Ervin B. Nussbaum

Modernist American Judaica Painting Synagogue Interior Ladies Section WPA Era

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) This came with a small grouping from the artist's family, some were hand signed some were not. These were studies for larger paintings. Simka Simkhovitch (Симха Файбусович Симхович) (aka Simka Faibusovich Simkhovich) (Novozybkov, Russia May 21, 1885 O.S./June 2, 1885 N.S.—Greenwich, Connecticut February 25, 1949) was a Ukrainian-Russian Jewish artist and immigrant to the United States. He painted theater scenery in his early career and then had several showings in galleries in New York City. Winning Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissions in the 1930s, he completed murals for the post offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Beaufort, North Carolina. His works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Born outside Kyiv (Petrograd Ukraine) into a Jewish family who owned a small department store. During a severe case of measles when he was seven, Simcha Simchovitch sketched the views outside his window and decided to become an artist, over his father's objections. Beginning in 1905, he studied at the Grekov Odessa Art School and upon completion of his studies in 1911 received a recommendation to be admitted to the Imperial Academy of Arts. Though he enrolled to begin classes in architecture, painting, and sculpture at the Imperial Academy, he was dropped from the school roster in December because of the quota on the number of Jewish students and drafted into the army. Simchovitch served as a private in the 175th Infantry Regiment Baturyn [ru] until his demobilization in 1912. Re-enrolling in the Imperial Academy, he audited classes. Simka Simkhovitch exhibited paintings and sculptures in 1918 as part of an exhibition of Jewish artists and in 1919 placed 1st in the competition "The Great Russian Revolution" with a painting called "Russian Revolution" which was hung in the State Museum of Revolution. In 1922, Simkha Simkhovitch exhibited at the International Book Fair in Florence (Italian: Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Firenze). In 1924, Simkhovitch came to the United States to make illustrations for Soviet textbooks and decided to immigrate instead. Initially he supported himself by doing commercial art and a few portrait commissions. In 1927, he was hired to paint a screen for a scene in the play "The Command to Love" by Fritz Gottwald and Rudolph Lothar which was playing at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. Art dealers began clamoring for the screen and Simkhovitch began a career as a screen painter for the theater. Catching the attention of the screenwriter, Ernest Pascal, he worked as an illustrator for Pascal, who then introduced him to gallery owner, Marie Sterner. Simkhovitch's works appeared at the Marie Sterner Gallery beginning with a 1927 exhibit and were repeated the following year. Simkhovitch had an exhibit in 1929 at Sterner's on circus paintings. In 1931, he held a showing of works at the Helen Hackett Gallery, in New York City and later that same year he was one of the featured artists of a special exhibit in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. The exhibit was coordinated by Marie Sterner and included four watercolors, including one titled "Nudes". He is of the generation of Russian Soviet artists such as Isaac Pailes, Serge Charchoune, Marc Chagall, Chana Orloff, Isaac Ilyich Levitan, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1936, Simkhovitch was selected to complete the mural for the WPA Post office project in Jackson, Mississippi. The mural was hung in the post office and courthouse in 1938 depicted a plantation theme. Painted on the wall behind the judge’s bench, “Pursuits of Life in Mississippi”, a depiction of black workers engaged in manual labor amid scenes of white professionals and socialites, was eventually covered over in later years during renovations due to its stereotypical African American imagery. Simka painted what he thought was typical of Jackson. His impression of pre-civil rights Mississippi was evidently Greek Revival column houses, weeping willow trees, working class families, and the oppression of African Americans. He painted African American men picking cotton, while a white man took account of the harvest and a white judge advised a white family, calling it Pursuits of Life in Mississippi. Though clearly endorsed by the government and initially generally well-received, the mural soon raised concerns with locals as the climate toward racial segregation began to change. The main concern was whether depictions that show African Americans in subjugated societal roles should be featured in a courtroom. The following year, his painting "Holiday" won praise at an exhibition in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1940, Simkhovitch's second WPA post office project was completed when four murals, "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat", "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright", "Sand Ponies" and "Canada Geese" were installed in Beaufort, North Carolina. The works were commissioned in 1938 and did not generate the controversy that the Jackson mural had. The main mural is "The Wreck of the Crissie Wright" and depicts a shipwreck which had occurred in Beaufort in 1866. "The Cape Lookout Lighthouse and the Orville W. Mail Boat" depicted the lighthouse built in 1859 and the mail boat that was running mail during the time which Simkhovitch was there. The boat ran mail for the area until 1957. "Sand Ponies" shows the wild horses common to the North Carolina barrier islands and "Canada Geese" showed the importance of hunting and fishing in the area. All four murals were restored in the 1990s by Elisabeth Speight, daughter of two other WPA muralists, Francis Speight...

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) This came with a small grouping from the artist's family, some were hand signed some were not. These were studies for larger paintings. This is a watercolor and gouache beach scene three young men bathing...

Portrait of an Old Man with Cane, by American artist William S. Schwartz, c. 1940, gouache painting, signed l.l, framed. William S. Schwartz (February 23, 1896 – February 10, 1977) was an American artist who lived and worked in Chicago. Schwartz was born in Smorgon in Belarus, then in the Russian Empire in 1896. His parents were Samuel Schwartz and Tauba Reznikoff. At the age of thirteen, he moved to the nearby city of Vilna to attend art school. Four years later, he emigrated to the United States and eventually enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating, he put his art career on hold to concentrate on a budding career as an opera singer. When Schwartz returned to painting, he distinguished himself with dreamy, symbolist works and abstractions that tended to bewilder viewers. He also scandalized conservative audiences with numerous lithographs of nude women. During the Great Depression, Schwartz became an artist on the Federal Art Project (WPA) payroll painting murals. He was one of the seven WPA artists who contributed to a mural at Riccardo's, Schwartz (Music), Malvin Albright (Sculpture), Ivan Alrbight (Drama), Aaron Bohrod (Architecture), Rudolph Weisenborn (Literature), Vincent D’Agostino (Painting), and Ric Riccardo (Dance). In 2002 Chicago philanthropist Seymour H. Persky acquired the murals for his personal collection. Through the WPA, Schwarz received commissions to produce murals in post offices and public spaces. He created his “Americana Series,” a group of four paintings featuring poets, painters, composers and scientists. His Composersdepicts four contemporary musicians, among them, Victor Herbert. The mural was discovered at Glencoe Public Library, IL, in 2007, and include: Americana No. 1 Poets: Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe; Americana No. 2 Painters: Saint Gaudens, Bellows, Sargent, Innes, Whistler and Homer; Americana No. 3 Composers: Herbert, DeKoven, Chadwick, MacDowel; Americana No. 4 Scientists: Thomas Alva Edison, Steinmetz, Alexander Graham Bell...

Vibrant Gouache and watercolor painting by israeli master JOSSI STERN. on paper mounted to board. Hungary, b. 1923, d. 1992 Jossi (Yossi) Stern, son of David and Katerina, was born in the Bakon Hills of Hungary, in 1923. He was already drawing when at the age of ten he moved with his family from the Bakon Hill region to the considerably more cosmopolitan Budapest. Recognizing the looming threat of Hitler and the pending Nazi invasion of Hungary, in 1940, at the age of seventeen, the young artist made his way to Palestine aboard the Sakaria, an old ship heavily crowded with 2,300 other refugees. Before reaching the shores of Palestine, then under the British Mandate, the British Navy...

Ivan Kurach (1909 – 1968) lived and studied in Italy. Well known both in Europe and in the United States, his paintings are found in famous private collections and in museums all ov...

Genre: Judaica Subject: Religious Medium: Watercolor, Ink, Mixed Media Surface: Paper Country: United States Dimensions: 13.75" x 10" Dimensions w/Frame: 19.75" x 15.5 Born to Harry and Jenny Gropper in 1897, William was raised in New York City's Lower East Side. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Romania and Ukraine, and young William grew up in relative poverty, watching his family struggle to achieve that sought-after American dream. His father, a bright and college-educated man, was unable to find employment that worthy of his intellect. His mother, meanwhile, worked as a seamstress from home. Coupled with the devastating loss of an aunt to the infamous Triangle Factory fire of 1911, significant childhood factors created the foundation that led to Gropper’s exploration of the American experience. Early on, Gropper displayed an extraordinary, natural skill for art. By 1912, he was already studying under the instruction of George Bellows and Robert Henri at the Ferrer School in Greenwich Village. During his time at school, Gropper was also awarded a prestigious scholarship to study at the National Academy of Design. However, he refused to fit into convention and was swiftly expelled from the Academy. After his expulsion, Gropper returned home to help financially by assisting his mother and taking a shop position. However, he didn't abandon art academia and soon presented a portfolio to the New York School of Fine Art which earned him a scholarship for study. Gropper obtained his first significant job as a cartoonist for the New York Tribune in 1917. While working as a staff cartoonist for the Tribune, he also contributed drawings to publications like Vanity Fair, New Masses, The Nation, and Freiheit. His interest in the welfare of the American worker...

From the estate of Jerry Opper & Ruth Friedman Opper Orange Nude c. 1950's Gouache on Paper 15" x 18", Unframed *Custom framing available for additional charge. Please expect framin...

Jack Hooper "Side Stretch Nude 3" 9/7/1984 Gouache and pastel on paper 20"x26" unframed Signed and dated in pencil lower right In this exemplary work of modernist art, Jack Hooper e...

Jack Hooper "Side Stretch Nude 2" 9/7/1984 Gouache and pastel on paper 20"x26" unframed Signed and dated in pencil lower right In this modernist masterpiece, Jack Hooper deftly navi...

Jack Hooper "Side Stretch Nude" 9/7/1984 Gouache and pastel on paper 20"x26" unframed Signed and dated in pencil lower left In this intriguing modernist artwork, Jack Hooper's minim...

Late Mid Century French watercolour and Gouache on handmade paper of a pair of dancers by Damien Hermellin. Signed and dated bottom right. Pres...

"Artists Sketching (California)" is an American Modernist scene of three artists working with mountains in the background. Gouache on paper, signed, titled, and dated by the artist in the lower margin. Housed in a custom frame with all archival materials measuring 25.5 x 37.5 x 1.5 inches; image dimensions measure 20.25 x 29.75 inches. Provenance: Estate of the Artist, Frederick Shane About the artist: Painter and printmaker, Missouri regionalist Frederick E. Shane specialized in genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes and portraits executed in a variety of media: oil, watercolor, mixed media, gouache, tempera and lithography. Fundamentally a realist, his work also contains some abstraction, expressionism and surrealism used in treating his subject matter. In the summers of 1925-26 Shane studied with Randall Davey at the recently-founded Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs. The Academy was established in 1919 by Spencer and Julie Penrose, prominent philanthropists and art patrons, who donated their family residence for the creation of a local art institution. In the 1940s and early 1950s Shane maintained his contact with Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (the successor institution to the Broadmoor Academy in 1936). He participated in a number of its annual Artists West of the Mississippi exhibitions and also became a close friend of Boardman Robinson, the Center’s director, and visiting artist Adolph Dehn...