Paul Zimmerman Art

Chess Players WPA Depression Era Mid-20th Century American Scene Realism Modern. Signed upper right and verso 8 x 10 inches oil on board. BIO The son of a men's haberdasher, Mervin ...

Vintage 1930s - 1940s oil painting of an adobe church in New Mexico with a brilliant blue sky and clouds (likely Rancho de Taos), circa 1940. Painted by Denver modernist, Paul K...

Arctic Stream in Forest Landscape with Lush Greens & Blues by 20th Century British Artist, Jack Strickland Art measures 16 x 20 inches Frame measures 19 x 23 inches Original, Oi...

"In Soquel (California)" is an original oil on board painting by Jon Blanchette (1908-1987) circa 1955. Farm landscape with figure hanging laundry and silo, painted in colors of blue...

This is an original oil painting on by Ginny Williams. Celebrating the elements of still life often found in paintings of the Dutch golden age, this piece showcases blue and white po...

Bathers 1940s Mid 20th Century American Scene Social Realism WPA Modern Ashcan Marion Gilmore (1909-1984) Bathers 15 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches oil on canvas boar...

Men Working Mural Study American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern Jo Cain (1904 – 2003) Men Working: WPA Mural Study 17 ½ x 10 ½ inches Oil on ...

WPA era signed framed modernist oil painting of houses and trees in summer with a stormy cloud in Colorado by Paul K. Smith in shades of green, ...

Six O-Clock, c. 1942, oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, signed and titled several times verso of frame and stretcher (perhaps by another hand), marked “Rehn” several times on frame (for the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries in New York City, who represented Craig at the time); Exhibited: 1) 18th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings from March 21 to May 2, 1943 at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. #87, original price $450 (per catalog) (exhibition label verso), 2) Craig’s one-man show at the Frank K. M. Rehn Galleries, New York City, from October 26 to November 14, 1942, #10 (original price listed as $350); and 3) Exhibition of thirty paintings sponsored by the Harrisburg Art Association at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg in March, 1944 (concerning this exhibit, Penelope Redd of The Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) wrote: “Other paintings that have overtones of superrealism inherent in the subjects include Tom Craig’s California nocturne, ‘Six O’Clock,’ two figures moving through the twilight . . . .” March 6, 1944, p. 13); another label verso from The Museum of Art of Toledo (Ohio): original frame: Provenance includes George Stern Gallery, Los Angeles, CA About the Painting Long before Chris Burden’s iconic installation outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Urban Light, another artist, Tom Craig, made Southern California streetlights the subject of one of his early 1940s paintings. Consisting of dozens of recycled streetlights from the 1920s and 1930s forming a classical colonnade at the museum’s entrance, Burden’s Urban Light has become a symbol of Los Angeles. For Burden, the streetlights represent what constitutes an advanced society, something “safe after dark and beautiful to behold.” It seems that Craig is playing on the same theme in Six O-Clock. Although we see two hunched figures trudging along the sidewalk at the end of a long day, the real stars of this painting are the streetlights which brighten the twilight and silhouette another iconic symbol of Los Angeles, the palm trees in the distance. Mountains in the background and the distant view of a suburban neighborhood join the streetlights and palm trees as classic subject matter for a California Scene painting, but Craig gives us a twist by depicting the scene not as a sun-drenched natural expanse. Rather, Craig uses thin layers of oil paint, mimicking the watercolor technique for which he is most famous, to show us the twinkling beauty of manmade light and the safety it affords. Although Southern California is a land of natural wonders, the interventions of humanity are already everywhere in Los Angeles and as one critic noted, the resulting painting has an air of “superrealism.” About the Artist Thomas Theodore Craig was a well-known fixture in the Southern California art scene. He was born in Upland California. Craig graduated with a degree in botany from Pomona College and studied painting at Pamona and the Chouinard Art School with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Barse Miller among others. He became close friends with fellow artist Milford Zornes...

Poker Players NYC Mid 20th Century Modern WPA American Scene Social Realism Philip Reisman (1904-1992) Poker Players 12 x 16 oil on board Signed and dated 1949 lower right BIO Phi...

This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Army Poker, c. 1943, probably tempera on board, signed upper right, 16 x 20 inches, inscribed verso a) “Army Poker / Mervin Honig / 421 W 42 St. N.Y.C.,” b) “Mervin Honig / US Army Air Force – Seymour Johnson Field – Goldsboro, NC / Circa 1943,” and c) “(This painting was done before men was (sic) shipped off to the Mariana Islands (Saipan) The Second World War.” Note: four pencil sketches for this work included Mervin Honig was a New York-based painter and illustrator who is best known for his realistic depictions of everyday life and sports themes. Honig was raised in Brooklyn and recalled almost never being without a paintbox in hand from the time he started elementary school. Honig had a deep reverence for the Old Master painters, Vermeer and Bellini, as well as the Americans Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. He initially studied art from 1939 through 1941 with Francis Criss. At the outbreak of World War II, Honig worked as a mechanic for Republic Aviation, but in August 1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and was stationed at Seymour Johnson Field in Goldsboro, North Carolina. During the war, Honig began to exhibit nationally, including as part of the Portrait of America exhibitions which originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveled around the country, as well as at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. He painted Army Poker in 1943 while stationed at Johnson Field. In this work, Honig draws inspiration from Paul Cezanne's The Card Players (Metropolitan Museum of Art), with a similar placement of the four figures, but Cezanne's table is replaced with an Army cot, the pipe rack with a soldier's mess kit and the drapery in the right background with a heap of discarded uniforms. Unlike the vibrancy of Cezanne's composition, the limited palette of Honig's work suggests the drabness and monotony of stateside Army life. After being discharged from military service, Honig furthered his studies with Amadee Ozenfant in 1946 and Hans Hoffman from 1947 through 1950. Additional exhibitions included the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Provincetown Art Association, and the National Academies Galleries of the Allied Artists Association. He was represented by the venerable Frank Rehn...

Mario Larrinaga was born in Baja California in 1895 and moved with his brother to Los Angeles in 1909. He had no formal training in art, but had natural talent that was noticed by local movie studios. He was hired by Universal Studios as a designer, art director and creator of background scenes. He produced some of the background effects for King Kong in 1933. After a career in set design and illustration he focused on painting for pleasure in California, Mexico and Hawaii. He belonged to local art clubs and exhibited his works often. This stylized modernist work was likely created around 1960. It is oil on wood panel and of a horizontal format, 18” x 36”. It portrays a procession of seemingly Hawaiian natives...