Displaying items by tag: european modernism

Only a short time remains for a special exhibition of the work of American modernist Gershon Benjamin (1899-1985), a Romanian-born, Montreal-educated artist remembered as an Expressionist for his individualistic style and use of color. The exhibition, Gershon Benjamin: Modern Master features more than 60 portraits, still lifes, landscapes and city scenes in oil, watercolor and charcoal—all representing more than seven decades of work.

Benjamin was part of a 1920s New York scene of progressive artists who favored European modernism to the popular American Scene and Regionalist art of the day.

Sotheby’s New York will host two highly-anticipated design auctions this week. “The Jon Stryker Collection: Masterworks of European Modernism,” will take place on Tuesday, December 16, followed by the “Important 20th Century Design” sale on Wednesday, December 17.

“Masterworks of European Modernism” will feature works from the collection of Jon Stryker -- an American architect, philanthropist, and activist. In 2002, Stryker teamed up with Peter Shelton and Lee Mindel of the New York-based architecture and interior design firm Shelton, Mindel & Associates to renovate his former apartment at the “Prasada,” a Beaux-Arts luxury apartment building overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. With help from Shelton and Mindel, Stryker created a stylish and modern space within the historic building to showcase his collection of European and Scandinavian twentieth-century design and photography.

Now that the first week of the big spring auctions is over, Sotheby’s is wasting no time touting its sales in London next month, hanging highlights in its York Avenue galleries for collectors to peruse during the contemporary-art previews this weekend.

Knowing that today’s appetite for prime abstract paintings appears boundless, Sotheby’s expects a 1927 Mondrian that has not been on the market since the 1950s to be a star of its June 23 auction. This stark canvas, “Composition With Red, Blue and Grey,” was first owned by Harry Holtzman, an artist who helped found the American Abstract Artists Group, an influential organization that espoused the principles of European Modernism, and who was a friend of Mondrian’s and an expert on his work.

On November 9, 2013 the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas unveiled the exhibition The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The monumental presentation features 101 works of American and European art as well as African art from the collection of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. Works on view include masterpieces by his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

The exhibition traces the rise of American Modernism, a movement that Stieglitz championed through his career as a photographer and gallerist. When he opened his gallery in the early 20^th century, Stieglitz was one of the first gallery owners in the United States to showcase European Modernists. Soon, he became devoted to highlighting the works of American modernists, often purchasing artworks from them and providing them with studio space.

The collection that comprises The Artists’ Eye was donated to Fisk University in Nashville by O’Keeffe after Stieglitz’s death in 1946 and is now co-owned by Crystal Bridges and Fisk. The collection will travel between the two institutions every two years.

The Artists’ Eye will be on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art through February 3, 2014.