Viola Burley Leak

La Dame Noir (the Black Woman) African American Artist Viola Leak Woodcut Print

1982

Motif (Abstract) in orange, blue and gold abstract. From the small edition of 10. from 1982. I am not sure if this is a woodcut or woodblock print or a silkscreen screenprint or some combination. Viola Burley Leak, American (1944 - ) Viola Leak was born in Nashville, Tennessee, she received a B.A. in Art from Fisk University, a B.F.A. in Fashion Design from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, an M.A. from Hunter College, NY and an M.F.A. in Media from Howard University, Washington, DC. Leak was an art consultant for both the New York State Board of Education and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Print Department, in addition to working for the Experimental Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institute. Her mixed media work often references religious motifs and those of her African-American experience and heritage. She is a multimedia artist, her works include printmaking, textile designing, soft sculpture, appliqué tapestries, doll making, and multi-media. Viola has studied with many renowned artists such as Aaron Douglas, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, and Charles White. Her works can be found in the collections of World Federation of United Nations, New York State Office Building, Manufacturers of Hanover Trust Company, Atlanta Life Insurance Company and many more organizations. Viola's exhibition experience is extensive - more than 100 showings over a decade, national and international. Her quilts exude a miraculous and magical presence. They have traveled in two international shows and three national quilt projects in the past three years. A proud moment for her was being featured in the December 20, 2000 of the Smithsonian magazine; the article praised her mural "Afro Dance Scan" as one of the outstanding artworks in the "When the Spirit Moves: African American Dance...

Judy Rifka (American, b. 1945) 44/84 Lithograph on paper titled "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness against Thy Neighbor"; Depicting an abstract composition in blue, green, red and black tones with Hebrew script. Judaica interest. (I have seen this print described as a screenprint and as a lithograph) Hand signed in pencil and dated alongside an embossed pictorial blindstamp of a closed hand with one raised index finger. Solo Press. From The Ten Commandments Kenny Scharf; Joseph Nechvatal; Gretchen Bender; April Gornik; Robert Kushner; Nancy Spero; Vito Acconci; Jane Dickson; Judy Rifka; Richard Bosman and Lisa Liebmann. Judy Rifka (born 1945) is an American woman artist active since the 1970s as a painter and video artist. She works heavily in New York City's Tribeca and Lower East Side and has associated with movements coming out of the area in the 1970s and 1980s such as Colab and the East Village, Manhattan art scene. A video artist, book artist and abstract painter, Rifka is a multi-faceted artist who has worked in a variety of media in addition to her painting and printmaking. She was born in 1945 in New York City and studied art at Hunter College, the New York Studio School and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Rifka took part in the 1980 Times Square Show, (Organized by Collaborative Projects, Inc. in 1980 at what was once a massage parlor, with now-famous participants such as Jenny Holzer, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kiki Smith, the roster of the exhibition reads like a who’s who of the art world), two Whitney Museum Biennials (1975, 1983), Documenta 7, Just Another Asshole (1981), curated by Carlo McCormick and received the cover of Art in America in 1984 for her series, "Architecture," which employed the three-dimensional stretchers that she adopted in exhibitions dating to 1982; in a 1985 review in the New York Times, Vivien Raynor noted Rifka's shift to large paintings of the female nude, which also employed the three-dimensional stretchers. In a 1985 episode of Miami Vice, Bianca Jagger played a character attacked in front of Rifka's three-dimensional nude still-life, "Bacchanaal", which was on display at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Rene Ricard wrote about Rifka in his influential December 1987 Art Forum article about the iconic identity of artists from Van Gogh to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, The Radiant Child.The untitled acrylic painting on plywood, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates the artist's use of plywood as a substrate for painting. Artist and writer Mark Bloch called her work "imaginative surfaces that support experimental laboratories for interferences in sensuous pigment." According to artist and curator Greg de la Haba, Judy Rifka's irregular polygons on plywood "are among the most important paintings of the decade". In 2013, Rifka's daily posts on Facebook garnered a large social media audience for her imaginative "selfies," erudite friendly comments, and widely attended solo and group exhibitions, Judy Rifka's pop art figuration is noted for its nervous line and frenetic pace. In the January 1998 issue of Art in America, Vincent Carducci echoed Masheck, “Rifka reworks the neo-classical and the pop, setting all sources in quotation for today’s art-world cognoscenti.” Rifka, along with artists like David Wojnarowicz, helped to take Pop sensibility into a milieu that incorporated politics and high art into Postmodernism; Robert Pincus-Witten stated in his 1988 essay, Corinthian Crackerjacks & Passing Go that "Rifka’s commitment to process and discovery, doctrine with Abstract Expressionist practice, is of paramount concern though there is nothing dogmatic or pious about Rifka’s use of method. Playful rapidity and delight in discovery is everywhere evident in her painting." In 2016, a large retrospective of Rifka's art was shown at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai. In 2017, Gregory de la Haba presented a Rifka retrospective at the Amstel Gallery in The Yard, a section of Manhattan described as "a labyrinth of small cubicles, conference rooms and small office spaces that are rented out to young entrepreneurs, professionals and hipsters". In 2019 her video Bubble Dancers New Space Ritual was selected for the International Istanbul Bienali. Alexandra Goldman Talks To Judy Rifka About Ionic Ironic: Mythos from the '80s at CORE:Club and the Inexistence of "Feminist Art" Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. She was included in "50 Contemporary Women Artists", a book comprising a refined selection of current and impactful artists. The foreword is by Elizabeth Sackler of the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Additional names in the book include sculptor and carver Barbara Segal...

Lithograph, waxtype woodcut and screenprint on 638-g/m cold-pressed Saunders Waterford Paper. From the "Brushstroke Figures" series, 1989. Hand signed rf Lichtenstein, dated ('89) a...

From the "Paintings" Series. Lithograph and woodcut in colors. Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles. Hand signed, dated '84 and numbered in pencil lower right. 14 colors in 11 run...