William Gropper

Wedding Dancer, Shtetl Series

1960

Simka Simkhovitch (Russian/American 1893 - 1949) signed lithograph. Pencil signed and dated "S. Simkhovitch 1933" lower center. Title "Island Beach," in pencil lower left of sheet. Numbered "44/50" in pencil lower right. (it is either Island Beach Wisconsin or New Jersey) 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. 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...

Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) Bouquet de Fleurs Lithograph in colors, 1957. Published by Maeght, printed by Mourlot, Paris, France Numbered 166/300 and hand signed in pencil. ...

Hand signed in pencil and numbered from the limited original edition. Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) 1920-2013 Bursa, Ottoman Turkish Empire Hovhannes "Jean" Semerdjian (Armenian: Հովհաննես "Ժանսեմ" Միրիջանի Սեմերջյան, 9 March 1920 – 27 August 2013), also known as Jean Jansem, was a French-Armenian painter. Jansem's artworks are internationally known, and are part of museum collections throughout France, Japan and the United States. A Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2002). He was awarded by the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1953 and by the Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 2003. The President of Armenia awarded Jansem a Medal of Honor for his “reinforcement of Armenian-French cultural ties.” Hovhannes Semerdjian was born in 1920 in Bursa, then in the Ottoman Empire. In 1922, his family fled to Greece. He spent his childhood in Thessaloniki. They arrived to Issy-les-Moulineaux suburb of Paris, France in 1931 when he was 11 and that is when he begin to paint. The first professional schools for Jansem became the academies of Montparnasse (1934–1936). He studied in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. His teachers were Maurice Brianchon, Raymond Legueult and Roland Oudot. Jansem also studied at the Sabatie studio for a year. Early paintings by Jansem were mainly on national issues. Known for his washy representational paintings of figure, landscape, marine and genre scenes of European subjects: fishermen and children of Greece, bullfighting in Spain, Italian landscapes and markets, scenes of Venice and French France village marketplaces and landscapes, nude women, still lifes, and figures, Jansem painted with a variety of media that included gouache, watercolor, ink, and oil painting in a stylized and textural aesthetic. had individual exhibitions in Paris, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Rome, Brussels, Lausanne, Beirut etc. His work was shown by the prominent Wally Findlay Galleries in New York, Paris, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills (they show many important artists including Gaston Sebire, Henri Maik, Gen Paul, Jean Pierre Cassigneul, Jean Dufy, Gustavo Novoa, Nicola Simbari, Dietz Edzard, Suzanne Eisendieck, Constantin Kluge, Louis Valtat, Michael Vollbracht...

Lithograph with Roman portrait bust. Will Petersen, a painter, master printer and a poet, was born in Chicago. (Amer. 1928-1994) created this limited edition LITHOGRAPH at the Lakeside Studio. The LITHOGRAPH PRINT is from a limited edition THE LITHOGRAPH IS SIGNED TITLED AND ANNOTATED BY THE ARTIST in pencil EXCELLENT condition. Will's formal art education began with classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. As a student at the city's Steinmetz High School, Petersen succeeded Hugh Hefner (of Playboy magazine fame) as the HS newspaper cartoonist, the Steinmetz Star. During this time, Petersen recovered from polio. In 1947 Petersen enrolled at Chicago's Wilbur Wright College. While there, he painted with oils for the first time. Two years later he enrolled at Michigan State University where he developed a strong interest in literature and writing and began printmaking. By 1951 he had begun to exhibit paintings and prints nationally. A year later he completed his master's degree. Petersen served in the United States Army from 1952-54, spending one year as an education specialist in Japan. This encounter with the Japanese culture affected his entire life. He became interested in calligraphy and Noh, classical Japanese Buddhist performance that combines elements of drama, music and poetry. Upon completion of his military service in Japan in 1955, Will Petersen settled in Oakland, California, where he met some of the most active poets of the Beat Generation: Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Phil Whalen, Mike McClure and others. Petersen was attracted to the group by their intelligence and belief in Zen Buddhism. In 1956 in his small studio in Oakland, he printed the poems of Jack Kerouac. He attended for the first time, the reading of Ginsberg's Howl at Six Gallery. His relationship with Gary Snyder had begun when both were in Kyoto, Japan; later Snyder wrote for the Plucked Chicken. Petersen returned to Japan in 1957, pursuing painting, printmaking and writing for eight years while living in Kyoto. In 1965 he accepted a faculty appointment at Ohio State University, teaching drawing, painting and printmaking. Four years later Petersen took his teaching skills to West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he concentrated on printmaking. He taught there until 1977 when he began publishing Plucked Chicken, a journal of art and poetry. In 1978 in Morgantown, Petersen and his wife, Cynthia Archer, established Plucked Chicken Press, which they later moved to Chicago and then Evanston. Petersen operated the Press until his death on April 1, 1994. 1956 In storefront studio in Oakland, California, creates serigraphs and lithographs. Prints poems of Jack Kerouac. 1961 Back in Japan, acquires a lithography press and stones and resumes printing lithographs. Exhibits regularly with Kyoto Printmakers. 1969 Resident lithographer at the Lakeside Studio, Lakeside, Michigan. Prints for the first time Richard Hunt lithographs. 1978 Establishes Plucked Chicken Press in Morgantown, West Virginia. Resident lithographer at Lakeside Studio in Michigan. 1980 Plucked Chicken Press moves to Chicago. Publishes lithographs by Don Crouch and Art Kleinman. 1982 Publishes Blossom, a lithograph/collage by Tom Nakashima. 1983 Series I of Plucked Chicken Press is published with work by Archer, Duckworth, Godfrey, Heagstedt, Himmelfarb, Hoff, Hunt, Martyl, Miller, Nakashima and Petersen. 1984 Plucked Chicken Press moves to Evanston. Series II of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Croydon, Ho, Archer, Torn, Osver, Middaugh, Roseberry, Petersen, Spiess-Ferris and Hoppock. 1985 Series III of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Driesbach, Hunt, Trupp, Gregor, Pattison, Conger, Evans, Weygandt, Archer, Ho and Petersen. Prints Suite I, Northern Illinois University Collectors Series, with lithographs by Renie Adams, David Bower, David Driesbach, Carl Hayano and Ben Mahmoud, all faculty members of the art department at Northern Illinois University. 1986 Publishes Richard Hunt s Over Wisdom Bridge. 1987 Series IV of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Bustos, Archer, Martyl, Petersen, Smith, Gordon, Gadomski and Godfrey. 1990 Series V of Plucked Chicken Press is published with four floral lithographs by Winifred Godfrey...

With chopmarks and blindstamps. published by The Lakeside Studio (chopmark lower right). THE LITHOGRAPH IS SIGNED TITLED AND ANNOTATED BY THE ARTIST in pencil EXCELLENT condition. Will's formal art education began with classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. As a student at the city's Steinmetz High School, Petersen succeeded Hugh Hefner (of Playboy magazine fame) as the HS newspaper cartoonist, the Steinmetz Star. During this time, Petersen recovered from polio. In 1947 Petersen enrolled at Chicago's Wilbur Wright College. While there, he painted with oils for the first time. Two years later he enrolled at Michigan State University where he developed a strong interest in literature and writing and began printmaking. By 1951 he had begun to exhibit paintings and prints nationally. A year later he completed his master's degree. Petersen served in the United States Army from 1952-54, spending one year as an education specialist in Japan. This encounter with the Japanese culture affected his entire life. He became interested in calligraphy and Noh, classical Japanese Buddhist performance that combines elements of drama, music and poetry. Upon completion of his military service in Japan in 1955, Will Petersen settled in Oakland, California, where he met some of the most active poets of the Beat Generation: Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Phil Whalen, Mike McClure and others. Petersen was attracted to the group by their intelligence and belief in Zen Buddhism. In 1956 in his small studio in Oakland, he printed the poems of Jack Kerouac. He attended for the first time, the reading of Ginsberg's Howl at Six Gallery. His relationship with Gary Snyder had begun when both were in Kyoto, Japan; later Snyder wrote for the Plucked Chicken. Petersen returned to Japan in 1957, pursuing painting, printmaking and writing for eight years while living in Kyoto. In 1965 he accepted a faculty appointment at Ohio State University, teaching drawing, painting and printmaking. Four years later Petersen took his teaching skills to West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he concentrated on printmaking. He taught there until 1977 when he began publishing Plucked Chicken, a journal of art and poetry. In 1978 in Morgantown, Petersen and his wife, Cynthia Archer, established Plucked Chicken Press, which they later moved to Chicago and then Evanston. Petersen operated the Press until his death on April 1, 1994. 1956 In storefront studio in Oakland, California, creates serigraphs and lithographs. Prints poems of Jack Kerouac. 1961 Back in Japan, acquires a lithography press and stones and resumes printing lithographs. Exhibits regularly with Kyoto Printmakers. 1969 Resident lithographer at the Lakeside Studio, Lakeside, Michigan. Prints for the first time Richard Hunt lithographs. 1978 Establishes Plucked Chicken Press in Morgantown, West Virginia. Resident lithographer at Lakeside Studio in Michigan. 1980 Plucked Chicken Press moves to Chicago. Publishes lithographs by Don Crouch and Art Kleinman. 1982 Publishes Blossom, a lithograph/collage by Tom Nakashima. 1983 Series I of Plucked Chicken Press is published with work by Archer, Duckworth, Godfrey, Heagstedt, Himmelfarb, Hoff, Hunt, Martyl, Miller, Nakashima and Petersen. 1984 Plucked Chicken Press moves to Evanston. Series II of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Croydon, Ho, Archer, Torn, Osver, Middaugh, Roseberry, Petersen, Spiess-Ferris and Hoppock. 1985 Series III of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Driesbach, Hunt, Trupp, Gregor, Pattison, Conger, Evans, Weygandt, Archer, Ho and Petersen. Prints Suite I, Northern Illinois University Collectors Series, with lithographs by Renie Adams, David Bower, David Driesbach, Carl Hayano and Ben Mahmoud, all faculty members of the art department at Northern Illinois University. 1986 Publishes Richard Hunt s Over Wisdom Bridge. 1987 Series IV of Plucked Chicken Press is published with works by Bustos, Archer, Martyl, Petersen, Smith, Gordon, Gadomski and Godfrey. 1990 Series V of Plucked Chicken Press is published with four floral lithographs by Winifred Godfrey...

Andre Minaux: (1923 - 1986) French painter and printmaker, he studied at the ecole national superieure des arts decoratifs in Paris, he exhibited at the salon d’automne and salon des...

Fernand LÉGER Still life with Journal and Flowers, 1959 Original lithograph and stencil Printed signature in the plate On vellum Auvergne 50,2 x 40 cm (c. 19,7 x 15,7 Inches) Publ...

Rachel hides her father's housold gods  is a an artwork from the Series "The Bible", realized by Marc Chagall in 1960. Mixed colored lithograph on brown-toned paper, no signature. ...

Francis BACON (after) Lying Woman Original vintage lithograph poster On heavy paper 71 x 45 cm (c. 28 x 18 inch) This lithograph was created for the arti...

A highly influential mid-century American artist, Richard Diebenkorn is known for his abstract landscape paintings, in particular, the "Ocean Park" series, which he exhibited when re...

Strong and vibrant color lithograph by the American artist Benton Murdoch Spruance. Edition size in pencil lower left margin Titled in pencil middle margin and signed in pencil lower...

Majesty Gathering is a lithograph on paper realized by Hégésippe Moreau in 1838. The artwork is in good conditions. Hégésippe Moreau (1810-1838) was a French lyric poet. The romant...