Avel de Knight

The Artwork of Avel de Knight

Avel C. de Knight was a Paris and New York-based artist, educator, curator, and art critic. Born in New York City in April of 1923, he was the son of parents who immigrated to the United States from Barbados and Puerto Rico. De Knight studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1942 to 1943, after which he served in the Army, in a segregated unit, until the end of World War II.

After the war and with the aid of the GI Bill, De Knight traveled in 1946 to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Académie Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian. In Paris, he discovered an environment that reflected the kind of freedom that an artist of color from the United States needed. He was one of many African American artists living and working in postwar Paris, a group which included expressionist painter Herb Gentry, modernist painter Beauford Delaney, and abstract painter Ed Clark, the first American artist credited with exhibiting a shaped canvas.

Returning to the United States after living ten years abroad, Avel de Knight settled into an apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. In the 1950s, he would go on to win prizes and acclaim for his art, and supplement his income writing reviews as an art critic for the French language weekly “France-Amérique”. De Knight participated in his first group exhibition in 1953, which was held in the Village Art Center in New York City, where he was awarded the Village Art Center Prize for his work. He exhibited his work in one-man shows at the Sagittarius Gallery in New York City, his first solo show in 1957 and the second in October of 1959.

In addition to his painting and work as a critic, Avel de Knight taught at the Art Students League of New York and, as an academician well respected by the faculty and students, at the National Academy of Design for many years. Pursuing his cultural interests, de Knight spent two months in a cultural exchange program for the U.S. State Department in 1961 as an artist-lecturer in the former Soviet Union. During that time, he was particularly attracted to the regions influenced by Islam, such as Samarkand and Bukhara, just north of the Afghanistan border. This experience influenced his late 1960s “Mirage” series which coincided with the growing Black Arts movement in many of the urban centers throughout the United States.

Though Avel de Knight avoided any direct political statements in his work, his paintings and drawings during the latter part of the 1960s through the early 1970s can be viewed as celebrations of a perceived African aesthetic. Along with this sense of beauty, his work reflected the principles of classicism that he had internalized through his studies in Europe. From these sources, as well as Asian art and Ancient Western sculpture, de Knight was able to draw from a broad cross-section of historic world culture influences.

De Knight’s interest in spirituality, which would be more explicit in his later work, was deeply rooted in his early experiences as a member of Manhattan’s La Iglesia Católico de la Milagrosa. Located on the fringe of “El Barrio,” the church was a Spanish National Parish that served a large Spanish-speaking community. In addition to images of hooded saints, one of the most powerful images was a life-size statue of Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows. Identified as the patron saint of the dying, and invoked as an intercessor against plague, the image of Saint Sebastian would be used by De Knight in his work as he saw the AIDS epidemic ravage the community he loved.

Avel de Knight was an Academician member of the National Academy of Design, a member of the American Watercolor Society, Audubon Society of Artists, and a member of the Audubon Society of Artists. He had a long and productive career until his death in 1995, and exhibited widely in both individual and group exhibitions. He won many awards, including the William A. Paxton Prize from the National Academy of Design and the Palmer Memorial Prize both from the National Academy School of Fine Arts, the Emily Lowe Award from the American Watercolor Society, and the Samuel F. B. Morse Medal from the National Academy School of Fine Arts.

Insert Top Image: Kurt Ammann, “Avel de Knight, Paris”, 1950

Insert Middle Image: Maurice Grosser, “Avel de Knight, Christopher Street, NYC”, 1961

Insert Bottom Image: Photographer and Date Unknown, “Avel de Knight”

George Daniell

The Photography of George Daniell

Born in May of 1911 in Yonkers, New York, George Daniell was an American photographer and a painter. His experience in the dramatic landscape of his childhood was the genesis that led to his passion for black and white photography’s cinematic effects. Taking a keen interest in a variety of subjects throughout his life, Danielle shot photos of dock workers in New Brunswick, crabbers on the Hudson, swimmers at Glen Island Beach and ballet dancers on Fire Island, all of which to him presented a fierce and tender celebration of the angular male figure.

George Daniell began his artistic career with a folding Kodak camera and a drawing class at the Grand Central Art School in New York City. He trained as a painter at Yale University, where he graduated in 1934 earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Painting and Photography. After returning to Yonkers, Daniell began photographing fishermen and bathers along the banks of the Hudson River, traveling further to Glen Island, Jones Beach, and Fire Island on subsequent excursions. Moving to New York City and attending courses at the Art Students League, he supported himself as a freelance photographer for publications such as “Time” and “Life” magazines.

In the summer of 1937, Daniell traveled north to Maine, first visiting the art colony at Ogunquit and then continuing up the coast to Monhegan Island. Developing his eye for composition and tonal values, he shot many images of Monhegan’s distinctive houses, rugged terrain, and working fishermen. The publication of many of these Monhegan images in both “Time” and “Life” earned Daniell a reputation as an artist with a keen sense for recognizing the human moments within everyday life. He followed this project in the following year with an internationally acclaimed photo essay about the lives of herring fishermen living on Grand Manan Island, off the coast of New Brunswick.

In 1940 in New York, George Daniell continued his studies of painting at Bronx’s American People’s School, after which he served from 1942 to 1944 in the US Army during World War II. After his discharge he returned to New York City, purchased a house on Fire Island, and continued his freelance photography career. Soon after resuming his work, Daniell met and fell in love with realist-expressionist painter and gallery owner Stephen Dorland. The couple moved in 1960 to Trenton, Maine, near Acadia National Park, to paint and to start a country life together; over the next forty years, they would travel and paint together.

George Daniell’s association with renowned photographer and owner of the famous “291” Gallery, Alfred Stieglitz, would lead to his most known series of work, the celebrity portraits. Meeting Georgia O’Keeffe at the gallery would result in two famous intimate photo shoots, one in 1948 at Daniell’s Fire Island house and one in 1952 at O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, which formed a lasting friendship between the two. Some of the famous subjects included in this celebrity series were landscape painter and friend John Marin, photographer Berenice Abbott, writer Tennessee Williams, and actors Robert De Niro and Greta Garbo.

Over the course of his career, George Daniell spent a considerable amount of time traveling abroad, completing two around the world excursions. Between 1950 and 1954, he photographed many street scenes and images of the local people in Rome and Florence. Returning to Italy for two months in 1955, Daniell shot a series of images depicting the streets and countryside of devastated postwar Italy; he also shot a series of portraits on the movie sets of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. Marked by a distinct sense of sensuality and interest in his subjects, these two series, which Daniell considered his favorite work, combined his democratic vision and his recognition of the celebrity.

Affected by Stephen Dorland’s death in October of 1983 and suffering from depression, George Daniell was hospitalized and shortly after suffered a stroke which limited his mobility. Drawn to the dark and deep tones of the North Atlantic Coast, which coalesce in his early paintings, Daniell moved to Bar Harbor, Maine where he returned to painting. He continued working as a photographer and painter until his death on September 14, 2002 at the age of ninety-one.

The George Daniell Museum located in South Beach, Florida, houses a full collection of George Daniell’s work which covers the years from 1920 to 1991, and includes paintings, aquarelles, and his more personal photographs. The collection was recently unearthed by his estate and was presented through the cooperation of the German organization Zentraldepot, a security facility with conservators and restorers.

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Self Portraits of George Daniell, George Daniell Estate

Middle Insert Image: George Daniell, “Steve Dorland in Acapulco”, 1944, Silver Gelatin Print, 34.5 x 23.1 cm, George Daniell Estate

Randall Mann: “The Pool Shark Lurked”

Photographers Unknown, The Pool Shark Lurked

Like eelgrass through a glass-
bottom boat on the Silver River,
I see the state, obscured yet pure. Derision,

a tattooed flame crackling
underneath the lewd, uncool
khaki of an amused park worker.

I was the sometimes boy on a leash,
my sliver of assent in 1984 —
as if it were my decision.

The I-75 signage, more than metaphor.
As if I had the right to vote.
The slumber parties then were hidden wood;

the tea so sweet, the saccharin
pink and artificial, like intelligence.
The science sponsored in part by chance.

I made my acting debut with the red
dilettante down the street, “Rusty” Counts,
in Rusty Counts Presents: Suburbs of the Dead,

straight to VHS. My parents phoned a counselor.
A palmetto bug read Megatrends on the fold-
ing chair by our above-ground swimming pool …

The pool shark lurked, but not to fear.
The end unknowable, blue, inmost, and cold,
like the comfort of a diplomatic war.

—Randall Mann, Florida, Poetry, October 2015

Born in Provo, Utah, in January of 1972, Randall Mann is an American poet, the only son of Olympic medalist Ralph Mann. He spent his younger years in Kentucky and Florida, a time in which he was encouraged to read a wide range of literature. In his senior years in high school, Mann’s teachers supported his writing of poetry which he continued into his college years. Mann graduated with a BA and a MFA from the University of Florida. Since 1998 he has lived in San Francisco.

Randall Mann’s poetry is mostly influenced by the English poet Philip Larkin, whose poems are most often reflections of plainness and skepticism, the 1980 Pulitzer Prize Poetry winner Donald Justice who shared his insight into loss and distance, American poet Elizabeth Bishop whose work is formed with precise description and poetic serenity, and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda whose two-volume “Residencia en la Tierra” made him a renowned international poet.

In his work, Randall Mann explores the themes of loss, expectation, brutality, attraction, and the unabashed experiences of living a gay life. He is accomplished in the formalist design of the poem and has a witty sense in where he places his line-breaks. Mann projects a wide range of emotions in his work which is emphasized by the word choice he uses to set the poem’s tone. Usually set in the countrysides around San Francisco or in Florida, his poems often reflect the contrasts between the countryside beauty and the serious social problems inside city life, which includes the spreading of homelessness and random criminal attacks against the gay community.

Mann’s collections include the 2004 “Complaint in the Garden”, which won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry; “Breakfast with Thom Gunn”, published in 2009 and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the California Book Award; the 2013 “Straight Razor”, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and “Proprietary” published in 2017 and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and Lambda Literary Award.

In addition to his poetry collections, Randall Mann is the author of “The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry”, a 2019 book of criticism in which Mann applies his attention to language, fearlessness, and sharp wit to a collection of musings, reviews, autographical sketches, and readings on the art of poetry. Mann also co-authored the seventh edition of“Writing Poems”, which was published in 2007.

A small collection of Randall Mann’s poetry can be found at the Poetry Foundation located at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/randall-mann#tab-poems

Domenico Baccarini

The Artwork of Domenico Baccarini

Born in December of 1882 at Faenza, Italy, Domenico Baccarini studied sculpture at Faenza’s School of Arts and Crafts under Massimo Campello and drawing under the sculptor and medalist Antonio Berti, who introduced him to the renowned ceramic crafts of the city. Since the Middle Ages, Faenza was considered an excellent ceramic center which was known for its high-quality majolica pottery. After graduating and obtaining a study grant from the city of Faenza, Baccarini attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence between 1900 and 1903.

During this period in Florence, Baccarini associated with many artists including symbolist illustrator and print maker Adolfo De Carolis, painter and engraver Giovanni Costetti, and painter and poet Lorenzo Viani. He produced several sculptures in the years 1901 and 1902, which are now housed in the collection of the municipality of Forli’s Aurelio Saffi Library. These include his sculptural works “Bust of a Young Woman”, “Spring”, “Nymphs”, and “Sensations of the Soul”.

Baccarini visited the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, held in Turin in 1902, and, in the following year, attended the Fifth International Biennial of Art in Venice. Settling in Rome in the autumn of 1903, Baccarini worked as an illustrator for the La Patria newspaper, which later organized an exhibition of his work at its headquarters in summer of 1904. During this time in Rome, Baccarini was in a relationship with the future model for many of his works, Elizabetta Santolini known as Bitta,, who would in 1905 give birth to their daughter Maria Teresa.

In the beginning of 1904, Baccarini achieved admission to the Nude School of the French Academy located in central Rome’s Villa Medici. He often frequented the home of monumental and frieze sculptor Giovanni Prini and met with other artists, such as painters and sculptors Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, both leading members of Futurist movement, and musician and composer Alberto Gasco, a proponent of musical Modernism. Baccarini exhibited his work in 1904 with success at the Romagna Regional Exhibition of Ravenna.

Returning to Faenza in 1905, Domenico Baccarini began to work in the medium of ceramics. As part of the Art Nouveau and the late symbolism period of Faenza ceramics, he was responsible for some of the most interesting artistic, ceramic and decorative concepts at the turn of the twentieth century. Baccarini played a key role in the renewal of Faenza’s ceramic production, especially that of the Fabbriche Riunite Ceramiche workshop of Achille Calzi and the Manifatture Fratelli Minardi owned by the Minardi brothers, Virginio and Venturino.

While working in ceramic design, Baccarini continued his own drawing and sculptural works, of which three were presented at the Sixth Venice Biennale. He was very engaged in his artwork throughout 1905: exhibiting in Milan’s Fine Art Exhibition for the opening of the Sempione and at the first Exhibition of the Società del Risveglio Cittadino in Faenza. Baccarini also produced illustrations for Rome’s L’Avanti della Domenica magazine and started collaborating with writer and journalist Antonio Beltramelli on illustrations fo the author’s short stories.

After being abandoned by Bitta and suffering economically, Domenico Baccarini returned to Rome where he received a commission from the charity institution, Casa del Pane, for a series of drawings to illustrate their workers in the field. During this second stay in Rome, his already poor physical condition worsened rapidly, which forced his return to his hometown of Faenza. It was there that Domenico Baccarini died on January 31 of 1907, at the age of twenty-four.

For the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the passing of Domenico Baccarini, the Municipal Art Gallery of Faenza held two exhibitions of his paintings and drawings in their collection. On the same occasion, the Museum of Art of Ravenna held an exhibition entitled “Domenico Baccarini: A Meteor of the Early Twentieth Century”, which retraced his life through his work.

Benton Murdoch Spruance

Lithographs by Benton Murdoch Spruance

Born in June of 1904 in Philadelphia, American artist Benton Murdoch Spruance was a painter. educator, and lithographer. Growing up in an affluent suburb, he worked as an architectural assistant after graduating from high school. Spruance studied at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Architecture, and also attended etching and drawing classes at the Graphic Sketch Club, a free art school.

After working in a logging camp for several months in 1924-1925, Benton Spruance enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, whose 1928 Cresson scholarship enabled him to study overseas in France. He studied at the Académie Montparnasse under cubist painter André Lhote, and later was introduced to lithography at the acclaimed Paris print workshop of Edmond Desjobert, with whom Spruance would later work producing many of his lithographs.

After returning to Philadelphia, Spruance began working for an interior design firm and taught part-time at Arcadia College. After receiving a second Cresson scholarship, he traveled to Paris to continue his painting studies with André Lhote. In 1933, Spruance had his first solo show at New York City’s Weyhe Gallery, a print and drawing gallery established in 1919. He was also appointed that same year as professor of the Department of Art at the Pennsylvania Academy.

Although Benton Spruance continued to paint after his return from Paris, he was most active as a printmaker. His art in the 1920s and 1930s portrayed the life of ordinary men and women at both work and play. During this period Spruance’s style varied from naturalistic portraits to a precisionist approach of flattened and layered forms. It was these boldblack and white lithographic compositions with their wide tonal ranges and gradations which established Spruance’s reputation as a lithographer. During this period with the aid of two Guggenheim fellowships, he sketched landscapes throughout Europe and the United States..

During the period of the Works Progress Administration, from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, a deliberate socially conscious agenda characterized Spruance’s lithographs. He began to work in a more highly charged expressionistic style and turned to wartime subjects as a prominent theme. Spruance also began producing psychologically charged portraits of women, which was followed later by themes based on biblical narratives and mythology. At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany, Spruance’s work was among the six hundred works of art at the competition held inside the Berlin Exhibition

From the early 1950s Spruance participated in the urban regeneration of the city of Philadelphia and, in 1953, was appointed to the Philadelphia Art Commission. One of his achievements was the passing of a 1959 law where one percent of the budget for every new building in Philadelphia had to be spent upon public art. Avid about the lithographic process, Spruance pioneered many innovations and techniques for the use of color in print making. During the 1960s he produced many color lithographs, which were mostly literary or symbolic in theme.

Despite the demand for his lithographic work, Benton Spruance continued his role as an educator. He started “Prints in Progress”, a program to teach printmaking, through demonstration and participation, to public school students. Spruance was both the chair of the art department at Arcadia University and held the chairmanship at the printing department of the Philadelphia College of Art.

A prolific printmaker with over five hundred editions during his lifetime, Benton Spruance died in Philadelphia on the 6th of December in 1967. In 1968, Barre Publishers, Massachusetts, posthumously published Benton Spruance’s project “Moby Dick: The Passion of Ahab”, a portfolio which illustrated Lawrence Melville’s novel and contained twenty-six color lithographs that were finished in the years just before Spruance’s death.

Top Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, “Subway Shift, The Second Front”, 1943 Lithograph, 36.8 x 48.6 cm, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, Approach to the Station, 1932, Lithograph on Japon Paper, 27.9 x 35.3 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Benton Murdoch Spruance, Nero, 1944, Lithograph Edition of 30, 36.8 x 39.7 cm, Private Collection

Cesare Fracanzano

Cesare Fracanzano, “Two Wrestlers”, 1637, Oil on Canvas, 156 x 128 cm, Museo del Prado

Born in Bisceglie, Apulia in 1605, Cesare Fracanzano was a Mannerist painter who flourished in the seventeenth century. His father, Alessandro Fracanzano, was a nobleman originally from Verona and a late-Mannerist painter. Cesare Fracanzano and his younger brother Francesco learned the art trade from their father; however, they attributed little importance to their father’s style. In 1622, the brothers moved to Naples to study and work.

Cesare Fracanzano returned to the Apulia region in 1626, producing works for the churches and palaces of the nobility. In the period around 1630, he entered the Naples studio of Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, a proponent of an especially pronounced chiaroscuro technique which added drama to a work by creating a spotlight effect. Fracanzano’s pictorial style was based on Ribera’s teachings; however, he was also influenced by the boldness and dramatic brushwork of Tintoretto and the more classical Baroque styles of the Carracci brothers and Guido Reni of the Mannerist school.

Fracanzano married Beatrice Covelli, of whom little information is known, and settled in Barletta, the main town of Apulia, in south eastern Italy. Their union produced one son, Michelangelo, who was also a painter. After the death of his wife, it is known that he married a model who had posed for several of his works. Cesare Fracanzano died in 1651.

Fracanzano executed many works in his hometown, and only journeyed from town to fulfill commitments for work in Naples, Rome and other cities in Apulia. Works attributed to him include: “Saint John the Baptist”, 1635-40, at the National Museum of Caposimonte in Naples; “Drunken Silenus”, 1630-35, at the Museo del Prado; “Saint Jude Thaddeus” painted circa 1630 and showing the influence of his mentor, the painter Ribera; and the “Immaculate Conception with St. Joseph and St. Nicholas” at the Church of Sant Antonio de Padri Barletta in Apulia.

Cesare Fracanzano’s 1637 “Two Wrestlers” belongs to a group of paintings entitled “History of Rome” which was commissioned for Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace, a large palace complex built on the orders of Philip IV of Spain and designed for the leisure of the monarchy . Dedicated to depictions of Roman public pastimes, the group includes athletes, gladiators, animal fights, and mock sea battles. As the buildings of the palace complex are no longer extant, the painting is in the collection of Madrid’s Museo del Prado.

Insert Image: Cesare Fracanzano, “Saint Jude Thaddeus”, circa 1630, Oil on Canvas, 91.5 x 79.3 cm, Private Collection

Grant Wood

Grant Wood, “Spring in Town”, 1941, Oil on Wood Panel, 66 x 60.9 cm, Swope Art Museum, Terra Haute, Indiana

Born in February of 1891 near Anamosa, Iowa, painter Grant Wood was one of the major exponents of Midwestern Regionalism, an art movement that flourished during the 1930s. His adolescent years on the family farm remained an inspiration to him throughout his artistic career. In his early years, Wood studied under tile-craftsman Ernest A. Batchelder and took drawing classes under painter Charles Cumming at the University of Iowa. In 1913, he moved to Chicago to study at the Art Institute until the death of his father in 1916; at which time, Wood returned home to Cedar Rapids to support his mother and sister.

Wood traveled to France in 1923, where he studied for two years at the Académie Julian in Paris. He then continued his European travels, staying in Italy for a period to paint. During this period, Wood painted in an Impressionist-inspired style, focusing on landscapes. Though his style changed significantly over time, the decorative patterns of foliage and light seen in his early work remained a feature of his mature style. Encouraged in 1925 by his friend David Turner, Wood gave up teaching to focus full-time on his art, setting up a studio space, furnished by Turner, in Cedar Rapids.

It was in this developmental time, through the support of the Cedar Rapids community and his exposure to its culture, that he became committed to Regionalism, drawing the subjects of his work from the local population and landscapes of the region. Wood’s distinctive style was finalized after a trip to Munich in 1928, where he oversaw the fabrication of his stained glass window design for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. By 1929, after having viewed painter Hans Memling’s canvases and painter-printmaker Albrecht Dürer’s work in Munich’s museums, Wood came to believe the crisp edges and meticulous details of their execution could be used to convey a distinctly American quality.

In Iowa City in the spring of 1941, with war overseas and anxiety growing at home, Grant Wood began his sketch work for “Spring in Town”, which he finished that summer along with its companion piece “Spring in the Country”. He painted the scene with crisp, clear lines and gave the scene a perspective from slightly above: this enabled the viewer to see the whole panorama of small-town life and labor as well as its minute details. Wood drew from his own memories of farm life as a young boy but combined these with aspects of his present life, the houses he noticed, the people he knew, and his feelings about family and friends.

“Spring in Town” was one of Grant Wood’s last midwestern rural scenes before his death in February of 1942. After the United States entered World War II, the Saturday Evening Post magazine printed “Spring in Town” as patriotic propaganda, presenting the idyllic scene as the exemplar of American life. The painting, however, although manifestly tranquil, represented a traumatic personal memory- the death of Wood’s father and, as a result, the loss of the family’s Anamosa farm. Wood’s first conception of the “Spring in Town” image coincided with the fortieth anniversary of his father’s death on March 17, 1901.

Top Insert Image: Grant Wood’s “Self Portrait” was reworked several times by the artist, beginning in 1932, but was never finalized. This last version of the enigmatic artist was uncompleted at his death. It is in the Davenport Collection of the Figge Art Museum located in Davenport, Iowa.

Second Insert Image: Grant Wood’s 1937 “Saturday Night Bath” is a charcoal drawing on wove paper which is in the collection of Houston’s Museum of Fine Art. In 1939, the image, reproduced as a lithograph, was considered by the U. S. Post Office to be pornographic due to the depictions of the two naked men.

Bottom Insert Image: Grant Wood, “Plowing on Sunday”, 1934, Black Conté Crayon, Ink, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Brown Wove Paper, 45.7 x 43.5 cm, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island

Michael Stamm

Paintings by Michael Stamm

Michael Stamm’s work, using literature, design, and autobiographical sources, examines the need for human relationships in an increasingly interconnected but alienated world. Raised in Illinois, he received his BA at Wesleyan University in West Virginia and an MA in English Literature from Columbia University; he later earned a MFA from New York University in 2016. Stamm also attended in 2016 the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, an intensive nine-week residency program for emerging visual artists.

Stamm’s work explores the themes of identity, spiritual and physical wellness, the individual’s innate decision capacity, and the issue of self-doubt. While other gay artists often use erotic imagery in their work, he takes everyday, mundane imagery and codes it with queer history, thus transforming it into archetypes. Throughout Stamm’s body of work, text highlights the talkative self-awareness implicit in his paintings. Whether functioning as the headspace of the artist, of the subject, or an omniscient voice, the use of text animates a thought into an object.

During his MFA work at the New York University, Stamm had his first solo exhibition “Just Like This Please” at the Thierry Goldberg Gallery. From this period came his “April 26,, 2016” series, a work consisting of nine small panels depicting the same corner of his studio at different times of the day. Michael Stamm produced the 2017 “Tincture” series of seven larger paintings, a more refined and surreal series incorporating the human figure as a design element in the terrazzo-like textured works. The tightly composed surfaces of his paintings are formed by applying thin glazes in multiple layers; and his portrayal of human bodies are highly stylized and often cropped.

In early 2018, Michael Stamm exhibited a group of eight portraits of his therapist, each painting showing her in a different session, but only depicted as a torso in various modes of dress and decoration. The paintings’ outlandish jewelry, inspired by Stamm’s own therapist, is overlaid by poetry, text from cybernetics textbooks, and lyrics from pop songs. His most recent series at the Shulamit Nazarian gallery in Los Angeles, entitled “So Super Sorry Sir”, is currently running from January 16th to March 6th of 2021.

Michael Stamm’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in New York at DC Moore Gallery and Thierry Goldberg, and has been included in several group exhibitions, including shows at Deli Gallery, New York; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Taymour Grahne Projects, London; Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig, and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.

For more information and exhibitions, the artist’s site is located at: https://michaelstamm.com

Yuri Georges Annenkov

Yuri Georges Annenkov, Theater and Film Costume Design

Besides his renown as a painter and illustrator, Yuri Georges Annenkov was one of the top costume designers in French cinema from 1926 until the end of the 1950s. Born into a family of Imperial Russia’s cultural elite that suffered through the changes in political power, he was able to overcome the accusations of political radicalism that surrounded his family. This enabled Annenkov to study at the Stieglitz School of Art in Saint Petersburg, where Marc Chagall became one of his classmates.

Before the outbreak of the First World War, Annenkov traveled to Paris for further study, and began illustrating books and designing for the stage. In the period immediately after the Russian Revolution, he returned to Russian and was active in the Soviet Theater and outdoor performance shows, and also worked as a portraitist. Annenkov emigrated to Paris in 1924 where he settled and began designing ballet sets for American ballet choreographer George Balanchine and Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine.

In 1926, Yuri Georges Annenkov began what was to become a two-decade long career in movies. He was first engaged in 1926 to design the costumes for German film director F. W. Murnau’s production “Faust”, which would be Murnau’s last German film. From 1945 to 1955, Annekov was the president of the French Syndicate of Cinema Technicians.

Annenkov’s most important body of work in film were the costumes he designed for the post-war films of director Max Ophüls, which included “La Ronde”, a series of character vignettes with circular visual motifs, and the 1953 “The Earrings of Madame De. .”, a romantic drama for which Annenkov received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design.

The work Annenkov did as art director for Ophüls culminated with his brilliant costumes created for the director’s final film, the 1955 “Lola Montès”. The film is a deliberate exercise in overabundance and opulence, and here, guided by Ophüls, Annenkov’s use of the Baroque style is a subtle critique of excess. Filmed in Technicolor by cinematographer Christian Matras, “Lola Montès” had an important influence on the French New Wave cinema movement and has since become a cult classic.

Naur Calvalcante

Photography by Naur Calvalcante

Naur Cavalcante is a designer and photographer, specializing in portraiture and commercial advertising, working in both Três Lagoas and São Paulo, Brazil. His work has been presented in the magazines: “Revista Planter”, “Revista Ella”, “Em Focco”, and the online magazines “Image Amplified” and “Morphosis”.

More information on the artist’s work can be located at: https://naurcavalcante.46graus.com

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, A Shepherd with a Flute, 1525 to 1540, Oil on Canvas, 98 x 78 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum

Born in Brescia, Republic of Venice in 1480, Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo was an Italian High Renaissance painter, noted for his coloring, chiaroscuro, and realism of his works. Little is known about his formative years; his first records attest to the fact that he was in the city of Parma in 1506, and a member of the Florentine painters’ guild in 1508.

During this period in Florence, Savoldo finished his 1510 “Elijah Fed by the Raven”, now residing at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In 1515 he painted the “Portrait of a Clad Warrior”, which was wrongly identified previously with painter Gaston de Foix. Savoldo was interested, as was other contemporary northern Italian painters, in the traditions of the Flemish school; some of that influence can be seen in his “Temptation of Saint Anthony”, particularly in the depiction of the saint’s tempters. These Florentine works of Savoldo were appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated sometime before 1520.

On June 15, 1524 Giovanni Savoldo signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Pesaro; this work now resides in Milan’s Brera Art Academy. The influence of the northern-Italian painter Giorgione’s use of color and mood can be felt in Savoldo’s poetic treatment of such works as his 1525 “Portrait of a Knight”. In 1527, Savoldo completed a “St. Hieronymus” for the residence of the Averoldi family in Brescia and, in the 1530s, a Nativity scene similar to Antonio de Corregio’s work of the same topic, which is now in the National Gallery in Washington DC.

In 1533 Savoldo painted his “Madonna with Four Saints” at the church of Santa Maria in Verona; and in 1537-1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce, Brescia. He finished commissions for two Nativity paintings in 1540: one at the church of San Giobbe inVenice and one at the church of San Barnaba in Brescia. Showing influences by Titian and Lorenzo Lotto for clearly defined shapes in light, Savoldo’s 1540 “Magdalen” is a masterpiece of lighting effects, cloaked in an enigmatic white gown, almost completely veiled except for the face, with a sliver of red cloth sleeve emerging in a alluring fashion.

Savoldo’s use of deep, rich color gave his paintings dramatic tonal values. He defined his luminous, meticulously detailed figures by setting them against reflected or nocturnally lit scenes with unusual effects of light. Through the span of his career, Savoldo painted only forty paintings and had little influence on the course of Venetian painting. The exact date of is death is not known; in 1548 he was noted as still living but very old. Forgotten after his death, Savoldo’s reputation was revived with exhibitions of his work in the early twentieth century, and retrospectives held in 1990 in Brescia, Italy and Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Note: Giovanni Savoldo’s “A Shepherd with a Flute” is an example of the genre scenes that became popular in Venice in the early sixteenth century, when interest in pastoral poetry and drama also began to flourish. The figure of the shepherd is clearly delineated against his surroundings and appears almost luminous in the evening light through Savoldo’s use of deep, rich colors and expressive textures.

Image Insert: Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, “Magdalen”, 1540, Oil on Canvas, 89.1 x 82.4 cm, National Gallery of London

Alfred Schwarzschild

The Artwork of Alfred Schwarzschild

Alfred Schwarzschild was born in 1874, the second child of a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany. From 1890 to 1892, he studied under painter and draftsman Anton Burger in Kronberg and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. After leaving the Academy, Schwarzschild studied with painter and illustrator Wilhelm von Diez, an Academy Professor who had a major influence on his work. In 1903, Schwarzschild exhibited his work at the Paris Exhibition and received an Honorable Mention.

During World War I, Schwarzschild joined the Imperial German Flying Corps as an observer, where he shot aerial photographs of the terrain and drew sketches of the enemy positions. For his endeavors, he was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. In 1924, Schwarzschild married Theodora Luttner and later, with their three daughters, settled in the Isar River area of Munich, where he shared an artist studio with painter Albert Weisgerber, whose work formed the bridge between Impressionism and early Expressionism.

From 1901, Alfred Schwarzschild regularly entered work in the international art exhibition in the Royal Munich Glass Palace. In 1901 he was awarded a medal fo his figurative oil painting “Übermut (High Spirits)” at the Glaspalast, Munich.. Between 1905 and 1909, Schwarzschild was also regularly represented by his work in the annual Great Berlin Art Exhibition. Painting in styles ranging fro Art Nouveau to New Objectivity, he became the great portrait painter of the Munich upper class.

Besides his portraiture work, Alfred Schwarzschild designed many souvenir postcards. He created a series of postcards with the image of a Munich child as a motif, a series on the topic of Oktoberfest, and a series on Munich’s famous Hofbräuhaus restaurant, founded in 1589 by the Duke of Bavaria. Schwarzschild often used his youngest daughter as the model for the postcards.

When Germany can under the rule of the National Socialist Party who placed restrictions upon the Jewish population, Schwarzschild found it extremely difficult, due to his Jewish origins, to sell his artwork. He fled to England in 1936, with the hope of earning a living; his family arrived in England in 1938, at which time the Nazi Party seized all his German assets. During the war years and despite war-time scarcities, Schwarzschild continued his artwork using whatever materials were available.

Known for his portraiture work, figurative paintings, and postcard images, Alfred Schwarzschild lived and worked in the United Kingdom until his death in London on August 19th of 1948. His artwork was deemed unworthy by the Nazi Party on the basis of it being sectarian; however, many of his works have survived and are in private collections and European museums.

Arlene Gottfried

Photography by Arlene Gottfried

Born in August of 1959 in Coney Island, New York, Arlene Gottfried was a photographer who recorded scenes of ordinary life in some of New York City’s more impoverished neighborhoods. At the age of nine, Arlene Gottfired’s family moved to the Crown Heights area where its Puerto Rican culture caught her attention and expanded her world view. Later in the 1970s, her family moved to the Alphabet City neighborhoods of the East Village and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Arlene Gottfried studied photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she was the only woman in her class. She later moved to Manhattan as a photographer for an advertising agency, where she did commercial work which at that time was a male-dominated profession. Switching to freelance work, Gottfried began shooting images for publications such as LIFE, the Village Voice, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, CBS News, and London’s The Independent. Her freelance work gave her the time and opportunity to wander the streets, always carrying a camera, and shoot her images spontaneously.

Gottfried’s subjects are consistently depicted with a sense of intimacy and curiosity, in which strangers are indistinguishable from friends. In every frame, no matter how tough the subject matter, there is never a sense of detached irony or coolness. She approached all her subjects with careful empathy and directness.

Gottfried produced several series of importance including the 1991 “The Eternal Light” series on the Eternal Light Community Singers, a choral group on the Lower East Side which she later joined, and her 2016 series “Mommie”, her last collection and an epic compilation containing forty years of work documenting the women in her family. Gottfried, a frequent visitor of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, was accepted into the Nuyorican downtown culture and documented her close friend Midnight’s years-long struggle with mental health problems in her 2003 series “Midnight”.

In 2008, a retrospective of Gottfried’s earlier black and white work was published as “Sometimes Overwhelming” by PowerHouse Books. Her “Barcalaitos and Fireworks”, a collection of images of New York’s Puerto Rican community in the 1970s, inspired by its poetry and music, was published in 2011.

Through her life, Arlene Gottfried continued to capture the excitement of everyday life in New York City. She died from complications of breast cancer, surrounded by friends and family. in August of 2017 at her home. Gottfried’s photographs are held in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum; The Jewish Museum; The Tang Teaching Museum, The North Carolina Museum of Art; and the New York Public Library.

Forrest Williams

Paintings by Forrest Williams

Born in North Carolina, Forrest Williams is an American figurative painter who lives and works in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. His extensive education began at Edinburgh University in Scotland where he graduated in 1985 with honors in English Literature and Art History. He next studied at Davidson College in North Carolina, where he earned his BA in English Literature. In 1989, Williams attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, earning Honors in Theater. He earned his Masters of Fine Art in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in 1994.

Most of Forrest William’s figurative paintings contain individual male figures, clothed or nude, in subjective spaces. Similar to the work of Hopper, there is a psychological undercurrent of loneliness and a lack of connection between the characters in the presented scenes. The paintings are staged sets, often with decorative elements, such as arrows, whose figures represent the iconic man caught between desire and doubt, and intimacy and uncertainty. .

Williams exhibited in group show a the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon, and later had his first solo show there, in which all his work sold. These shows were followed with other solo shows, including three at the Heather Marx Gallery in San Francisco between 2002 and 2007, a 2010 solo show entitled “Crossways” at the Marx & Savattero Gallery in San Francisco, and five solo shows at the AMP Gallery in Provincetown between 2014 and 2019.

“I remember reading that the young Balthus was deeply influenced by Derain’s remark, ‘The only purpose of painting today is the recovery of lost secrets.’ That observation was made almost a hundred years ago now, but it still resonates with me.” — Forrest Willams

The artist’s site can be found at : http://www.forrestwilliams.net

Lorenz Frølich

Paintings by Lorenz Frølich

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in October of 1820, Lorenz Frølich was a painter, illustrator, etcher and graphic artist. He initially studied in Copenhagen under painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, now referred to as the Father of Danish painting, and in Dresden between 1843 to 1846 under fresco painter Eduard Julius Bendemann. Frølich later traveled to Paris and studied under historical painter Thomas Couture from 1852 to 1853.

During his academic period, Frølich was influenced, by the impressionist movement through his friends Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Alfred Stevens, and constantly exhibited his work at the salons. Through his friendship with painter Thorald Læssøe, Frølich met painter and graphic artist John Thomas Lundbye, an encounter which swiftly turned into a close relationship. Existing correspondence between the two men shows their friendship was both intellectual and romantic, and lasted until at least 1840.

Nordic sagas and the Danish landscape became the focus of both Frølich’s and Lundbye’s work as they traveled the country to depict the national flora, landscapes and local people. The two artists also did extensive illustrative work, specifically for children’s books. There are several personal works showing the strong bond and collaboration between the two artists during this period: a 1839 portrait of Frølich by Lundbye, now in the Hirschsprung Collection; Frølich’s 1939 “Portrait of the painter J. Th. Lyndbye”; caricatures made by Frølich in 1839 of Lyndbye as a dog; and Frølich’s drawing of the two artists painting outside in June 1839.

Lorenz Frølich produced original etchings for the 1853-55 “Illustreret Danmarkshistorie for Folket (Illustrated Danish History for the People)”; the 1844 “De Tvende Kirketaarne (The Second Church Tower)” by Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger; and the 1845 “Die Götter des Nordens (Gods of the North)”. Frølich’s illustrative work for author Hans Christian Andersen’s stories and the editions published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris, particularly Frølich’s realistic and candid depictions for the work “Mademoiselle Lili à Paris”, brought him recognition as a renowned illustrator.

Frølich was part of a circle of young Danish artists that, during the 1830s and 1840s, directed their attention towards the creation of a nationalistic form of Nordic art, with the aim of imitating nature in its purest form. He married Carolina Charlotta in de Betou in 1855 and was appointed a professor at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Art in 1877. For the celebration of Frølich’s eightieth birthday held in November of 1900, Danish composer and violinist Carl Nielsen wrote the “Kantate til Lorenz Frølich-Festen”. Lorenz Frølich died in 1908 in Hellerup, Denmark.

Insert Image: Lorenz Frølich, “Self Portrait”, 1860s, Oil on Canvas, 22 x 18 cm, Private Collection