Skip to main content

Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

American, 1899-1985

In a body of work that spans seven decades, obscure American modernist artist Gershon Benjamin explored a varied range of tone, style and subject matter in watercolor, oil and charcoal. Not one to resign himself to a single trademark theme, Benjamin focused on an eclectic array of subjects. His paintings included landscapes, portraits, still lifes and urban scenes.

Benjamin was born in Romania just before the turn of the 20th century. His family moved to Montreal in 1901 to escape ethnic persecution. At 10, Benjamin began studying art at the Canadian Council of Arts and Manufacturers, in Quebec. When he was 12, the Royal Canadian Academy admitted Benjamin.

In 1923, Benjamin moved to New York City, where he secured a night job in the art department of The Sun newspaper. He also enrolled in the Art Students League, where he learned engraving from the notable lithographer Joseph Pennell and drawing from illustrator John Sloan.

Benjamin found inspiration in the work of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne. He depicted urban life in meditative Expressionist paintings that later drew comparisons to the Ashcan School — Benjamin painted scenes of New York City’s blocky skyline, elevated subway trains, empty streets at dawn and the Brooklyn Bridge as he saw them on his way home from his night shift at the newspaper.

In New York, Benjamin forged friendships with creative people who were as in love with art as he was and painted with them in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the city’s hot summers. A number of his acquaintances found a fair amount of fame — including artists Mark Rothko, Raphael Soyer and Milton Avery — whereas Benjamin sought none. And when artists of the era in Manhattan and elsewhere began to work in the style that would become known as Abstract Expressionism, Benjamin continued to create representational art. He remained largely obscure throughout his career, declining to promote or market his still lifes, landscapes and portraiture.

Benjamin's works are held in a number of private and public collections including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Ulrich Museum of Art.

Find original Gershon Benjamin paintings on 1stDibs.

to
2
1
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
3
2
1
3
3
3
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
72
180
72
60
51
3
3
Artist: Gershon Benjamin
"Self Portrait"
By Gershon Benjamin
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Gershon Benjamin (1899-1985) An American Modernist of portraits, landscapes, still lives, and the urban scene, Gershon Benj...
Category

1970s Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel

"Contemplation"
By Gershon Benjamin
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Gershon Benjamin (1899-1985) An American Modernist of portraits, landscapes, still lives, and the urban scene, Gershon Benj...
Category

1920s Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite

"Lilian"
By Gershon Benjamin
Located in Lambertville, NJ
Jim’s of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by: Gershon Benjamin (1899-1985) An American Modernist of portraits, landscapes, still lives, and the urban scene, Gershon Benj...
Category

1920s Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor

Related Items
"Truer Than True" ballpoint pen, figurative portrait
By Lauren Rinaldi
Located in Philadelphia, PA
Original drawing by Lauren Rinaldi float mounted in the pictured simple white frame measuring 17in x 14in. Lauren Rinaldi works using unbiased portraits of women’s bodies as a veh...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ballpoint Pen, Archival Paper, Graphite, Oil Pastel

Rare Modernist Hungarian Rabbi Pastel Drawing Gouache Painting Judaica Art Deco
By Hugó Scheiber
Located in Surfside, FL
Rabbi in the synagogue at prayer wearing tallit and tefillin. Hugó Scheiber (born 29 September 1873 in Budapest – died there 7 March 1950) was a Hungarian modernist painter. Hugo Scheiber was brought from Budapest to Vienna at the age of eight where his father worked as a sign painter for the Prater Theater. At fifteen, he returned with his family to Budapest and began working during the day to help support them and attending painting classes at the School of Design in the evening, where Henrik Papp was one of his teachers. He completed his studies in 1900. His work was at first in a post-Impressionistic style but from 1910 onward showed his increasing interest in German Expressionism and Futurism. This made it of little interest to the conservative Hungarian art establishment. However, in 1915 he met the great Italian avant-gardist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the two painters became close friends. Marinetti invited him to join the Futurist Movement. The uniquely modernist style that he developed was, however, closer to German Expressionism than to Futurism and eventually drifted toward an international art deco manner similar to Erté's. In 1919, he and his friend Béla Kádar held an exhibition at the Hevesy Salon in Vienna. It was a great success and at last caused the Budapest Art Museum to acquire some of Scheiber's drawings. Encouraged, Scheiber came back to live in Vienna in 1920. A turning point in Scheiber's career came a year later, when Herwarth Walden, founder of Germany's leading avant-garde periodical, Der Sturm, and of the Sturm Gallery in Berlin, became interested in Scheiber's work. Scheiber moved to Berlin in 1922, and his paintings soon appeared regularly in Walden's magazine and elsewhere. Exhibitions of his work followed in London, Rome, La Paz, and New York. Scheiber's move to Germany coincided with a significant exodus of Hungarian artists to Berlin, including Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Sandor Bortnyik. There had been a major split in ideology among the Hungarian avant-garde. The Constructivist and leader of the Hungarian avantgarde, Lajos Kassák (painted by Hugó Scheiber in 1930) believed that art should relate to all the needs of contemporary humankind. Thus he refused to compromise the purity of his style to reflect the demands of either the ruling class or socialists and communists. The other camp believed that an artist should be a figurehead for social and political change. The fall out and factions that resulted from this politicisation resulted in most of the Hungarian avant gardists leaving Vienna for Berlin. Hungarian émigrés made up one of the largest minority groups in the German capital and the influx of their painters had a significant effect on Hungarian and international art. Another turning point of Scheiber's career came in 1926, with the New York exhibition of the Société Anonyme, organized by Katherine Dreier. Scheiber and other important avant garde artists from more than twenty-three countries were represented. In 1933, Scheiber was invited by Marinetti to participate in the great meeting of the Futurists held in Rome in late April 1933, Mostra Nazionale d’Arte Futurista where he was received with great enthusiasm. Gradually, the Hungarian artists began to return home, particularly with the rise of Nazism in Germany. Kádar went back from Berlin in about 1932 and Scheiber followed in 1934. He was then at the peak of his powers and had a special flair in depicting café and cabaret life in vivid colors, sturdily abstracted forms and spontaneous brush strokes. Scheiber depicted cosmopolitan modern life using stylized shapes and expressive colors. His preferred subjects were cabaret and street scenes, jazz musicians, flappers, and a series of self-portraits (usually with a cigar). his principal media being gouache and oil. He was a member of the prestigious New Society of Artists (KUT—Képzőművészek Új Társasága)and seems to have weathered Hungary's post–World War II transition to state-communism without difficulty. He continued to be well regarded, eventually even receiving the posthumous honor of having one of his images used for a Russian Soviet postage stamp (see image above). Hugó Scheiber died in Budapest in 1950. Paintings by Hugó Scheiber form part of permanent museum collections in Budapest (Hungarian National Museum), Pecs (Jannus Pannonius Museum), Vienna, New York, Bern and elsewhere. His work has also been shown in many important exhibitions, including: "The Nell Walden Collection," Kunsthaus Zürich (1945) "Collection of the Société Anonyme," Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (1950) "Hugó Scheiber: A Commemorative Exhibition," Hungarian National Museum, Budapest (1964) "Ungarische Avantgarde," Galleria del Levante, Munich (1971) "Paris-Berlin 1900-1930," Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1978) "L’Art en Hongrie, 1905-1920," Musée d’Art et l’Industrie, Saint-Etienne (1980) "Ungarische Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik," Marburg (1986) "Modernizmus," Eresz & Maklary Gallery, Budapest (2006) "Hugó Scheiber & Béla Kádár," Galerie le Minotaure, Paris and Tel Aviv (2007) Hugó Scheiber's paintings continue to be regularly sold at Sotheby's, Christie's, Gillen's Arts (London), Papillon Gallery (Los Angeles) and other auction houses. He was included in the exhibition The Art Of Modern Hungary 1931 and other exhibitions along with Vilmos Novak Aba, Count Julius Batthyany, Pal Bor, Bela Buky, Denes Csanky, Istvan Csok, Bela Czobel, Peter Di Gabor, Bela Ivanyi Grunwald, Baron Ferenc Hatvany, Lipot Herman, Odon Marffy, C. Pal Molnar...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Charcoal, Pastel, Watercolor, Gouache

'The Red Headdress' by W. Worms
Located in London, GB
'The Red Headdress', pastel on art paper, by W. Worms (circa 1960s). A beautiful woman with contemplative expression and tender eyes is exquisitely portrayed by the artist. The treat...
Category

1960s Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pastel

Cholly (Portrait of Man in Mixed Media and Collage with Floral Theme by Ransome)
Located in Hudson, NY
"Cholly" — small portrait of man in mixed media and collage with floral theme in pink, yellow and green 2023 graphite, acrylic and collage on panel 8 x 8 x 2 inches, unframed Piece c...
Category

2010s Contemporary Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Acrylic, Graphite

Angela (Small, Light-Blue Portrait of Woman with Daisies by Ransome)
Located in Hudson, NY
Portrait of woman on a light blue pattern dotted with white daisies "Angela" by Ransome 2023 graphite, acrylic and collage on panel 8 x 8 x 2 inches, unframed Piece can be hung attra...
Category

2010s Contemporary Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic, Graphite, Paper

Portrait Of A Woman Pencil Drawing
Located in Lake Worth Beach, FL
Portrait of a Woman Pencil signed and dated Feb 20. 20 unframed 14x11 George Kenneth Hartwell painter and illustrator was born in Fitchburg 1891-1949, Massachus...
Category

1920s American Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Pastel, Pencil

Planes of the Head
By Lu Haskew
Located in Loveland, CO
"Planes of the Head" by Lu Haskew Graphite on Paper 14x12" framed, 10x8" image size ABOUT THE ARTIST: Lu considered it a must to work with live models once ...
Category

Early 2000s American Impressionist Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite, Archival Paper

Planes of the Head
H 14 in W 12 in D 1 in
Tippie Comic Strip Original Art - Female Cartoonist
Located in Miami, FL
An early example from pioneering Female Cartoonist/ Illustrator Edwina Dumm, who draws a comic strip from her long-running cartoon series Tippie which lasted for almost five decades. Signed and dated Edwina, 9-25, matted but unframed. Frances Edwina Dumm (1893 – April 28, 1990) was a writer-artist who drew the comic strip Cap Stubbs and Tippie for nearly five decades; she is also notable as America's first full-time female editorial cartoonist. She used her middle name for the signature on her comic strip, signed simply Edwina. Biography One of the earliest female syndicated cartoonists, Dumm was born in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, and lived in Marion and Washington Courthouse, Ohio throughout her youth before the family settled down in Columbus.[1] Her mother was Anna Gilmore Dennis, and her father, Frank Edwin Dumm, was an actor-playwright turned newspaperman. Dumm's paternal grandfather, Robert D. Dumm, owned a newspaper in Upper Sandusky which Frank Dumm later inherited. Her brother, Robert Dennis Dumm, was a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, and art editor for Cole Publishing Company's Farm & Fireside magazine. In 1911, she graduated from Central High School in Columbus, Ohio, and then took the Cleveland-based Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning correspondence course. Her name was later featured in Landon's advertisements. While enrolled in the correspondence course, she also took a business course and worked as a stenographer at the Columbus Board of Education. In 1915, Dumm was hired by the short-lived Republican newspaper, the Columbus Monitor, to be a full-time cartoonist.[2] Her first cartoon was published on August 7, 1915, in the debut issue of the paper. During her years at the Monitor she provided a variety of features including a comic strip called The Meanderings of Minnie about a young tomboy girl and her dog, Lillie Jane, and a full-page editorial cartoon feature, Spot-Light Sketches[3]. She drew editorial cartoons for the Monitor from its first edition (August 7, 1915) until the paper folded (July 1917). In the Monitor, her Spot-Light Sketches was a full-page feature of editorial cartoons, and some of these promoted women's issues. Elisabeth Israels Perry, in the introduction to Alice Sheppard's Cartooning for Suffrage (1994), wrote that artists such as Blanche Ames Ames, Lou Rogers and Edwina Dumm produced: ...a visual rhetoric that helped create a climate more favorable to change in America's gender relations... By the close of the suffrage campaign, women's art reflected the new values of feminism, broadened its targets, and attempted to restate the significance of the movement.[4] After the Monitor folded, Dumm moved to New York City, where she continued her art studies at the Art Students League. She was hired by the George Matthew Adams Service[5] to create Cap Stubbs and Tippie, a family strip following the lives of a boy Cap, his dog Tippie, their family, and neighbors. Cap's grandmother, Sara Bailey, is prominently featured, and may have been based on Dumm's own grandmother, Sarah Jane Henderson, who lived with their family. The strip was strongly influenced by Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as Dumm’s favorite comic, Buster Brown by Richard F. Outcault. Dumm worked very fast; according to comics historian Martin Sheridan, she could pencil a daily strip in an hour.[6] Her love of dogs is evident in her strips as well as her illustrations for books and magazines, such as Sinbad, her weekly dog page which ran in both Life and the London Tatler. She illustrated Alexander Woollcott's Two Gentlemen and a Lady. For Sonnets from the Pekinese and Other Doggerel (Macmillan, 1936) by Burges Johnson (1877–1963), she illustrated "Losted" and other poems. From the 1931 through the 1960s, she drew another dog for the newspaper feature Alec the Great, in which she illustrated verses written by her brother, Robert Dennis Dumm. Their collaboration was published as a book in 1946. In the late 1940s, she drew the covers for sheet music by her friend and neighbor, Helen Thomas, who did both music and lyrics. During the 1940s, she also contributed Tippie features to various comic books including All-American Comics and Dell Comics. In 1950, Dumm, Hilda Terry, and Barbara Shermund...
Category

1920s Conceptual Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink, Color Pencil, Graphite

Un Enfant
By Joseph Ramanankamonjy
Located in New York, NY
Signed and inscribed, lower center: Joseph / Ramanankamonjy / un enfant / Madagascar / “sanguine sur soie” Provenance: Private Collection, Paris Private Collection, Florida Sometim...
Category

20th Century Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Watercolor, Silk

Untitled (Man Undressing)
By Mark Beard
Located in New York, NY
Graphite on paper Signed, c.l. This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Mark Beard, born in 1956 in Salt Lake City, now live...
Category

1970s Realist Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Graphite

'Oleta's Hat', Carmel Art Association Exhibit, California Woman Artist, SFMA
Located in Santa Cruz, CA
Signed lower right, 'V. Conroy' for Virginia Conroy (American, 1922-2006) and dated 1985. Exhibited: Carmel Art Association, 1983 (on original backing...
Category

1980s Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor, Gouache, Graphite

"March Avery in Beret, " Milton Avery, American Modernism, Portrait of Artist
By Milton Avery
Located in New York, NY
Milton Clark Avery (1885 - 1965) March Avery in a Beret, 1951 Black crayon and graphite on cream wove paper 11 x 8 3/8 inches Signed and dated lower left; ...
Category

1950s American Modern Gershon Benjamin Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Graphite, Crayon, Paper, Pencil

Gershon Benjamin portrait drawings and watercolors for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Gershon Benjamin portrait drawings and watercolors available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Gershon Benjamin in crayon, graphite, paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Gershon Benjamin portrait drawings and watercolors, so small editions measuring 12 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Linda Newman Boughton, Ivan Chermayeff, and Antonio Lopez. Gershon Benjamin portrait drawings and watercolors prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $4,925 and tops out at $24,375, while the average work can sell for $6,175.

Recently Viewed

View All