filmmaker Neo Expressionist
By Peter Emanuel Goldman
Located in Surfside, FL
Greenwich Village Bar. The Pickup Watercolor painting hand signed by Peter Emanuel Goldman. Legendary French American Film Auteur, These are recently produced watercolor paintings b...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Neo-Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Wa...

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Modernist Watercolor Painting Peter Goldman American Filmmaker Neo Expressionist
By Peter Emanuel Goldman
Located in Surfside, FL
Bilbouquet sporting painting Watercolor painting hand signed by Peter Emanuel Goldman. Legendary French American Film Auteur, These are recently produced watercolor paintings based ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary American Realist Abstract Drawings and Wat...

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

You May Also Like

'Mother Nature', Lyrical Surrealist Abstract Watercolour on Paper.
Located in Cotignac, FR
Mid-century lyrical surrealist abstract watercolour on paper by French artist Jean Clerté, signed and dated bottom right. Presented in mid-century frame. Jean Clerté , born in 1930 in Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienne, is a French painter, engraver, draftsman, watercolourist and sculptor . This work is a great example of his more humorous and expressive work influenced by Alechinsky from the late 1960s onwards. There is a light playfulness and yet the watercolours are more vivid than his previous palette. Jean Clerté works in series. His sequential narrations testify both to a youthful spontaneity and to a perfect mastery in the distribution of forms and images on the painted surface. The narration is not only an accumulation of juxtaposed fragments and symbols, it forms a whole, it takes on and gives meaning. In general, we can say of Clerté that he practices an “eco-art” that feeds on primary hungers: the feeling of being united with nature, the vegetable, the mineral, the aquatic. In his colourful canvases, his inks, his boxes, his objects, like a shaman on the path of his dreams, the painter Clerté mounts an assault on beasts and demons, elves and gnomes. From the Poitevin marshes to the tropical forests emerges a fauna caught in the meanders of a design that marvels at the appearance of these grotesque idols. Jean Clerté began to draw and paint at a very young age, and at the age of 15 he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Poitiers. Then in 1949, curious about the capital, he moved to Paris. Having very few financial resources, he could not continue his studies at first, worked as a model to survive, and met other artists; he was then admitted to the studio of Ossip Zadkine and, from 1952, he was also able to study engraving at Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter, an English engraver and printer living in Paris associated in the 1930s with surrealism. At the end of the 1960s, he worked alongside Pierre Alechinsky, founding member of the Cobra movement, engraving Alechinsky's originals, benefiting from his advice, and discovering acrylic as a medium. From 1976, Jean Clerté became associate professor at Hayter. Clerté had taught previously, in 1971 at the Salzburg Summer University and in 1972 he gave courses at the Paris-Sorbonne University . In 1981, he was appointed professor at the School of Decorative Arts , where he had Maïlys Seydoux-Dumas as a student and, from 1983 to 1988, he was Alechinsky's assistant professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts. His first works are part of the current of lyrical abstraction, and are nourished by impressions of nature (landscape motifs, e.g. forest fires, waterscapes), then around 1968, encouraged by Alechinsky, he rejects abstraction, and his work becomes more figurative with expressive and humorous elements. From this period his colours are more subdued, often with pastel tones, he works on series. Jean Clerté has created a world in a space where drawing, painting, objects participate in a playful figuration. From his drawings were born sculptures and sometimes mobiles (Le Moulin à dessin). If it is the artist who makes astonishing, polychrome, whimsical “toys”, it is the painter who appeals to adults through his caustic and satirical humour. His first exhibitions in France took place at the Galerie Massol , then at the Galerie Pascal...
Category

Mid-20th Century Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Gladiator
By Rainer Küchenmeister
Located in Norwich, GB
An exquisite watercolour and paint painting on paper by German resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor Rainer Küchenmeister (1926-2010)...
Category

1970s Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

German expressionist drawing by Carl Hofer' Whispering'
By Carl Hofer
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
Carl Hofer (German, 1875 – 1955) Einflusterung (Whispering) Charcoal and pencil on paper Signed and inscribed ‘Einflusterung’ (lower middle) 17.1/4 x 13.3/8 in. (43.8 x 34 cm.) Provenance: These works come from the artist’s second wife Elizabeth and from then by descent. Carl Hofer was a German expressionist painter and the director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. One of the most important painters of the Expressionist movement, his work was among those that was considered degenerate art by the Nazis. He studied in Karlsruhe under Hans Thoma. He first visited Paris in 1899 making acquaintance with Julius Meier-Graefe. In 1902 he studied in Stuttgardt and became friends with the sculptor Hermann Haller...
Category

20th Century Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

German Expressionist drawing of abstracted figures by Carl Hofer
By Carl Hofer
Located in Petworth, West Sussex
Carl Hofer (German, 1875 – 1955) Abstract figures Pencil on paper 8.1/4 x 9 in. (21 x 23 cm.) With studio stamp (on the reverse) and signature of the artist’s wife Elizabeth Hofer Provenance: These works come from the artist’s second wife Elizabeth and from then by descent. Carl Hofer was a German expressionist painter and the director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. One of the most important painters of the Expressionist movement, his work was among those that was considered degenerate art by the Nazis. He studied in Karlsruhe under Hans Thoma. He first visited Paris in 1899 making acquaintance with Julius Meier-Graefe. In 1902 he studied in Stuttgardt and became friends with the sculptor Hermann Haller...
Category

20th Century Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pencil

Modernist Avant-Gard Figurative Abstract, Large-Scale Primary Colors Pastel
By Henry Elinson
Located in Soquel, CA
Stunning modernist avant-garde figurative abstract pastel in deep royal blue, with red and yellow accents by Henry Elinson (Californian/Russian 1935-2010), 1996. Signed and dated "H....
Category

1960s Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pastel

Une Danse, Original Work on Paper, Ink, Acrylic
Located in AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FR
Acrylic, Ink, Pastel and collage on archival paper - Original Work on Paper, unique work. The work is in very good condition and is signed lower Right "Patricia R.". Unfortunately w...
Category

1990s Expressionist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic

Recently Viewed

View All