Erté Figurative Paintings

Unique, one of a kind original gouache on paper from Harper's Bazar series. Hand signed lower front by Erte; titled top front with studio catalog number on verso. Sheet size 10.7...

Beautiful Art Deco illustration by unknown artist. Ink and gouache on faux wood grain illustration board. Image field measuring 14 x 18 inches on a 17 x 21 inch illustration panel...

'Still Life with Flowers and Fruit', gouache on art paper, by French artist, Michel Debiève (1964). As is usual with this artist, the joy is in the detail he has rendered. What is no...

Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Showgirls Cartoon for Life Magazine, 1934. Ink, watercolor and gouache on heavy illustration paper, matting window measures 16.5 x 13 inches; sheet measures 19 x 15 inches; Matting panel measures 20 x 23 inches. Signed lower right. Very good condition with discoloration and toning in margins. Unframed. Provenance: Ethel Maud Mott Herman, artist (1883-1984), West Orange NJ. For two decades, she drew almost 600 cartoons for The New Yorker with female characters that commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony. In the mid-1920s, Harold Ross, the founder of a new magazine called The New Yorker, was looking for cartoonists who could create sardonic, highbrow illustrations accompanied by witty captions that would function as social critiques. He found that talent in Barbara Shermund. For about two decades, until the 1940s, Shermund helped Ross and his first art editor, Rea Irvin, realize their vision by contributing almost 600 cartoons and sassy captions with a fresh, feminist voice. Her cartoons commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony, using female characters who critiqued the patriarchy and celebrated speakeasies, cafes, spunky women and leisure. They spoke directly to flapper women of the era who defied convention with a new sense of political, social and economic independence. “Shermund’s women spoke their minds about sex, marriage and society; smoked cigarettes and drank; and poked fun at everything in an era when it was not common to see young women doing so,” Caitlin A. McGurk wrote in 2020 for the Art Students League. In one Shermund cartoon, published in The New Yorker in 1928, two forlorn women sit and chat on couches. “Yeah,” one says, “I guess the best thing to do is to just get married and forget about love.” “While for many, the idea of a New Yorker cartoon conjures a highbrow, dry non sequitur — often more alienating than familiar — Shermund’s cartoons are the antithesis,” wrote McGurk, who is an associate curator and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. “They are about human nature, relationships, youth and age.” (McGurk is writing a book about Shermund. And yet by the 1940s and ’50s, as America’s postwar focus shifted to domestic life, Shermund’s feminist voice and cool critique of society fell out of vogue. Her last cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1944, and much of her life and career after that remains unclear. No major newspaper wrote about her death in 1978 — The New York Times was on strike then, along with The Daily News and The New York Post — and her ashes sat in a New Jersey funeral home...

From the estate of Jerry Opper & Ruth Friedmann Opper Shapes with Figure c. 1950's Gouache on paper 15" x 18", Unframed From the estate of Ruth Friedmann Opper & Jerry Opper. Ruth was the daughter of Bauhaus artist, Gustav Friedmann. San Francisco Abstract Expression A free-spirited wave of creative energy swept through the San Francisco art community after World War II. Challenging accepted modes of painting, Abstract Expressionists produced highly experimental works that jolted the public out of its postwar complacency. Abstract Expressionism resulted from a broad collective impulse rather than the inspiration of a small band of New York artists. Documenting the interchanges between the East and West Coasts, she cites areas of mutual influence and shows the impact of San Francisco on the New York School, including artists such as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. San Francisco's Beat poets...

Original Painting. New Yorker Cover Proposal Baseball c. 1939 Modern Cubist Deco Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Play Ball New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939 12 x 8 inches (sight) Framed 18 1/2 X 14 3/4 inches Gouache on board Estate sticker verso BIOGRAPHY: Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests. In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s. ‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune. Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...

'Chinatown, San Francisco', gouache on fine art paper, by Edward Wilson Currier (1903). Spofford Alley in San Francisco's Chinatown is best known for an address (number 36) where Dr. Sun Yat-Sen plotted the overthrow of China's last dynasty. During Prohibition, it was the site of turf battles over local bootlegging and protection rackets. Today it is lined with seniors' community centres. However, the quiet alley livens up in the evenings when a Chinese orchestra strikes up a tune, mah-jongg games begin with a cascade of clicking tiles, and barbers and florists use the pretence of sweeping their doorsteps to gossip. In this artist's depiction, a man smokes a long-stemmed Chinese pipe under the awning and colourful lanterns hanging from the wooden supports while a child looks on. The artwork is interesting from several standpoints including architectural, cultural and historical. Shortly after this work was painted, the neighbourhood was completely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake that levelled most of the city. From 1910 to 1940, Chinese immigrants were detained at the Angel Island...

House Beautiful Cover Proposal. American Scene Social Realism Industrial WPA Antonio Petruccelli (1907 – 1994) Mixing Mortar 12 1/2 X 14 3/4 inche...

From the estate of Jerry Opper & Ruth Friedman Opper Black Floor c. 1940-1950's Gouache on Paper 15" x 18" Unframed *Custom framing available for additional charge. Please expect framing time between 3-5 weeks. From the estate of Ruth Friedmann Opper & Jerry Opper. Ruth was the daughter of Bauhaus artist, Gustav Friedmann. San Francisco Abstract Expression A free-spirited wave of creative energy swept through the San Francisco art community after World War II. Challenging accepted modes of painting, Abstract Expressionists produced highly experimental works that jolted the public out of its postwar complacency. Abstract Expressionism resulted from a broad collective impulse rather than the inspiration of a small band of New York artists. Documenting the interchanges between the East and West Coasts, she cites areas of mutual influence and shows the impact of San Francisco on the New York School, including artists such as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. San Francisco's Beat poets...

From the estate of Jerry Opper & Ruth Friedman Opper Backside c. 1950's Gouache on Paper 15" x 18" Unframed *Custom framing available for additional charge. Please expect framing time between 3-5 weeks. From the estate of Ruth Friedmann Opper & Jerry Opper. Ruth was the daughter of Bauhaus artist, Gustav Friedmann. San Francisco Abstract Expression A free-spirited wave of creative energy swept through the San Francisco art community after World War II. Challenging accepted modes of painting, Abstract Expressionists produced highly experimental works that jolted the public out of its postwar complacency. Abstract Expressionism resulted from a broad collective impulse rather than the inspiration of a small band of New York artists. Documenting the interchanges between the East and West Coasts, she cites areas of mutual influence and shows the impact of San Francisco on the New York School, including artists such as Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. San Francisco's Beat poets...

From the estate of Jerry Opper & Ruth Friedman Opper Tighties c. 1950's Gouache on Paper 15" x 18" blue lacquered frame 18.5"x1.75"x21.5" Unsigned From the estate of Ruth Friedmann Opper & Jerry Opper. Ruth was the daughter of Bauhaus artist, Gustav Friedmann...

Viktor Schreckengost (American, 1906-2008) Mayan Watercolor heightened with gouache over pencil on paper Signed lower right 39 x 29 inches 45.5 x 35.5 inches, framed Registered with The Viktor Schreckengost foundation, stock no. 6891 The son of a commercial potter in Sebring, Ohio, Viktor Schreckengost learned the craft of sculpting in clay from his father. In the mid-1920s, he enrolled at the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art, or CIA) to study cartoon making, but after seeing an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art he changed his focus to ceramics. Upon graduation in 1929, he studied ceramics in Vienna, Austria, where he began to build a reputation, not only for his art, but also as a jazz saxophonist. A year later, at the age of 25, he became the youngest faculty member at the CIA. In 1931, Schreckengost won the first of several awards for excellence in ceramics at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and his works were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, and elsewhere. By the mid-1930s, Schreckengost had begun to pursue his interest in industrial design. For American Limoges...