Roberto Matta

L'epreuve

1967-68

"Untitled" is a painting by American artist David Smith. David Smith’s paintings from the 1930s rarely come to market, and when Untitled (Billiard Players) surfaced at a Christie’s auction in 2018, it created quite a stir, realizing an impressive price of $1.15 million. Painted around the same time, Untitled shares many similarities with Untitled (Billiard Players). Both paintings affirm Smith’s place among the American artists when ideas and style began to intermingle and coalesce around Picasso’s innovations. Uniquely positioned in temperament and ability, Smith was a man of considerable ambition whose direct-metal configurations would have much to do with achieving new ideas about abstraction. Yet all along, he insisted he was a painter, not a sculptor who painted. Paintings by Smith...

"Untitled" is a painting by artist David Smith. The work is signed and dated in the upper left "David Smith (symbol) 1936". When David Smith set up a workshop on the Brooklyn Navy Pier in 1933 to learn direct-metal techniques, he shared the space not with artists, but with professional welders. Yet as he stated in 1964, ‘…all my early friends were painters…I never conceived of myself as anything other than a painter because my work came straight through the raised surface.’ Picasso and Cubism would be dominant influences in Smith’s work. He understood that Picasso imagined the world as a sculptor might, and not necessarily limited to the unavoidable impact of Cubism. In addition to pursuing a kind of rethinking of the world in three-dimensionality on his own terms, by the late 1920s, Picasso had shown interest in surrealism. That meant drawing not as a depiction of reality, but rather as a reconfiguration of the body in an assemblage of often precariously balanced, interconnected forms — some expressed in a three-dimensional form, others as drawings or paintings. Those processes are reflected in this work by David Smith; three fanciful totemic assemblages set within a landscape perspective of ground, mountains, and sky and whose presence is surreal enough to cast shadows under a presumed solar presence. Untitled, 1936 embraces surrealism, yet also serves to demonstrate the extent to which his thought processes are inextricably linked to sculpture and related to scale, spatial orientation, and three-dimensionality. With that in mind, it is not surprising to know that Smith saw no demarcation between sculpture and painting, or that a painting such as Untitled (1936) can exist outside of planning or design for future three-dimensional work. Provenance: Estate of David Smith, New York Hauser & Wirth Private Collection Exhibition: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, ‘David Smith: Skulptureen, Zeichnungen [David Smith: Sculpture and Drawings]’ Dusseldorf/DE, March 14 – April 27, 1986 (travelled to: Städtische Galerie im Stäelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt/DE, June 19 – September 28, 1986: Whitechapel Art Gallery...

"La Comida" is an abstract figurative Impressionist oil on canvas painting by María Blanchard. The artwork is 21 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches and is 24 3/4 x 32 1/4 x 2 inches with the frame,...

A painting by Ryoko Kato. "Flooded Small Room" is an acrylic on canvas executed in a bright palette primarily of blues, whites and pinks and depicts a young girl, dressed in a white ...

YURI MARTINEZ RAMOS "REST ME ON A CUCKOO CLOCK" OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED, TITLED CUBAN-AMERICAN, DATED 2020 48 X 36 INCHES I wrote these words for the ...

YURI MARTINEZ RAMOS "PATCHES" OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED, TITLED CUBAN-AMERICAN, DATED 2012 40 X 30 INCHES Patches symbolize the destruction and erosion of Cuba. A ruined country stitched together by patches that blend the society like an old rag pant. The main buffoonery image depicts the old system, no more speech to play when you only have a broken instrument. Yuri Martinez Ramos was born in Havana, Cuba on November 24, 1964. He studied at the Elemental School of Plastic Arts from 1975 – 1979 and the National School of the Arts from 1979 – 1983. Martinez’ figurative paintings have been compared to Botero because of his satirical social commentary. His style, however, is uniquely his own with typically vibrant Latin colors and use of expressive magical realism. His paintings tell his story and the story of the Cuban dilemma. Martinez was granted permission by the US Justice Department after much effort with Cuban authorities to come to the US with his family and pursue his career outside Cuba. He now lives and works in Texas. Papillon Gallery...

Uruguayan artist Leonardo Aguirre creates visually animated surreal scenes in a theatrical environment. Aguirre rearranges whimsical components into unexpectedly harmonious ways of s...

Victor Brauner (1903-1966) La récapitulation de l'amour 1934 oil on canvas 50.2 x 61.2 cm Price: £85,000 GBP Provenance: Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens, Brussels Thence by descent N...