American, b. February 22, 1933, Brooklyn, New York

Joseph Raffael is an American contemporary realist painter. His paintings, primarily watercolors, are almost all presented on a very large-scale.

Raffael was the youngest of three children and the only son of Sicilian and Swiss-Irish parents, Joseph Marino Raffael and Cora Kaelin Raffael. He became interested in drawing at age 7, and spent his high school years taking classes at the nearby Brooklyn Museum.

From 1951-54, he attended Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, along with fellow students R.B. Kitaj and Paul Thek. Upon graduation from Cooper Union, Raffael received a fellowship to the Yale Summer School of Art and Music in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Through the support of his instructor Bernard Chaet, Raffael was awarded a scholarship to the Yale School of Art, where he studied color and drawing with Josef Albers and received his BFA in 1956. Instead of pursuing a master's degree, he moved to New York to become a painter, where he worked freelance part-time at Jack Prince Textile Studio, alongside Carolyn Brady, Audrey Flack, and others, while working nights and weekends on his paintings.

In 1958, he won a Fulbright fellowship to study for two years in Florence and Rome, and began painting complexly colored watercolors of flower forms. He mounted his first New York exhibition of his Umbrian watercolors in 1963, at the d’Arcy Galleries, while at the same time battling hepatitis from which he almost died; when he recovered, he shifted to real life images based on photographs.

American, b. October 22, 1925, Port Arthur, TX — d. May 12, 2008, Captiva, FL

Robert Rauschenberg was renowned as an enfant terrible, famous for his work in the 1950s, in the period between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Rauschenberg began to incorporate any material he could scavenge into his combines (sculptural collages) by incorporating found objects, traditional brush strokes, photographs, and any other materials he encountered. This interplay between materials defined Rauschenberg's entire career. He also experimented with silk screening and solvent transfers on a diverse selection of surfaces.

Rauschenberg also developed an interest in art activism: his Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) initiative encouraged collaborations between artists and scientists; the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project allowed him to visit locations worldwide to work with artists and exhibit his own art; and the non-profit Change, Inc. helps struggling artists pay medical expenses.

Robert Rauschenberg artworks are collected by every major art museum around the world.

American
b. 1951, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

b. 1953, German

Mario Reis works with the forces of nature such as water and sediments to create river paintings and find color. Reis captures the essence of the river itself. He submerges untreated, stretched canvases into river beds all over the world and allows them to soak until sediments and minerals are collected onto the canvas. Thus, each painting is a self portrait of that specific river. The results are a variety of pigments and accumulated sediments. They flow from the landscape tradition of painting in that they are specific to a place and they are a record of time passed. The result is illuminated by water, making them the conceptual offspring of Monet’s haystacks, as the mystery of color and nature are intertwined.

The significant contemporary German artist has an extensive body of work ranging from rivers in Texas (e.g. Colorado River) to Europe (Rems River, Germany) and on to Japan (Minamata Kingun). He is internationally recognized and participated in over 100 solo and over 200 group exhibitions and is the recipient of many awards such as the Suntory Award in Osaka, Japan. His work has been acquired by public and private collections across the globe such as Yellowstone National Park, Great Basin National Park, Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Dresden, Germany, the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Museum of Art in Tucson, Arizona and Modern Art Museum, Kyoto, Japan, to name just a few. His name has been mentioned in German schoolbooks, an honor normally bestowed only on Old Masters. He was born in 1953 in Weingarten Germany and was a master student of Guenther Uecker.

American
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Tom Riggle  produces work that has stylistic spread His figurative work; some painted and others done with pen and whiteout, are very expressive and influenced by social narratives and politics.

Other series are abstract, displaying and interest in color and the resists of different chemicals/mediums. Riggle states, I really enjoy making these because of the process, it takes some of the control away from me. I encounter lots of trial and error. The process takes me almost to the point of chaos, but when things work out there are some amazing reactions.

See more of Tom’s work here

American
Lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajito, Mexico

Isis Rodríguez uses the cartoon as a conceptual tool to empower and liberate women. She considers herself a contemporary myth maker, blending cartoons and symbolic realism to create new stories about the feminine divine. She says her art exists in a constant state of “nepantla”, between fantasy and reality, revealing at times our perceptions and at other times the truth of our situations.

Rodríguez also says, In animation, hand drawn cartoons are referred to as 'classical.' Though many consider the cartoon lowbrow or pop art, I believe the cartoon to be the modern classical figure. The cartoon is an elegant, minimalistic drawing of the realistic figure, and the realistic figure is just an over-rendered cartoon. I paint my characters in oils and pastels, using techniques of the great European masters to elevate the cartoon to the high art status it deserves.

Iris Rodríguez has exhibited here artworks throughout the United States and Mexico.

American
b. November 29, 1933, Grand Forks, North Dakota —
d. March 31, 2017, New York City, New York

James Rosenquist is one of the uniquely impressive exponents in the POP art movement. Moving to New York after art school, Rosenquist worked as a sign painter for several years. In his personal art-making he naturally gravitated toward interpretation of the bold, eye-catching American symbols of the late 1950’s. He takes fragmented, commercially iconic images, and combines, overlaps and paints them on canvases to create visual stories. This can leave some viewers breathless yet others confused, making them consider even the most familiar objects in more abstract and provocative ways.

In addition to painting, Rosenquist has produced a vast array of prints, drawings and collages. One of his prints, Time Dust (1992), is one of the largest prints in the world, measuring approximately 7 x 35 feet.

James Rosenquist paintings and prints are exhibited and collected by museums, individuals and corporations around the world. In 2016 alone he was honored with four solo museum exhibitions and was included in more than a half dozen group exhibitions.

American, b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska
Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

Ed Ruscha is a pioneer of the 1960’s Los Angeles art scene one of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century. Ruscha has built a formidable body of work by staking a claim on the deceptively simple intersection of text and image, superimposing elliptical phrases (or, often, single words) over mono-tonal fields or West Coast landscapes to create paintings that can be read instantaneously yet evade easy understanding.

Working across the mediums drawing, painting, printmaking, books, photography, and even film, Ed Ruscha’s artworks are exhibited and collected internationally.

Ed Ruscha is known for his detached, cool gaze over the American landscape, its vernacular and built environments. He is a leading voice in contemporary art, consistently subverting the aesthetic and conceptual conventions of photography and painting, as well as the mythic narratives surrounding American culture.

Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937 and grew up in Oklahoma City. He moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend what is now the California Institute of the Arts. Upon graduating in 1960, Ruscha began working in commercial advertising, putting him in contact with relationships between image and text and the language of consumerism and popular culture. Ruscha’s early drawings and paintings bucked against the prevailing trend of abstract expressionism, depicting wry, irreverent takes on the banality of the urban landscape. In 1962, Ruscha was included in New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, a show considered the first museum exhibition of Pop Art that included works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Wayne Thiebaud.

In 1963, the year Ruscha’s now-famous artist book Twentysix Gasoline Stations was published, he received his first solo show at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Ruscha made sixteen artist books in the 1960s and 1970s, most of them comprised of photography taken in an antagonistically plain, documentary style, covering subjects such as swimming pools, parking lots and Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). In his photography and painting, Ruscha does not attempt to idealize his subjects, but rather stares deadpan at the ordinary objects and spaces that exist on the periphery of the experience of our surroundings. Ruscha is also celebrated for his approach to language, which is often amusing, incongruous and common, exploring the multiplicity of words and turning them into solid objects to be contemplated and played with.

Ruscha’s first major retrospective was in 1982 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The cover of the catalog featured a drawing he had made in 1979, with the text: “I don’t want no retro spective.” Ruscha continues to reside in his adopted city of Los Angeles, actively creating work that speaks to our rapidly changing contemporary landscape, the way we use language and our conception of the American ethos.

Swedish and American
b. 1871, Blidsberg, Sweden —
d. 1954, Bethany, Kansas
Lived and worked in Bethany, Kansas

Birger Sandzén was a prolific modernist painter and printmaker whose favored images captured the Kansas landscape as well as the mighty rock formations in Colorado and the Southwest. He produced many still life paintings as well.

Sandzén’s expressive, gestural painting style incorporates thick application of impasto in bold and bright color combinations. Describing Sandzén’s paintings, a friend in 1948 noted, His use of color is so startlingly alive it is almost shocking.

His woodblock and lithographic prints project the same boldness with their vibrant yet systemic mark-making.

Birger Sandzén studied art in Stockholm with Anders Zorn and Richard Berg and briefly in Paris with Edmond François Aman-Jean. In 1894, Sandzén was hired by Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, to teach languages and to assist in the art and vocal music departments. He became the principal art instructor in 1899 and remained at Bethany for the remainder of his career.

During his lifetime Sandzén completed in excess of 2600 oil paintings and 500 watercolors. He created 207 lithographs, 94 block prints and 27 dry-points, which when the editions are totaled amount to over 33,000 prints.

Birger Sandzén paintings and works on paper can be found in most museum collections in the United States and in the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a favorite of collectors of American modern landscape painting from the first half of the 20th century.

Italian and American
b. June 6, 1932, Lago, Calabria, Italy —
d. July 7, 2001, San Diego, California
Lived and worked in San Diego, California

Italo Scanga was an innovative neo-Dadaist, neo-Expressionist and neo-Cubist multimedia artist who made sculptures of ordinary objects and created prints, glass and ceramic works.

Scanga's materials included natural objects like branches and seashells, as well as kitsch figurines, castoff musical instruments and decorative trinkets salvaged from flea markets and thrift shops. He combined these ingredients into free-standing assemblages, which he then painted. He considered his artistic influences to be sweepingly pan-cultural, from African sculpture to Giorgio de Chirico. He often collaborated with the famed glass sculptor Dale Chihuly, who was a close friend.

Italo Scanga exhibited internationally. His artworks can be found in art museum collections across the entire United States.

julianschnabel.com
American, b. October 26, 1951, Brooklyn, New York

Julian Schnabel is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his plate paintings — large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates. Since the 1990’s, he has been a proponent of independent arthouse cinema. Schnabel directed Before Night Falls, which became Javier Bardem's breakthrough Academy Award-nominated role, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. For the latter, he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as receiving nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director and the César Award for Best Director.

Schnabel returned to Houston in 1975 and rented a studio in the Heights neighborhood. After reported, repeated badgering by the artist, Jim Harithas, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, agreed to give him a show. The eponymously titled exhibit ran from February 20 to March 7, 1976 in the parallelogram building's lower gallery.

On seeing the show, ARTnews critic Charlotte Moser wrote, Though still formative, Schnabel’s paintings possess a palpable presence, but found the work clearly influenced by post-minimalist artists whose intellectual ideas he might share but whose technical expertise and clarity of vision he has yet to acquire.

It was with his first solo show, at the Mary Boone Gallery in 1979 that Schnabel had his breakthrough; all his works were sold in advance. He participated at the Venice Biennale in 1980 with Anselm Kiefer and George Baselitz. By the time he exhibited his work in a show jointly organized by Boone and Leo Castelli in 1981, he had become firmly established and was the youngest artist in the legendary exhibition A New Spirit in Painting in the Royal Academy of Arts. His now famous plate paintings — large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates — received a boisterous and critical reception from the art world. His wild and expressive works were classed as Neo-Expressionism by art critics. In the years to follow Schnabel's success on the art market would above all be criticized.

Schnabel's style is characterized by very large-scale paintings. He uses diverse materials such as plaster, wax, photographs, antlers, velvet and ceramics. His paintings make use of canvas, wood, muslin and even surfboards. His paintings often combine abstract and figurative elements. Due to the size, weight and depth of his works, they are often given sculptural properties.

In 2002, Schnabel painted the cover artwork for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' eighth studio album, By the Way. The woman featured on the cover of By the Way is Julian's daughter, Stella Schnabel, who was band member John Frusciante's then-girlfriend. Regarding the artwork, Frusciante noted: My girlfriend's father offered to do the album art, so we sent him rough mixes of eight songs, and he just got the vibe of the album from that. He said that he wouldn't be offended if we didn't like it, but we loved what he did. He's also given us great covers for all the singles. He's a true artist.

Schnabel had an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, which ran from September 1, 2010 to January 2, 2011 and occupied the entirety of the gallery's fifth floor. It examined the rich interplay between Schnabel's paintings and films. In 2011, Museo Correr exhibited Julian Schnabel: Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing, a selected survey show of Schnabel's career curated by Norman Rosenthal.

Art critic Robert Hughes was one of the most outspoken critics of his work; he once stated that Schnabel's work is to painting what Stallone's is to acting: a lurching display of oily pectorals. In the 2017 Swedish film The Square, set in a museum of modern art, Dominic West plays a character modeled on Schnabel.

American
b. 1937, Breckenridge, Minnesota —
d. 2005, Scottsdale, Arizona
Lived and worked in Scottsdale, Arizona

Controversial and prolific, Fritz Scholder embraced paradox. An enrolled member of the Luiseno tribe, he often said he was not Indian. Scholder's works were immediately recognized for their insight and powerful commentary on publicly held stereotypes of Native Americans, thus propelling Scholder into a position of prominence as an artist.

His revolutionary paintings broke away from stereotypical roles and forever changed the concept of Indian artist. His style is well known for its distortions, explosive brushwork and vivid colors.

Fritz Scholder's constant desire to explore, collect, travel and experience is undoubtedly the distinguishing feature of both his life and his art. Scholder is best known for his expressionist paintings that are in museum collections around the world.

Irish and American, b. 1945, Dublin, Ireland
Lives and works in New York City, Barcelona and Munich

Sean Scully uses thick applications of paint and rough brushstrokes to create multi-paneled, layered paintings using various striped and checkerboard compositions. His paintings reflect the cool geometric aesthetic of Minimalism, in a rugged, painterly way. Although he has spent almost his entire career working with the idea of the stripe or painted band, Scully’s body of work is complex and extensive, rigorously trying out new compositions and stretching the possibilities of a single motif.

Sean Scully’s paintings are in major art museums throughout the United States, the Tate Modern in London, and also in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Japan and Australia.

@iconinblackandwhite
American
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Twin Cities icon Scott Seekins, in the past twenty years, has created more than 300 self-portraits. Many of these images are situational, whereby he places his self in various scenarios. Some are based on historical events, while others portray fantasy relationships with pop music icon Britney Spears. All of Seekins’ artworks reveal a sense of humor and poignancy.

A central character in Seekins’ natural world pantheon is the panther. Its posture varies from picture to picture, sometimes posing in stately Egyptian-styled profile, and at others in an alert crouching position. The figures in his paintings and drawings are adorned with or surrounded by myriad personal symbols, thus infusing them with supernatural, mystical or magical power.

My quilting passion started in 1998 in the Pacific Northwest, the HOT-BED of the quilt world. I was a member of the Busy Bee Quilt Guilt, Snohomish, WA and a member of Quilters Anonymous (QA), Edmonds, WA. Both guilds were dedicated to promoting and educating about the art of quilting and craft of quilting. The quilters had a CONTAGIOUS PASSION to pass on everything they knew about quilting to others. QA teamed up mentors with other quilters, to expand their quilting skills. The quilters showed encouragement with a YES-YOU-CAN attitude. They were wonderful people to work with and everybody helped everybody.

Both guilds put on a quilt show each year. This meant that your quilt was competing with the big name designers. It made one check to see if the seams are aligned properly? Are the points pointed? Do I need to miter the borders? Does the pattern look better if it is floated? Do I need to change the pattern to make it a better quilt? Should I use a striped fabric for a bias binding to show off the quilt? Should I add a sashing? Is a flange necessary or useful for contrast? You wanted your quilt to be the best it could be for the show.

Because there are a lot of cloudy days in Washington, one will see a lot of bright colors and florals., which I love. One will see Fairy Frost fabric which has a glimmer to it, or a purple and orange blossoms from London, England, or florals with a black background, and a big selection of the 1930's fabrics. Since moving to MN I have come to enjoy and appreciate the warm tones. I love the flannel WOOLIES by Maywood.

I had access to many quilt stores which also gave lessons, so I took a lot of lessons. Roxanne Carter, a designer from Mulkiltio, WA gave quilt lessons at all of the local quilt shops. With each lesson the class would get a free quilt pattern. I especially love her traditional quilt patterns such as: Shadow Mountain, 9 Patch Baskets, Bear Paw Applique, Double Wedding Ring, Single Irish Chain, and Scrap Quilts patterns.

I like the traditional patterns like the Single Irish Chain, Log Cabin, and Scrap Quilts. I like Modern Quilt Patterns too. I look at patterns from the perspective of how much space there is for the quilter to show off her custom quilting. I like my space and don't feel the need to color to the very edge. Simple is Best in my book. I hope you enjoy looking at my quilts and hope you have learned something along the way.

American
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Todd Severson creates artworks from wood panels that are prepared by building up layers and layers of industrial car paint on their surfaces. He then draws delicately into them with a chainsaw, revealing the multi-colored edges within the marks. His subject designs tend toward iconic presentations of flowers, cars and even neuron patterns.

Todd Severson’s life experiences include time spent in various locations in the United States, Nova Scotia, London, and both Hamburg and Berlin, Germany. He has an active international exhibition record.

huntslonem.com
American, b. 1951, Kittery, Maine
Lives and works in New York City and at various plantations within Louisiana

Hunt Slonem is well known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings of butterflies, rabbits and tropical birds. He brings a whimsical, freewheeling sense of awe, wonder and detail to his wild array of brightly hued paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures.

For inspiration, Slonem surrounds himself with ever-expanding quirky collections, from Neo-Gothic furniture to countless objéts d’art from flea markets. Besides his various New York City spaces, he also has acquired and restored multiple historically important Louisiana plantations.

Hunt Slonem’s artworks are in the permanent collections of  more than 250 museums, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His works are also represented in private art collections all over the world, including those of many celebrities.

b. 1941, London, England - d. 2013, Northfield, Minnesota

Feminist, Artist and Radio Talk Show Host

Barbara Smith Hill was born in Warwickshire, England and died in 2013 in Northfield, Minnesota. Barbara was a member of the Women's Art Registry of Minnesota, WARM.

1946-58
Atrtended schools in Rugby and Oxford, during which time won two national painting awards in exhibitions by the Sunday Pictorial newspaper
1964-67
Studied art at Rugby College of Art, Rugby
1967-69
Graduate Student at Valands Konstskola, Gothenburg, Sweden
1968
Personal Show, Gothenburg, Sweden
1969
- Commission from Volvo Company - series of prints
- Print selected for Valands Portfolio
- Taught silkscreen priting at Valands Konstskola
- May: Group Show, Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden, where a print was accepted for the permanent collection
1971
Group Show, Pace Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1973
Solo Show, Northfield National Bank, Northfield, Minnesota
1974
Commissioned to do a limited edition Centennial print for St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
1975
- Studied etching at Camden Art Institute, London, England
- Selected by jury to exhibit two silkscreen prints at the Camden Art Institute’s Summer Exhibition, London, England
- Solo Show: Studen Center, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
1976-77
Group Print Show, Modernart Editions, New York City
1977
- Group Show, Gallery 39, Northfield, Minnesota
- Solo Show, Steensland Gallery, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota
1978
Group Show, WARM, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota

American
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

David Sollie is a conceptual artist who uses visual and written language to make sly commentary.

Shackway, Inc, was founded in 1948 by Sollie’s grandfather, Bruce Milburn. From humble beginnings as an importer of items made in Occupied Japan, the company steadily grew into a worldwide marketing octopus, selling hundreds of products in dozens of markets. Sollie's work in this series is devoted to his research into the company.

French, b. 1948 — d. 2005
Lived and worked in France

Jean Solombre was an internationally respected painter, engraver, and writer. Images of Solombre paintings were also woven as tapestries at the world renowned Les Atelier Aubusson in France.

Solombre's work is romantic and mysterious in imagery and rich in technical skill. His printmaking intaglio technique masterfully combines the techniques of aquatint and engraving.

An outstanding contemporary painter and printmaker, Jean Solombre studied art in both Paris and Frankfurt. He created his first original work of graphic art in 1975 and since that date has amassed an oeuvre of over 250 aquatints, etchings and serigraphs. As well he has created original etchings for illustrated books such as, Les mots incroyants and Matins sur la Terre (1988).

Jean Solombre is a full member of the International Society of Graphic Artists. Since 1980 his work has been regularly included in major exhibitions in Paris, Washington, New York, Basel, Frankfurt, London and Chicago. His graphic art is owned by a significant list of museums and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the French National Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, Coca Cola, IBM and the Bank of America. "Early Morning", with its beautiful colour modulations and tonal qualities, is indicative of Jean Solombre's finest landscapes in the medium of the aquatint engraving from this period.

Jean Solombre's prints, watercolor paintings, and oil paintings on canvas have been shown in prestigious solo exhibitions internationally.

stevensorman.com
American, b. 1948, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lives and works in New York City, New York

Internationally known as a painter and printmaker, Steve Sorman earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 1971. He moved to New York City in 1994.

He is best known for his multimedia, complex paintings, drawings and prints. Steve is a master at orchestrating theme, line, layer, media and color into challenging images that demand a rhythm of eye movement throughout his artwork. He is also noted for artworks that are visually complex. For example, his surfaces are rich, varied and detailed, and full of vivid color. Steve is able to utilize formal elements from the aesthetic trove of his past to create a more visually compelling present. His creative slate is never wiped clean, only refined. Nor does one ever sense that a mark has been made, a form envisioned, or a process explored just to try something new. While a new spirit is often evident, it is one that is confident with the past.

Since 1970, Sorman’s work has been in galleries in Singapore, Sweden and the United States. His work has been exhibited in numerous invitationals. In the 1970s, prestigious exhibits included the Paper as Medium, The Smithsonian Institute; The National Print Exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum and the 13th International Biennial of Graphic Art in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. In the 1980s, Sorman was invited to exhibit at the Bienal Americana de Artes Graficas at the Museo de Arte La Tertulia in Columbia.

German and American
b. 1938, Cologne, Germany — d. November 2, 2021, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lived and worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota

“I kinda like subtleties …
When you look at life, life is very seldom big events.” 

Dieterich Spahn (German, b. 1938, Cologne, Germany - d. November 2, 2021, Minneapolis, Minnesota) was a stained glass artist and painter. In a career that spanned more than five decades, his stained glass creations can be seen in over 200 places of worship, hospitals, universities, libraries and private residences throughout the United States. Some of his most notable works are located in Minnesota at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville. Though many may have come to know Spahn through his stained glass creations, he was also an innovative and prolific painter whose works hang in public and private collections worldwide. 

Growing up in the austere landscape of post-war Germany, Spahn experienced firsthand the scarcity of childhood pleasures. Toys were a luxury beyond reach for most children of his generation. This absence, however, seems to have ignited a love and appreciation for these objects later in his life. Spahn began collecting antique toys from American culture, particularly popular western films, and he often enjoyed visiting toy shows and flea markets with his three sons.

These toys became a major source of imagery for Spahn’s paintings. In return for their inspiration, Spahn bestowed them with a fresh, new identity. He transformed the objects, painting them in contemporary colors on a large scale, resulting in images that are simple yet distinct, nostalgic yet modern.

“It is not walk-by art. It is meditative art. You sit in front of it.
You keep looking at it, and every time you look at it,
you see something different. That’s the idea.”

It’s not often the artist gives such clear instructions on how to view their art and having this insight deepens one’s appreciation for their work. The unorthodox materials and innovative techniques used in these paintings are quite specific to Spahn. Regardless of medium, each project began with a small sketch. For the Lone Ranger paintings, Spahn used a surprising material as the ground - steel wool. A protective layer of shellac was then applied. Spahn built the images in layers using commercial oil paints (yes, the kind you use on your cabinets, baseboards, etc.). He did not use a palette, but mixed the colors directly on the canvas. 

The choice of materials and application method achieve a textural effect Spahn described as “…that of a tapestry” lending the paintings a “...subtle, soft quality.” An abstract background of repeating shapes and patterns lend a sense of life and movement. The combination of these elements alters how the painting looks depending on the time of day, direction of light and viewing angle, providing the viewer with an ever changing experience. 

All these elements align with Spahn’s intent that his paintings ”…give the viewer visual enjoyment” and “…entice their observation to find objects that will only reveal themselves through further viewing.”

For Spahn, art was his calling, mission, purpose and life’s work. To honor his passion and devotion, contemplate the work as he intended. Deeply examine the changing details as objects begin to reveal themselves. Immerse yourself in the subtleties.

jackspencer.com
American, b. 1951, Kosiusko, Missouri
Lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee

Describing his photographs as metaphors that represent something primal in all of us, Jack Spencer is a master storyteller whose subjects and objects are composed as the main characters. He also says that photographically he works in an expressionistic way not in a traditional documentary tradition.

Spencer accomplishes each softly tactile print through selective hand-coloring and unique technical processes devised by him. An out-of-focus quality in his images comes from selective control of the camera’s focus. Spencer also projects his negatives in the enlarger through various transparent materials, thus distorting light on its way to the photographic paper. Prints are often coated with up to three coats of oil varnish medium and even distressed with coats of asphaltum that is applied then removed. Some prints are slightly torn and dented. The process creates a patina that suggests age.

Native Soil is a series of photographs that captures lives of people rich with stories, It is a meditation on race, poverty, kinship, joy, and love — accomplished through backland travels across the country. The poignant subject matter is the artist’s way of karmically reversing the prejudicial culture in which he was raised in the South.

In The Land, Spencer powerfully manipulates typical photographic images of decaying buildings, lost highways and monumental big-sky landscape features spread out across the American West and Midwest. Particularly, some of the landscapes are hand-colored in a way that suggests the color and light employed by painters of the 19th century Hudson River School.

Apariciones is a series of photographs from Spencer’s travels in Mexico. In these works one feels his sense of awe for the spiritual power of the country’s people. From simple portraits to chronicles of culturally unique rituals, initiations and sacred festivals, these moving photographs record an emotional range from the delicately romantic to the rugged and the intensely reverent. The prints in this series glow from a selenium toning bath that adds a coppery sepia hue.

In his series of Florals, Spencer photographs flowers up-close, lending the emotional response one feels in confrontation with monumental icons; coloration of the prints contributes to their otherworldliness.

Jack Spencer has photographs in many collections, including The Houston Museum of Fine Art, Texas, Berkley Museum of Art, California, and even Sir Elton John’s Photography Collection, reported to be one of the largest photography collections in the world.

American, b. April 10, 1938, Newark, New Jersey
Lives and works in New York City, New York

Pat Steir studied art and philosophy at Boston University and received her BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1962. In 1963, she was invited to participate in her first group show at the High Museum in Atlanta. The next year, her work appeared in group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, making her a key figure among the first wave of women artists to gain prominence in the New York art world.

In the mid-1960s, Steir was appointed an Art Director at Harper & Row publishers in New York. In the early 1970s she taught art at Parsons School of Design, Princeton University and later at the California Institute of the Arts, where Ross Bleckner, David Salle and Amy Sillman were among her students. She is a founding board member of Printed Matter, HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, and Semiotext(e).

Steir was lauded in the early 1970s for her canvases featuring various iconographic symbols — most prominently roses crossed out with ‘X’ figures, inspired by Shakespeare’s famous aphorism, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and Gertrude Stein’s retort, A rose is a rose is a rose. Of this act of effacement, the artist explains, I wanted to destroy images as symbols. To make the image a symbol for a symbol. I had to act it out―make the image and cross it out. This series marks Steir’s first engagement with questions of representation and semantic signification, issues she continues to explore. She was compelled to search for her own praxis that was both painterly and theoretical. The influence of Conceptual art, French philosophy, and East Asian art and thought moved her to begin creating room-size installations in the mid-1970s.

In the late 1970s, Steir traveled extensively in the United States and Europe, where numerous galleries regularly presented her work. By the late 1980s, back in New York, Steir began to experiment with pouring and flinging layers of thinned paint onto canvas, releasing herself from conscious consideration of imagery and composition and allowing the indexical trace of her process to become the image itself. While her pouring process invites comparisons to Jackson Pollock, rather than laying her canvases on the floor, Steir paints from a ladder and works directly on unstretched canvas tacked to the studio wall. The delimited chance of this working method has since come to define Steir’s practice. Her painting methods incorporate delimited chance, with a studied and deliberate release of control developed through her study of Japanese and Chinese painting. Deeply inspired by Taoism and Buddhism, her working methods transcend the divide between figuration and abstraction. Intentionally deviating from the gestural flatness of the Abstract Expressionists, Steir instead explores a contemplative condition of unbound perception. In this way, she seeks to both portray and evoke a state of mind: rather than representing the sublimity of a waterfall or seascape, Steir’s paintings become charged spaces of transcendental content.

For five decades, Steir has exhibited widely in American and European museums. She recently completed two major suites of monumental, rigorous Waterfall projects: Silent Secret Waterfalls for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (2019) and Color Wheel for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (2019–2021). Lévy Gorvy has shown her paintings with solo exhibitions in London (2016) and New York (2017), and in 2019 hosted Visible Traces (Mountain Air Water), an exhibition curated by Steir.

In 2013, the National Academy Museum, New York, exhibited Pat Steir: Blue River. In 2010, Drawing Out of Line traveled from the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, to Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York. In 2000, Dazzling Water, Dazzling Light traveled to the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, and the Des Moines Art Center, among other venues. Steir created site-specific installations Likity Split and Ghost Moon Mountain Water in 1998 for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, respectively. Other major exhibitions include: The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (1994, 1996); Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble (1992); and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (1990), among others.

In 1988, Pat Steir Prints 1976–1988 opened at the Cabinet des Estampes, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, and traveled to the Tate, London. The prior year, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam presented Paintings 1981–1984; the Baltimore Museum of Art hosted Drawing Now: Pat Steir; and Kunstmuseum Bern opened Paintings and Drawings. In 1984, the Brooklyn Museum organized Pat Steir: The Brueghel Series (A Vanitas of Style), an exhibition that traveled to ten museums including the Dallas Museum of Art; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Palais Wilson, Geneva; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Netherlands, among other venues. Form Illusion Myth: The Prints and Drawings of Pat Steir opened at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1983 and traveled to the California State University, Long Beach; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Wellesley College Museum; and the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis.

Steir’s work has been included in hundreds of group shows and is held in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide including: Denver Art Museum; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Louvre, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London, among other institutions.

Steir is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1982), as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1973). In 1991, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute, New York, and in 2001, she received the Boston University School for the Arts Distinguished Alumni Award. Steir received the Visionary Woman Award from the Moore College of Art & Design in 2015 and in 2016 was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts in Letters. In 2017, she was awarded the International Medal of Art by the United States Department of State.

American, b. May 12, 1936, Andover, Massachusetts – d. May 4, 2024, West Village, New York, New York
Lived and worked in New York, New York

In 1959, Frank Stella gained early, immediate recognition with his series of coolly impersonal black striped paintings that turned the gestural brushwork and existential angst of Abstract Expressionism on its head. Focusing on the formal elements of art-making, Stella went on to create increasingly complicated work that seemed to follow a natural progression of dynamism, tactility, and scale: first, by expanding his initial monochrome palette to bright colors, and, later, moving painting into the third dimension through the incorporation of other, non-painterly elements onto the canvas. He ultimately went on to create large-scale freestanding sculptures, architectural structures, and the most complex work ever realized in the medium of printmaking. Stella's virtually relentless experimentation has made him a key figure in American modernism.

Frank Stella known for his experimental printmaking. Though he came to printmaking somewhat reluctantly, he eventually discovered its potential and has continued with the form. He began with lithography, making prints that expand upon formal concerns he explored in his painting practice such as scale, surface, and texture. By continuing to incorporate additional print processes into his practice, Stella has redefined the traditional print with his highly experimental endeavors.

Frank Stella has created a significant body of abstract art comprised of paintings, reliefs, sculptures, drawings, and prints. His ground-breaking early works were included in seminal exhibitions such as Three Young Americans at the Allen Memorial Museum and Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, both in 1959. His first solo exhibition was at the seminal Leo Castelli Gallery, New York in 1960. In 1970, at the age of 34, he was the youngest artist ever to receive a retrospective at MoMA, and remains the only living American artist to be honored with two retrospectives there, his second being in 1987.

Stella’s work is represented in major museums and private collections around the world. In 2016 and 2017 alone he has been honored with retrospective exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, California, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York and the Tate Modern, London, England.

American, b. 1942, Brooklyn, New York
Lives and works in New York City and Stone Ridge, New York

Gary Stephan has found plenty to work with in his paintings and prints, including chaos, decay and especially bizarre contrasts. He knits together his disparate images into surreal abstractions.

Stephan has been showing his painting and sculpture since the late sixties in the United States and Europe. He has had solo shows in New York at Mary Boone Gallery, Hirschl and Adler and Marlborough Gallery; in Los Angeles at Margo Leavin Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery; and in Berlin at Galerie Keinzle and Gmeiner, among many others.

Gary Stephan’s work can be found in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

American, b. 1958, St. Louis Park, Minnesota

At the age of 21, Bruce Stillman and his stainless steel kinetic sculptures had already been featured in national media including, Vogue Magazine, CBS Morning news and People magazine, attracting comparisons to artist Alexander Calder. Not bad for a young man who had managed to support himself solely thought the sale of his artwork since the age of 18.

Bruce began sculpting in his junior year of high school. His early pieces were constructed of copper and brass, and attracted the admiration and interest of buyers at local art fairs. He was introduced to stainless steel through a friend dealing in scrap metal and liked the balancing characteristics and luster of the metal for his elegant rocking sculpture designs. His high school art teacher [Robert Anderson] recalls, “He was always evolving, constantly exploring new ideas. I simply lit the fuse and Stillman went off to create one concept after another. He has an affinity for motion.” The art teacher encouraged Bruce to study art at the university level. Bruce did so for a year at Northern Illinois University, then returned to full time studio work.

”I approach motion,” Bruce explains, “as an added dimension to three dimensional sculpture, and interpret my style of motion as having a lively energy, playing with gravity. I’m interested in the art of pleasant motion, a slow tranquil motion that in some viewer’s judgment, is relaxing and almost hypnotic to watch. My outdoor sculptures move with the wind. In some case, I consider them a tool for the environment to express itself, from the delicacy of the breeze to the power of high winds. Indoor pieces are operated manually by starting the bottom weight swing, while the counter weight slows the motion.”

Indoor sculptures are up to five feet in height, while outdoor pieces can be monumental, exceeding 15 ft. in height and 85 ft. in length. Precision balance is the trademark of Bruce Stillman sculptures. The mass and weight of steel, often combined with granite, are transformed under the artist’s guidance into delicate, graceful works that captivate one’s attention and stimulate childlike wonder.

Over the years these hypnotic works of art have attracted the attention of art collectors around the world. Bruce Stillman’s works are in the collections of corporations such as General Mills, Lutheran Brotherhood Insurance, Mayo Clinic and Dayton-Hudson Corp. Prominent private collectors include movie Producer and Director Robert Altman, artist Yaacov Agam, Henry Mancini and more. An outdoor kinetic sculpture is in permanent collection of the Kansas City At Institute.

donaldsultanstudio.com
|American, b. 1951, Asheville, North Carolina
Lives and works in New York, New York

Donald Sultan is a distinguished painter, printmaker and sculptor. His paintings are derived from still life, but are foremost abstract. Sultan's large compositions of huge pieces of fruit, flowers, dominoes and other objects, set against the stark, tar-black and more recently constructivist-like backgrounds, dominate the viewer.

Sultan's work incorporates basic geometric and organic forms with a formal purity that is both subtle and monumental. His images are weighty, with equal emphasis on both negative and positive areas. Sultan describes his work as heavy structure, holding fragile meaning with the ability to turn you off and turn you on at the same time.

Donald Sultan’s work is included in the permanent collections of many prestigious institutions including: The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Gallery in London, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sultan is active exhibiting internationally.

American
Lived an worked in Princeton, Minnesota

Jake Sumner was a young talented Minnesota artist.

Mexican, b. 1899, Oaxaca, Mexico — d. 1991, Mexico City, Mexico
Lived and worked in Mexico City, Mexico and New York, New York

Rufino Tamayo was a prolific artist who was a master of many mediums, including oil, watercolor and lithography. His signature images of mask-like faces and statuesque figures are rooted in his Indian origins and in his study of Mexican folk art and Pre-Columbian sculpture. Tamayo sought the essential, which he expressed through a deliberately limited range of colors in order to give the freest possible rein to tonal interplay. His subject matter tends to be simple — figures of men and women and animals that are almost sketchy, although charged with content. From beginning to end, his painting is saturated with Mexican color and light.

Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, wrote: If I could express with a single word what it is that distinguishes Tamayo from other painters of our age, I would say, without a moment's hesitation: sun. For the sun is in all his pictures, whether we see it or not; night itself is for Tamayo simply the sun carbonized.

In addition to producing works on paper and canvas, Tamayo was also a muralist whose work adorns the walls of museums, universities and libraries throughout the world. He also pioneered a new printmaking technique known as Mixografia with several of his works produced in this medium. This innovative process allows a traditional lithographic print to be created in relief that produces fine surface detail as well as volume. In his later years, Tamayo added sculpture to his artistic repertoire, utilizing his own paintings as a source of inspiration for subject matter.

Rufino Tamayo was given a large exhibition at the Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil in 1977. In 1979 a retrospective Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The largest Tamayo exhibition, bringing together more than 700 paintings, took place in 1987 at two museums in Mexico City, the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and the Tamayo Museum. Rufino Tamayo artworks are represented in prestigious art museum collections internationally. His work is popular among individual art collectors as well.

Spanish
b. December 13, 1923, Barcelona, Spain -
d. February 5, 2012, Barcelona, Spain
museutapies.org

Antoni Tàpies created a visual language inspired by a wide range of sources that coalesce into a complex fusion of materials, gestures, and symbols. His explorations of Surrealist imagery early in his career served as the foundation for an ongoing investigation of the nature of physical objects and their materiality. Tàpies’ work ties into his extensive personal experience and history, as well as that of his native Spain, specifically Catalonia. His use of tangible materials for making art emphasize physical and spiritual transformations that are evoked through signs and symbols drawn from both Eastern and Western cultures.

Antoni Tàpies was a self-taught painter, sculptor and art theorist, who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation. He experimented with many media and techniques, and earned an international reputation as one of the most original artists of the 20th century. Tàpies' work has been exhibited at and collected by many international art museums, to include retrospectives at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, in 1990, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1992, and the Solomon R.  Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1995, among many others.

American, b. January 2, 1960
Lives and Works in Minneapolis and the North Woods of Minnesota
kellieraeart.com

A gallery visitor once asked Kellie Rae how long it took her to paint one of her portraits of birds. "All of my life" was her reply.

Born on her ancestral family farm among the rolling hills and prairies of Northeastern Nebraska, Kellie Rae has always retained a love of, and respect for, the natural world. Whether it be the cultivated fields of golden corn and wheat, the natural grasslands that cover endless miles of land, or the streams that water the earth, this beautiful environment remains the essential foundation of her view of the world.

Her reverence and respect for nature imbue her life and art with the sincerity of prayer, as befits a woman whose Quaker forbearers moved West to establish one of Nebraska's first homesteaded farms.

A poet as well as a painter, Kellie Rae sees the world in terms of its beauty and its sanctity. Like the prose of the great Nebraska author Willa Cather, or the contemporary poems of Mary Oliver, Kellie Rae's visual images show us an understanding of the specialness of the most humble of natural forms. Her paintings are a sincere celebration of life imbued with careful observation, tenderness, and respect. The creatures she depicts are not anonymous. Each one expresses the uniqueness of the individual, the sense of personality that recognizes the special character of all of God's creations.

Kellie Rae's poetic vision of nature comes into the world through the masterful sureness of her craft. She studied art at the University of Nebraska and later added to her training at an art academy in Florence, Italy. Her sophisticated technique is based on the craft of the Renaissance masters whose work she studied and whose careful building up of the image yields a sense of depth that evokes the beating heart that lies beneath the feathers or scales in all their complexity of color and texture. The animals she creates exist in a space that adds a sense of mystery and timelessness to the vision.

These paintings could not have been created within the overbearing built environment of the city with its noise and frenetic activity. Her studio sits on a hill overlooking Prairie Lake in Northern Minnesota. Surrounded by woods and long vistas of water, her retreat is a place of sanctuary that allows her to enter the fullness of nature in all seasons. A student of natural history, Kellie Rae is a ceaseless student, ever eager to learn about the animals who fill her life and her art. She is a close observer of nature and fascinated with creatures great and small. Her work honors the world in which she lives and provides her with an essential expression of her love of life in its many forms. We are fortunate that Kellie Rae has devoted her life to bringing her vision to others as an affirmation of the world in which we live.

Written by: Dr. Evan Maurer (Minneapolis Institute of Art, Director Emeritus)

American, b. 1959, Crookston, Minnesota
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota
josephtheroux.com

Joseph Theroux is a regional painter known for depicting scenes from the urban landscape to the natural world. Deft brushwork, effective compositions and vivid color define mood and place — persuading viewers to linger and connect with the spirit of the image. Originally trained as a sculptor, Theroux produced a variety of work; from fine art to large–scale commercial projects to freelancing small–tabletop works for the gift and collectable industry. While employed as Lead Sculptor for HSC Scenic of Minneapolis in the 1990's, he sculpted works for businesses and museums nation–wide including General Mills, the Rainforest Cafe and the Science Museum of Minnesota.

After decades of three dimensional work, Joseph decided to take a break and in January of 2000, he began to paint landscapes in oils. He hasn’t been able to put the brush down since. Joseph Theroux earned a degree in fine art from the University of Minnesota and Bemidji State University and an Associates degree in Graphic Design from Hennepin Technical College. His work appears in private and corporate collections across the country.

American, b. November 15, 1920 — d. December 25, 2021
Lived and worked in Sacramento, California

Wayne Thiebaud is California’s POP art master. His characteristic work displays consumer objects, particularly food such as pies and cakes as they are seen in store windows. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects. Well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements (and one might say California Light) are almost always included. Objects are simplified into basic units but appear varied using seemingly minimal means.

As with many artists from the beginning of the POP art era in the early 1960s, Wayne Thiebaud had underpinnings in the commercial art world, from having been a high school summer apprentice in the animation department of Walt Disney Studios to serving as an artist and cartoonist in the Air Force during World War II.

Wayne Thiebaud’s artworks are highly regarded internationally, with paintings, drawings and prints in almost every major art museum collection in the world. His work is also highly sought after by individual art collectors.

Delights Portfolio

17 Aquatint, Drypoint and Etchings:
Lunch, Fish, Banana Splits, Cherry Stand, Bacon and Eggs, Double Deckers, Lunch Counter, Dispensers, Gum Machine, Lemon Meringue, Suckers, Candied Apples, Cake Window, Club Sandwich, Pies, Delicatessen, and Olives

“I love doing prints,” professed acclaimed artist Wayne Thiebaud in 1997 during a talk at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Thiebaud reminisced that his first etchings were made by “taking a piece of plastic, scratching on it and then running it through an old-fashioned washing machine wringer.” Thiebaud’s “scratches” have since grown into sophisticated etchings that explore the artist’s signature imagery on paper. The seventeen etchings of Delights showcase a mastery of medium and mark an important achievement in the artist’s oeuvre. Formatted as a book, inherent to half the edition, Delights is an homage to life’s simple pleasures. The jaunty gumball machine, hearty diner breakfast, and immaculate slice of cake depicted in these pages appear just like their namesake, total delights.

Printed in 1964 and published in 1965, Delights was an early endeavor for Crown Point Press and its founder, master printer Kathan Brown. After seeing an exhibition of Thiebaud’s paintings in San Francisco, not knowing the artist, Brown invited him to her printshop to make an artist’s book. There, Thiebaud delved into etchings that explored the iconography of his paintings through a new medium. Delights marked the beginning of a more than 50-year printmaking partnership for Thiebaud at Crown Point Press where he has created over 100 different images.

With an emphasis on edges and negative space, Thiebaud's prints appeal to the eye through rudimentary forms. The stark contrast of black ink on white paper follows the traditional arc of Thiebaud’s graphic works. The fine lines, spare in certain areas and brimming with cross-hatched details in others, are at first direct, later revealing immense depth and solid form. The structure of Thiebaud’s images speaks to his ability to construct, in great detail, the candid compositions of our daily lives.

Thiebaud created the seventeen etchings for Delights to handsomely document and enhance the appreciation of our existence. “We are hesitant to make our own life special ... set our still lifes aside,” wrote Thiebaud in Is a Lollipop Tree Worth Painting, San Francisco Chronicle, 1962. “If we sentimentalize or adopt a posture more polite than our own,” he continued, “we are not having a real look at ourselves for what we are.”

Alma Woodsey Thomas
b. September 22, 1891 - d. February 24, 1978

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, the oldest of four girls. In 1907, her family moved to Washington, D.C., seeking relief from the racial violence in the South. Though segregated, the nation’s capital still offered more opportunities for African Americans than most cities in those years.

As a girl, Thomas dreamed of being an architect and building bridges, but there were few women architects a century ago. Instead, she attended Howard University, becoming its first fine arts graduate in 1924. In 1924, Thomas began a 35-year career teaching art at a D.C. junior high school. She was devoted to her students and organized art clubs, lectures, and student exhibitions for them. Teaching allowed her to support herself while pursuing her own painting part time.

Thomas’s early art was realistic, though her Howard professor James V. Herring and peer Loïs Mailou Jones challenged her to experiment with abstraction. When she retired from teaching and was able to concentrate on art full time, Thomas finally developed her signature style.

She debuted her abstract work in an exhibition at Howard in 1966, at the age of 75. Thomas’ abstractions have been compared with Byzantine mosaics, the Pointillist technique of Georges Seurat, and the paintings of the Washington Color School, yet her work is quite distinctive.

Thomas became an important role model for women, African Americans, and older artists. She was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and she exhibited her paintings at the White House three times.

The artworks picture here are not in stock. Please inquire for information about additional works by Alma Thomas.

American
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Michael Thomsen is an award-winning assemblage sculptor, musician and filmmaker living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thomsen’s approach to filmmaking closely reflects that of his visual artwork, a beautifully converged narrative of mysterious objects, mood and wonder. In his sculpture work, Thomsen combines woodworking techniques, painting, assemblage and electrical wiring with discovered artifacts from thrift stores, flea markets and more — items that hold a human imprint. Over the past 10 years, Thomsen’s work has been exhibited locally and nationally, most recently at Parlor Gallery in Asbury Park, New Jersey and Alexi Era Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri. His first major solo exhibition was at Minneapolis contemporary art space, Public Functionary in Spring of 2015. 

Artist Statement:

At 7 years of age, my first job was working for my grandfather, an auctioneer, who hired me to sort trunks and boxes full of trinkets and old-timey miscellanea. Over time, I began squirreling away the occasional sparkly bauble, old key or foreign coin until I amassed a cigar box full of my own unusual curios. I also spent much of my childhood with my other grandfather, who was a clock maker, painter and violin maker. Other family members (who were formerly of the Danish Royal Circus) ran a carnival, which traveled up and down the coast of California in the 1970s.

My little box of treasures was the jumping off point and original inspiration for my mixed media sculpture work. Today my works are filled with Illuminated compartments and secret drawers; these shrines pay homage to the precious and the absurd, they are junk drawer orphanages and reliquaries to lost memories.

My creative process usually begins with one solitary object around which a story is built. I manipulate each piece to create a cohesive, yet labyrinthine whole. I combine woodworking techniques, painting, assemblage and electrical wiring with discovered artifacts from thrift stores, flea markets and more — items that hold a human imprint.

Each of my works tells a personal story to its viewer. One may recognize a familiar figurine or novelty piece from their childhood, or they may read into the symbolic iconography in their own unique way. Nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotions. It’s history and memory; love and pain. It can be comforting and alternately, uncomfortable. In my art, nostalgia plays a key roll, in both the literal and abstract. And although our memories may be different, that shared universal emotion is what connects the viewer to my work.

richardtullis.com
American, b. 1962, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lives and works in Portland, Oregon

Richard Tullis became a master printer, papermaker, photographer and painter. After years of facilitating artistic collaborations with other artists, helping them create works on paper, Tullis decided to concentrate on his own art and projects full time in 2005. His paintings on paper concern biomorphic shapes enhanced with expressionist mark making, dripping and spattering. Tullis is an experimenter. His photographic, painting and monotype techniques reveal that. About his photography Tullis says, I'm fascinated with the natural world and continue to focus my camera as I enjoy the beauties around me.

From age 10, Richard Tullis worked for his father at Garner's International Institute of Experimental Printmaking, later reopened as the Garner Tullis Workshop. In 1992, he took over his father's west coast operation in Santa Barbara, California, as the Atelier Richard Tullis. Between 1992 and 2006 he collaborated with artists from around the world, on an invitation-only basis, to create bodies of original work on paper.

Most recently, Richard Tullis has focused on documentary and studio photography as well as photo-journalism. He also markets and sells art to individual, museum and corporate collectors.

American, b. April 14, 1938, Omaha, Nebraska

Tom Tyler graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in studio art.where he studied under nationally-known painter, Cameron Booth, and well-known regionalist, Josephine Rollins. Influences include the German Expressionists who worked in the first half of the 20th century. Tyler has exhibited in 34 international, national, regional and one-man shows and galleries in five states where he has won numerous awards. Additionally, he has served on a city art board of directors and has lectured on art history. His work hangs in private and corporate collections in the US, Canada and London England. His paintings have been used on a CD album cover, and he authored an article in a widely circulated magazine. During a one man show his paintings were featured on TV, 10 PM news on the ABC affiliate in Duluth, Minnesota.

Tyler concentrates on acrylic paintings in the Expressionist style covering a wide variety of subjects. He applies paint in bright colors and dramatic contrasts, and often draws, almost sketch-like with paint to create excitement, movement, the essence of the subject. Of his work he says:

"Usually I select a subject and explore it from different angles. Important things for me are power, intensity and the ability of the painting to 'carry them away.' One can see these attributes in all great paintings from a 15th century Pisanello to a 20th century Matisse.

"Awards don't mean anything unless the work impacts the viewer, unless it 'carries them away.' These characteristics will deliver eternal pleasure and never become ordinary."

Tyler resides in Minneapolis where he is a full time painter and he teaches art.

ABOUT THE EAGLES

Can an artist not paint an eagle...sooner or later? It took me a while, but here they are. Why eagles?

There is no more majestic or noble-looking creature on the planet than an eagle. Just look at them. Alaskan eagles – up to 15 lbs, wing span 8 ft, nests weigh up to one metric ton, able to fly up to 43 mph, dive at 99 mph and carry prey that weigh as much as the eagle's weight. Live up to 20 years.

Navajo Indians considered an eagle feather to be a protector, The Lacota Indians on the Great Plains gave an eagle feather as an honor. The Pawnee considered eagles as a symbol of fertility and the Chactaw as a symbol of peace. Read an Iroquois poem:

"Screaming the night away
With his great wing feathers
Swooping the darkness up;
I hear the Eagle bird
Pulling the blanket back
Off from the eastern sky."
...a worthy bird.

Spanish, b. 1942, Valencia, Spain
Lives and works between New York, New York and Madrid, Spain

Manolo Valdés is a master of the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking. In each medium he shows himself to be technically skilled, highly original and unceasingly provocative. He draws heavily upon Spanish artistic heritage, particularly the work of baroque painter Diego Velázquez and also the informalismo (European abstract, gestural style) of his immediate predecessors Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura and Antoni Tàpies.

Using etching, silkscreen and collage techniques, the prints of Manolo Valdés reference these and other masters, including Rembrandt, Rubens and Matisse, creating an intellectual twist that brings significant historical works out of their original context.

The works of Manolo Valdés can be seen in numerous prestigious public and private art collections in Europe, the United States, and Mexico.

navanderloop.com
American, b. 1990, Orlando, Florida

Minneapolis artist, Nicholas Adsit Vander Loop, holding a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and working primarily in acrylic paint and collage, utilizes various styles and effects to produce artworks that combine elements of representation and abstraction. He often paints figures or animals interacting with an abstract background and surroundings in a sort of action shot, with heavy emphasis on composition. His main focus with his art is to create a feeling of fun in his viewer and bring a smile to their face. "I like art that makes me stop and appreciate the moment I currently inhabit, I want to make artwork that does that to people."

Dutch, b. March 30, 1853, Groot-Zundert, Netherlands — d. July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Vincent van Gogh was a Post-Impressionist painter known for his amazing mark-making systems, vibrant colors and impasto surfaces. Including a range of subjects from agricultural and small town landscapes to portraits, still life and flower paintings, van Gogh’s work has had far-reaching affect on 20th and 21st century art, continuing to influence artists around the world.

Incredibly prolific during his short life, van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Vincent van Gogh is represented in museum and private collections internationally with the world’s largest collection at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

French and Hungarian, b. April 9, 1906, Pécs, Hungary — d. March 15, 1997, Paris, France

Victor Vasarely is known as the father of the Op Art movement. As a painter, he created intricate abstractions that suggested depth and dimensionality using a variety of optical illusions, with surfaces seeming to bulge out of the canvas. His works present color, form, and pattern as a single interconnected element — a concept that was critical to the foundation of the Op Art movement and the focus of his mature works.

Vasarely initially studied medicine at the Budapest University in his early 20s, only to abandon his medical studies to attend to the Muhely Academy, the center of the Bauhaus movement in Budapest. While there, he was profoundly influenced by the work of color theorist and artist Josef Albers, as well as the Constructivist methods promoted by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky. While Vasarely’s earlier work was concerned more with color theory, during the 1950s and 1960s his work became more focused on the optical potential of the two-dimensional surface. He began to use complex and colorful patterns to actively engage the viewer’s eye, and to convey a sense of kinetic energy across the two-dimensional surface.

Vasarely’s work was heavily influenced by his time spent at Breton Beach of Belle Isle in France, which also prompted the creation of his Belle Isle series. These works display an intrinsic concern with the internal geometry present in the natural world, which was a motif that Vasarely continued to explore extensively throughout his life. After a long and celebrated career, Vasarely died on March 15, 1997 in Paris at the age of 90.

American
Lives and works in New York, New York

Mary Jo Vath is a painter whose imagery is at once intimate and dark, meditative and quiet. The act of looking alters common, thrift store props into talismans of luminosity and understanding.

Mary Jo Vath has exhibited extensively in New York and across the United States.

Spanish, b. January 20, 1903, Turégano, Spain — d. January 10, 2001, Bridgehampton, New York

Esteban Vicente was a Spanish Abstract Expressionist painter. Known for his gestural and contemplative compositions, Vicente’s work focused on exploring color and tonal harmonies rather than the expressive improvisation of his Abstract Expressionist peers. He was an integral member of the New York School of painters, working alongside Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning.

Vicente spent his youth visiting the Museo del Prado, and went on to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He left Spain for New York in 1936 to escape the Spanish Civil War, and rarely returned to his home country thereafter; however, a museum dedicated to his life and work was established in Segovia, Spain.

Today, Vicente’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum in Spain, and the San Diego Museum of Art, among others.

American , b. 1958, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Louise Viste-Ross blends abstraction with remnants of formal landscape. She's interested in revealing the processes within a work of art as much the sensual qualities of its theme. Subtle glazes interact; every layer of color changes every other. Method & meaning intertwine to reveal the facts of an image by exposing its making. Embodied in their making, these paintings are about the structures and components of the land; the lifelike interactions between water, air, soil and rock.

Viste-Ross is an alumna of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design & The University of Minnesota, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA. Her work is held in a variety of collections, corporate, public & private. She has been selected as an exhibitor across four decades in both public and private venues.

French
b. 1868, Cuiseaux, France —
d. 1940, La Baule, France
Lived and worked in Paris, France

Jean-Édouard Vuillard is known for prints and paintings that portray his preference for the painting of interior and domestic scenes, and often referred to as an intimist. He executed some of these works in small scale, while others were conceived on a much larger scale made for the interiors of the people who commissioned the work.

Sometimes identified as a Symbolist painter and part of the fin-de-siècle escape into the aesthetic, Vuillard employed flat patterns into which his figures were embedded as his means to express both emotion and ideas. This kind of abstract painting evolved to communicate ideas not expressible through traditional painterly means. Color and shape could represent experiences that are difficult to express in words.

Jean-Édouard Vuillard’s color lithographic prints made a significant contribution to laying a foundation for a more modern imagery. Japanese goods were first imported to 19th-century Paris wrapped in woodblock prints. Their dissemination among French artists had a profound effect on Vuillard as well. They taught him how to rethink color and form, resulting in delicious color choices. His interiors compress people and objects, and foreshorten distances and employ busy wallpaper patterns to create a restless energy teeming in them.

Jean-Édouard Vuillard prints, drawings and paintings are coveted among art museums and individual collectors internationally.

American, b. 1955 – d. 2021
Lives and works in East Hampton, New York

Charles Waller’s multimedia compositions are inspired by folk traditions and the antiques he finds both in his travels and around his Hamptons home. The artist spent his childhood in the U.S., Central America, and England before studying illustration at the Royal College of Art in London and RISD. His illustrations have been featured in a variety of leading publications, including the New York Times and Esquire. In his fine art practice Waller begins his work with found objects, which he manipulates using his signature blend of humor, cultural commentary, and whimsy — along with nods to Surrealism and the art of René Magritte — riffing on such themes as tattoos, WWII love letters, and other Americana. “My greatest satisfaction occurs when a watch a collector laugh and get the connection,” says Waller. “Then I’ve succeeded.”

Charles Waller has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in New York City and throughout New York State, in East Hampton, Syracuse, and Sag Harbor, among The Games We Play other cities. Additionally, he has participated in shows in Canada and Japan. A longtime professional illustrator for several national publications, Waller has won numerous awards for his drawings in the New York Times, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. His fine art pieces have appeared in various publications, including Moving Art magazine, Hampton Jitney magazine, the East Hampton Star, and the New York Times, among others.

Born in California, Charles Waller grew up in South America and England. He studied English Literature and Psychology at the University of London, and Illustration at the Royal College of Art in London before earning his BFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design.

American,c b. August 6, 1928, Pittsburgh, PA — d. February 22, 1987, New York, New York
Lived and worked in New York, New York

Andy Warhol achieved almost worldwide household recognition as the iconic symbol of the American Pop Art movement that emerged in the 1960s. Pop artists maintained a commonality in their choice of popular culture imagery as their fundamental subject.

Already an award-winning commercial artist in New York, Warhol in the late 1950s began devoting more attention to painting, and in 1961, he debuted the concept of Pop Art — paintings whose subjects focused on mass-produced commercial goods. In 1962, he exhibited the now-iconic paintings of Campbell's soup cans. These small canvas works of everyday consumer products created a major stir in the art world, bringing both Warhol and Pop Art into the national spotlight for the first time.

Early Pop progenitor, British artist Richard Hamilton described Pop Art as popular, transient, expendable, low cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business. As Warhol himself put it, once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.

Andy Warhol is known, too, for his painted celebrity portraits in vivid and garish colors of famous celebrity icons including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley and China’s Mao Zedong. As these portraits gained fame and notoriety, Warhol began to receive hundreds of commissions for portraits from socialites and celebrities. He then produced silkscreen editions of those images as a way of gaining wider distribution for them.

Famous for his 1967 Time magazine prediction of the day when everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, Warhol's life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and celebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol's focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in celebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized.

Andy Warhol artworks are must-haves for every comprehensive museum and private art collection worldwide.

Andy Warhol is one of our most popular artists and our Inventory changes almost daily. Pieces listed here are just a few that we have currently. Prices are available on request.

Paintings, drawings, signed and numbered prints available:
Marilyn Monroe
Mick Jagger
Mao
Campbell’s Soup Cans
Ads
Endangered Species

Various other prints available. Please inquire.

American, b. 1931, New York, New York
Lives and works in Amcramdale, New York

Joyce Weinstein is a prominent New York artist who has exhibited widely. Weinstein brings an abstract sensibility to landscape imagery, capturing the feeling of beautiful countryside. In depictions of rolling hills, mountains and distant views, the ever changing qualities of the sky, fields, woods and streams, old barns, haystacks, and weeds and wild flowers, she conveys the essence of what she has seen and felt, making what is seemingly ambiguous, tangible and unique.

A 1940’s alumna of the famed Art Students League in New York City, Joyce Weinstein had her first solo exhibition in 1953. She has continued an active exhibition schedule. Joyce Weinstein's paintings are represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Edmonton Museum, Canada; the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; the Hines Collection, Boston;  the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Clint Eastwood Collection, Palo Alto, California; the Queens Museum, New York; the Centre de Creacio Contemporia Museum, Barcelona, Spain; and many others.

American, b. Madison, Wisconsin
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota
mikeweltonart.com

Mike Welton's approach to producing realism is through intense examinations of urban buildings and signage in his photography. The reinterpretation of colors to create higher intensity adds a dynamic and vibrant quality to his work, offering a unique perspective on urban landscapes.

The Four Seasons Hotel and the Condo above it in Minneapolis is a continuation of his Architecture and Twin Cities series of paintings. Exploring newer building towers, especially those that contribute to the evolving cityscape, highlights a commitment to capturing the ever-changing urban environment.

The integration of abstract graffiti into his recent painting series reflects an evolution and shift towards intuitive painting and drawing inspiration from the daily changes of graffiti on boxcars around his art studio in Northeast Minneapolis as well as the 2020 protests where artists came out to express themselves spontaneously suggests an engagement with the urban atmosphere.

Welton's artistic journey, blending realism with abstract elements inspired by urban life, showcases a deep connection to the visual richness of the city. His ability to combine intense observations with intuitive expression contributes to a body of work that captures the essence of urban spaces in a way that is both vivid and evolving.

American, b. February 23, 1931, Cincinnati, Ohio — d. December 17, 2004, New York City, New York

Tom Wesselmann attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before entering the University of Cincinnati. In 1953 his studies were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the army, during which time he began drawing cartoons. He returned to the university in 1954 and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1956; during this time he decided to pursue a career in cartooning and so enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After graduation he moved to New York City, where he was accepted into the Cooper Union and where his focus shifted dramatically to fine art; he received his diploma in 1959.

Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of the classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera in an effort to make images as powerful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his Great American Nude series with their fat forms and intense colors.

In the seventies, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media which had preoccupied him during the Sixties. Most significantly, his large Standing Still Life series, composed of free standing shaped canvases, showed small intimate objects on a grand scale. In 1980 Wesselmann, using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, wrote an autobiography documenting the evolution of his artistic work. He continued exploring shaped canvases (first exhibited in the 1960s) and began creating his first works in metal. He instigated the development of a laser-cutting application, which would allow him to make a faithful translation of his drawings in cut-out metal. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the artist expanding on these themes, creating abstract three-dimensional images that he described as “going back to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959.” He had indeed come full circle. In his final years he returned to the female form in his Sunset Nudes series of oil paintings on canvas, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery, and sanguine moods often recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.

Wesselmann worked in New York City for more than four decades. He lived in New York City with his wife, Claire, daughters Jenny and Kate, and son Lane. He died there on December 17, 2004.

tomwesselmannestate.org

American
Lives and works in Minnesota

Formerly a traditional leaning artist, Kevan F Willington moved toward a more indirect painting method to create works with a more cosmic-scaled depth. His work alternates between building up surface layers and sanding them down as well as applying many glazes to create a polished stone like quality. For him there is just as much usefulness in the process of destruction as creation in his work. Willington says, It allows me to revitalize and transform my paintings into something I couldn't pre-conceive.

On the surface Kevan Willington’s paintings are dynamic botanical, ornithological scenes set against vast empty light filled skies. He states, however, On a deeper level my work is a manifestation of the Taoist law that extremes turn into their opposites. Upon closer analysis what is close is simultaneously distant, and what is distant is really close. His paintings further manifest atmospheric and emotional power.

Kevan F Willington maintains an active exhibition schedule. His paintings are collected nationally.

American

Chinese, b. 1960, Jining City, Inner Mongolia
Lives and works in Beijing, China

Su Xinping is known for his paintings and lithographic prints. The figures portrayed in his paintings, whether they show respect, critique or pity, always reveal an underlying compassion in his work. In revealing the relationship between man and society, the works suggest a certain suspension, or even anxiety. His views come more from the perspective of fate, than from a moral perspective.

Following completion of his study at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1989, Su Xinping began to produce intimate black-and-white depictions of the social transformations occurring during the decade of open policy promoted by Deng Xiaoping. His works expressed a deep concern for the issues surrounding isolation and lack of communication among the people at this time.

Su Xinping has an international reputation with solo exhibitions and artworks in the collection of prestigious museums worldwide.

Ecuadorian, Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Victor Yepez resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through his work as a sculptor and muralist aswell as an art teacher, Victor Yepez has exposed many people to the power and healing that art can provide. Found objects and recycled materials, especially metal, influence many of Yepez’s sculptures while rich colors and movement are hallmarks of his murals. Victor graduated with a degree in sculpture and print making from the School of Fine Arts, Central University in Quito, Ecuador.

Creating art is a gift that celebrates the connection between myself and the. My art is inspired by everything around me, made with passion and love, limitless and indestructible. Everyday reality meets with my imagination, freely creating a language, which allows me to express myself. Mind, spirit, body, and soul come together to reach the muses. I use materials, tools, colors, and forms to prepare and walk the path of creativity. Then the magic moment comes to embrace and incubate the idea with scenes full of life. The divine combines with mortal flesh to awaken and illuminate sensibility and appreciation. The moment of verification arrives when the art consolidates itself.

I strongly believe that art is for everybody. In my sculpture I utilize recycled materials because of their aesthetic properties and also with an ecological message for future generations. My hope is that my work will play a role in creating a positive future with respect for the earth, justice and dignity for everyone.

@yoes_in_progress
amyyoesprojects.com
American, b. 1959, Houston, Texas
Lives and works in New York, New York

She works in a multi-faceted way, alternately employing installation, photography, video, painting, and sculpture. An interest in decorative language and architectural space permeates all of her work. She responds to formal topologies of ornament and style that have reverberated through time, informing our mutually constructed visual and cultural memory.

Her videos have been seen in many venues, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.; MassMoca, North Adams, MA; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. She has held residences at the Maison Dora Maar, Ménerbes, France; AIR, Krems, Austria; McDowell, Peterborough, NH; Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York; and The British School at Rome, Italy. She has been a visiting artist at many institutions, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Las Vegas Nevada, Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Siena Art Institute. Recent projects include a site specific animation installation at the Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a new animation for a screening at the National Gallery of Art.