Dunbar Dyson Beck

The Paintings of Dunbar Dyson Beck

Born in Delaware, Ohio in 1903, Dunbar Dyson Beck was an American painter, muralist, educator, and designer of both interiors and exteriors, as well as theatrical sets and costumes. He studied at Northwestern University in Chicago before earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1926. Beck was invited to teach at Yale during the following academic year. In 1927, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome for his painting “Adoration”. This scholarship enabled Beck to spend three years studying at Rome’s American Academy and travel extensively in Europe and Africa to study traditional arts.

Upon his return to New York in 1930, Beck taught at Columbia University and then at Cooper Union’s School of Art. He began to receive several important commissions for altar paintings, murals and portraits. Beck painted a mural in 1934 for the lobby of New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. He also received a commission from Theodor Steinway to execute a gold-leaf decorative frieze on the side of a custom Steinway piano for President Roosevelt’s White House. Beck’s decoration represented the five musical forms indigenous of America: a New England barn dance, a lone cowboy playing a guitar, the Virginia reel, black field hands singing, and an Indian ceremonial dance.

Dunbar Beck’s commissioned work in New York included both mosaics and murals for the Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue, as well as, murals for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows- Corona Park. In the late 1930s, Beck met Eleanor McClatchy, president of the McClatchy publishing company, who recognized his talents and encouraged his relocation to Sacramento, California where he could live and work. McClatchy became Beck’s most important patron with commissions ranging from stage sets for Sacramento’s Eagle Theater to design work for the Sacramento Bee, the fifth-largest newspaper in California.

In the 1940s, Beck painted a series of eight paintings which focused on the theme of prize-fighting. These works were inspired by an unpublished play of unknown origin entitled “TheNational Ring”. In these works, Beck created the presence of a boxing match with his dramatic placement of compositional elements and his use of theatrical lighting effects. He used architectural elements, diagonal perspectives and concentric circles to create movement; his figures, with their raised fists and muscular arms, are highlighted as it they were spotlit for an unseen audience. Similar to the fight scenes painted by George Bellows, anticipation and emotional tension in Beck’s work are emphasized as details are minimized.

Settled in Sacramento, Dunbar Beck made many contributions to the local art scene, among which were the Sacramento Art Deco Society and the Sacramento Public Library Program. He also served as set designer for the Sacramento Civic Theater and became an architectural preservationist for the Sacramento area. Beck was a juror for exhibitions held at Sacramento’s Kingsley Art Club and completed murals and mosaics for local churches. He executed fourteen oil paintings depicting the “Stations of the Cross” and a series of stain glass windows for St. Rose’s Chapel in South Sacramento. Beck also executed work for churches in New York, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Dunbar Dyson Beck died of cancer, at the age of eighty-three, in February of 1986 at a Sacramento convalescent home. In addition to his work in prominent public places, Beck’s work is housed at Smith College and in private collections. His 1934 portrait of American architect William Adams Delano resides in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Notes: The Sacramento Public Library in collaboration with the Sacramento Art Deco Society has a YouTube video, entitled “Dunbar Dyson Beck: Renaissance Master of Poverty Ridge”, that is narrated by local historian Bruce Marwick.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dunbar Dyson Beck”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Palais des Papes, Avignon”, 1928, Watercolor on Paper, 31.8 x 23.8 cm, Private Colledtion

Third Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, Crocker Art Museum, Sacrament, California

Bottom Insert Image: Dunbar Dyson Beck, “Allegory of Charity”, 1925, Oil on Canvas, 132 x 104.1 cm, Private Collection

Owen Rival

The Paintings of Owen Rival

Born in 1999 in Toronto, Owen Rival is a Canadian painter known for his highly contrasted and saturated everyday scenes. After studying both design and painting, he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Illustration at Providence’s Rhode Island School of Design in 2021. Rival is a recipient of the New York Academy of Art Summer Residency and the Dumfries House Artist Residency, a program delivered by Scotland’s Royal Drawing School and the Glasgow School of Art. He is also a member of the Society of Illustrators, a New York City-based professional society that promotes the art and history of illustration through exhibitions and competitions.

Through his work, Rival examines the seemingly mundane episodes of existence which include such monotonous chores as grocery shopping, washing clothes and brushing one’s teeth. Presented through the perspective of an observer, his paintings amplify these daily routines and transforms them into historic events. Married and now living as a couple with his wife and art collaborator Jenny, Rival paints scenes of domestic life that examine both the solitary moments and the interactions that occur in their Houston, Texas apartment.

Owen Rival’s paintings slowly evolve through an extensive work process: creating thumbnail sketches of a proposed scene, staging the scene, shooting photographs for foreground and background references, and lastly the gradual layering of color onto each drawn form on the canvas. His work is characterized by its strong lighting effects and visually complex compositions. Rival’s use of different colored LED lighting in the staged settings provides optional color highlights for the proposed work.

Rival pays particular interest in the color combinations for his work and often uses an inversion of traditional color associations to add both depth and complexity to the paintings. Instead of a realistic color palette, he chooses vibrant and contrasting tones to highlight important elements in the work and to amplify its mood, either conveying a sense of calm or injecting tension and stress.

In 2017 and 2018, Rival exhibited his paintings in group exhibitions held at Providence’s Waterman Building, the first permanent home of the Rhode Island School of Design and its first museum location. He exhibited his work in 2019 at the New York Academy of Art and, in the following year, at “The Color of My Land” exhibition at the RISD Museum Gelman Gallery.

Rival presented five new medium and large scale works at his first solo exhibition, “Chronic Maintenance”, in April and May of 2023 at the Monti8 Gallery in Latina, Italy. He had his first New York solo exhibition entitled “Long View” in May and June of 2023 at the Harkawik, Gallery 2 on Orchard Street in Manhattan. The show consisted of five acrylic paintings and four works on paper depicting domestic scenes at the Houston apartment.

Notes: Images of Owen Rival’s work, contact information, and social media sites can be found on his website located at: https://www.owenrival.com

The creative art site It’s Nice That has an article on Owen Rival’s life and paintings written by Olivia Hingley for its July 2022 posting. It can be found at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/owen-rival-art-180722#:~:text=Gifted%20with%20a%20clear%20perception,relatability%2C%20and%20striking%20visual%20complexity

The Harkawik Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with two locations, Orchard Street in New York and Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. The gallery’s website can be found at: https://www.harkawik.com

Top Insert Image: Owen Rival, “Groceries”, 2022, Acrylic on Canvas, 91.4 x 61 x 10.2 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Owen Rival, “Toronto”, 2021, Acrylic on Canvas, 60.1 x 76.2 cm, Private Collection

Martin Stommel

The Paintings of Martin Stommel

Born in 1969, Martin Stommel is a German contemporary painter whose dramatic and suspenseful compositions are a statement on the restlessness of the world. He first studied at Munich’s State Art Academy from 1994 to 1997 under Professor Bernhard Franz Weißhaar (Weisshaar), the academy’s Chair of Christian Art from 1978 to 2000. Stommel entered Berlin’s University of Arts, HdK, in 1998 where he studied under landscape painter and graphic artist Klaus Fußmann (Fussmann).

During the span of his academic studies, Stommel also trained under Russian painter and dissident Boris Georgievic Birger. Birger widely exhibited in Russia during the 1950s to the 1970s. After he joined the human rights movement, he was expelled in 1962, under the influence of Communist Party leader Nikita Khruschev, from the Moscow Union of Artists. Birger emigrated in 1990 to Bonn, Germany where he taught and exhibited until his death in 2001. Through his association with Birger, Stommel met several international artists, including Russian writer Lev Kopelev, German author and journalist Fritz Pleitgen, and Russian cellist Natalia Gutman.

In 2000, Martin Stommel met Austrian-born art historian and theorist Sir Ernst Gombrich in London. The author of many works of both cultural and art history, Gombrich is noted for his 1950 “The Story of Art” and 1960 “Art and Illusion”, a major work in the psychology of perception which influenced such writers as Umberto Eco and Thomas Kuhn. Gombrich encouraged Stommel towards figurative work and, during his last years of life, engaged in an exchange of supportive letters.

Stommel’s work exhibits the same bold brushwork and use of perspective as that used by sixteenth-century Venetian painter Jacopo (Tintoretto) Robusti, as well as, the intensity found in the figurative paintings of German modernist Max Beckmann who reinvented the religious triptych form. Stommel uses strong lighting techniques, carefully chosen colors, energetic diagonal movement, and elongated gestural bodies to create powerful visual experiences of tension and drama. His figures, rarely static, are full of energy and accentuated by bold black lines of pronounced shading

Between the years 2001 and 2007, Martin Stommel created a series of paintings and drawings of circus scenes as well as portraits of circus performers. His portraits included such famous clowns as the white-faced Francesco Caroli, Oleg Popov of the Moscow Circus, and David Larible known for his performances with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as well as Bernhard Paul and André Heller’s Circus Roncalli. Stommel’s circus portraits, along with still lifes and landscapes, were shown in his first solo exhibition in 2003 at the Museum Charlotte Zander in Bönnigheim, Germany. In the next year, he presented his circus paintings in the Principality of Monaco at the invitation of Prince Rainier III and his illustration series for the “Divine Comedy” at the Stadtmuseum in Bonn.

Stommel has regularly exhibited in solo shows throughout the years. In 2013, he exhibited at the Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg which was followed by two shows at Frankfurt’s Galerie Mühlfeld & Stohrer in 2014 and 2015. Stommel’s “Lust and Expectation”, inspired by the world of dance, was held in 2019 at Gallery 70 in Tirana, Albania. In 2020, he had a second solo show at the same Gallery 70 location which showed large-format works, among which was his 2018 “Amazonenkampf (Fight of Amazons)”, a densely painted martial work of warriors and horses. Stommel’s 2022 “On Deliverance” exhibition, a series of works on the turmoil in the world, ran from April to July at Berlin’s Janine Bean Gallery, a dedicated supporter of local contemporary art.

Martin Stommel’s work has also been exhibited at the Kallmann Museum at Ismaning, Germany; Museum am Dom Trier, Germany; Cologne’s Lew Kopelew Forum; Munich’s Katholische Akademie in Bayern; Monaco’s Théâtre Princesse Grace; the Venice Biennial; as well as many galleries and art fairs in London, Cologne, Berlin, Lübeck and Munich, among others.

Notes: Martin Stommel’s website with current exhibition and contact information is located at: http://martin-stommel.deadwings.de/de

A short video in which Martin Stommel discusses his work can be found in the videos category at Gallery 70’s YouTube site located at: https://www.youtube.com/@gallery70/videos

Second Insert Image: Martin Stommel, “Jesus Asleep”, 2022, Oil on Linen, 260 x 175 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Martin Stommel, “Girls at the Pool”, 2024, Oil on Canvas, 57 x 52 cm, Gallery 70, Chicago (Available)

Rockwell Kent

The Wood Engravings of Rockwell Kent

Born in Tarrytown, New York in June of 1882, Rockwell Kent was an American painter, graphic artist, writer and adventurer. A profoundly independent and thoughtful man, he acquired through his personal experience and skills a great respect for the dignity of labor and an appreciation of indigenous societies and cross-cultural encounters.

In his formative years, Rockwell Kent spent much of his life in the area of New York City. He attended the Horace Mann School, a private school and member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. In the fall of 1900, Kent studied composition and design at the Art Students League under painter, printmaker and curator Arthur Wesley Dow. He studied in the summers between 1900 and 1902 at one of the first plein air painting schools in America, Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art, under Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase.

In the fall of 1902, Kent entered the New York School of Art, founded by William Chase, where he studied under painter Robert Henri, one of the pioneers of the Ashcan School of American realism. He became an apprentice during the summer of 1903 to painter and naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer, one of the first to write about disruptive patterning to break up an object’s outlines, now known as Thayer’s Law. Kent earned his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from New York’s Columbia University which prepared him for occasional work as an architectural renderer and carpenter. While at Columbia, Kent developed a close friendship with Carl Zigrosser who later founded New York’s Weyhe Gallery and became Curator of Prints and Drawings at Philadelphia’s Museum of Art.

Rockwell Kent was a transcendentalist and mystic in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He found his inspiration in the austerity and primordial beauty of the wilderness. After his five-year residence on Monhegan Island in Maine, Kent lived for extended periods in Minnesota, Newfoundland, Alaska, Vermont, Tierra del Fuego, Ireland and Greenland. His landscapes and seascapes from these locales show a Symbolist viewpoint of the natural world. Kent published ten memoirs, complete with illustrations, of his travel years. The first of these volumes was the 1920 “Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska”, an account of his and his eldest son’s 1918 fall and winter exploration of Fox Island in Alaska’s Resurrection Bay.

Kent spent his early years as a painter in New Hampshire where he painted a series of landscapes and several views of Mount Monadnock, the most prominent mountain peak in southern New Hampshire. These works were first shown at the Society of American Artists in a 1904 New York City exhibition. In 1905, he began his five-year stay on Maine’s Monhegan Island; the series of paintings he produced during this period were shown in 1907 at New York’s Clausen Galleries to critical acclaim. The New Hampshire and the Monhegan paintings are the foundation for Kent’s reputation as an early American Modernist painter.

In the 1920s, Rockwell Kent began a career in illustration and contributed drawings for the covers of many leading magazines. Acknowledging Kent’s success with his 1920 illustrated “Wilderness”, publisher George Palmer Putnam and others incorporated Kent as ‘Rockwell Kent, Inc” to support him in his Vermont homestead while he completed his Alaskan paintings for a 1920 exhibition at New York’s Knoedler Galleries. Approached by publisher Thorne Donnelley for an illustrated version of “Two Years Before the Mast”, Kent suggested he instead illustrate an edition of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick; or, The Whale”. After researching whaling lore and visiting whaling museums, Kent created two-hundred and eighty illustrations for the 1930 three-volume set of “Moby Dick”, of which one thousand copies were printed by Donnelley’s Lakeside Press.

In 1927, Kent purchased Asgaard, an Adirondack farmstead in upstate New York, which became his residence and studio for the remainder of his life. In the summer of 1929, he traveled to Greenland on a painting expedition. Determined to paint and write, Kent spent two years between 1931 and 1935 living in a tiny fishing settlement above the Arctic Circle. His paintings from this period include some of the largest and most lauded of his career. Becoming more politically active as World War II drew near, Kent, on commission from the Treasury Department, painted two murals at the Federal Triangle Post Office in Washington DC that supported, in small letters of a Native Alaskan language, the decolonization of Puerto Rico.

In spite of his critical views on American foreign policy, Rockwell Kent remained America’s foremost draftsman of the sea. He produced a series of pen and ink maritime drawings for the American Export Lines during World War II. In 1946, Kent completed a second series for the Rahr Malting Company, a worldwide supplier to breweries, wineries and distilleries. These works were published in the 1946 “To Thee!: A Toast in Celebration of a Century of America 1847-1947”, a volume Kent wrote and designed to celebrate American freedom and democracy and the important role immigrants play in forming America’s national identity.

In 1948, Kent was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate member; he became a full Academician in 1966. Kent passed away due to a heart attack at his Adirondacks home in March of 1971 at the age of eighty-eight. He had participated in the 1936 formation of the American Artists’ Congress and later served as an officer of the Artists’ Union of America as well as the Artists’ League of America. In 1948, Kent had sought election as a New York Congressman under the American Labor Party banner.

New York’s Columbia University houses Rockwell Kent’s personal collection of thirty-three hundred working sketches and drawings, most of which were unpublished. The Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution houses an extensive collection of Kent’s correspondence. His work is contained in many private collections and is both housed and exhibited in major museums throughout the United States.

Notes: A May 2023 online edition of “Modernism/modernity” has an excellent and extensive article, written by Colgate University Visiting Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Jonathan Najarian, entitled “And Words Were Images to Him; Narrative Remediation in Rockwell Kent” located at: https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/najarian-narrative-remediation-rockwell-kent

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Rockwell Kent”, circa 1920, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Rockwell Kent, “Dan Ward’s Stack, Ireland”, 1926-1927, Oil on Canvas, 86 x 112 cm, Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Third Insert Image: Rockwell Kent, “Workers of the World, Unite!”, 1937, Wood Engraving on Paper, Cover Illustration for 1937 Issue of the New Masses, 20.3 x 15.2 cm, Plattsburgh State Art Museum, New York

Fourth Insert Image: Rockwell Kent, “Endless Energy for Limitless Living”, 1946, Oil on Canvas on Board, 111.8 x 121.9 cm, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio

Bottom Insert Image: Rockwell Kent, “Mountain Climber”, 1933, Wood Engraving on Paper, 20 x 14.9 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Stanley Stellar

Photography by Stanley Stellar

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945, Stanley Stellar is an American photographer whose five decades of work captured the beauty and vitality of the LBGTQ community of New York City. His work followed its life through the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the first Gay Pride Parades and evolving Gay Liberation Movement, as well as the realities of the HIV/AIDs epidemic. As a participant and a documenter, Stellar produced works that have become historic and cultural references for both the young and old.

Stanley Stellar studied photography and graphic design at New York City’s Parsons School of Design, one of the oldest schools of art and design in New York City. Upon graduation, he began work as art director for the advertising agency Art Direction. Stellar’s career during the 1970s included countless book designs as well as editorial design and art direction for numerous magazines and publishing houses.

Stellar’s purchase of a Nikon camera in 1976 began his career as a photographer. Among the artists who influenced him were fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar known for his black and white portraits, and Bruce Davidson, a regular photographer for “Life” and “Look” magazines. Stellar, however, developed his own style and began photographing unequivocally gay images of men that reflected the world he knew.

Stanley Stellar’s work concentrated on the everyday life of gay men in New York City. He initially began taking street photographs of men with tattoos on their arms, as an inquiry about a tattoo made the request for a photograph easier. Stellar shot many images of gay men walking and gathering on Christopher Street as well as meeting at the abandoned warehouses and piers in Manhattan’s West Village.

One of Stellar’s most iconic street photographs, the first to be mass-produced on postcards, was a 1970 photo of a young man, who after having his arm tattoos photographed, lifted his shirt to show two bright bird tattoos on each chest muscle. Taken at a time when tattooing was illegal in New York City, this single shot by Stellar became a homoerotic image nobody had ever made before.

Stanley Stellar’s early design experiences, essentially photo-journalism, are apparent in all of his work; they all display a simplicity of composition, recurrence of themes, and honest unembellished depictions of the subject. Throughout most of Stellar’s years of documentation, homosexuality was still illegal in many states; it was not until 2003 that all laws against same-sex activity were invalidated. Stellar’s photographs captured the confidence, intimacy and the energy of the LBGTQ community through all those difficult years.

Stellar’s photography has been shown in many galleries throughout the United States and Europe and has been featured in many international magazines. From May to July in 2011, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art featured an exhibition of Stellar’s work entitled “Stanley Stellar: Photographer”. This exhibition coincided with the release of Stellar’s 2011 publication “The Beauty of All Men”, curated by author and publisher Peter Weiermair. In 2018, Stellar published a second collection of photographs entitled “Into the Light: Photographs of the NYC Gay Pride Day from the 70s Till Today”, through the Bruno Gmeunder Press.

Represented by the Kapp Kapp Gallery on Manhattan’s Walker Street, Stanley Stellar had three solo exhibitions in the gallery. The first show was the 2019 “Photographs 1979-1992” which was followed in 2020 by “Night Life”, an exhibition of twenty-four images documenting New York’s queer nightlife between 1981 and 1992. Stellar’ third exhibition with Kapp Kapp was the 2022 “Stanley Stellar: The Piers (1976-1983)” which featured a suite of unseen photographs of the Christopher Street Piers. The Piers exhibition was held at the grand opening of Kapp Kapp’s Tribeca gallery.

“When I was an editorial art director in the 70s, I used to think I wanted to design other people’s photographs graphically. Possess them in that way. Then in 1976, it became clear to me that I wanted to take my own images of what I had never freely seen, of who and what I was hungry to see, to record my existence through my individual vision of it.

A combination of masculinity, detail, individuality and human vulnerability catches my eye. Men who are at home within themselves, alive in their ability to share some spark of their humanity with me. Men who have an inner life and an inner light that I recognize within me, within both of us.” —-Stanley Stellar

Notes: Stanley Stellar’s website with archived images and contact information is located at: https://www.stellarnyc.com

Kapp Kapp Gallery’s article on Stanley Stellar’s exhibitions can be found at: https://www.kappkapp.com/artists/stanley-stellar/media

David McGillivray’s 2023 article entitled “Six Pictures by Iconic Photographer Stanley Stellar that Captured Male Beauty in All Its Glory” is located at the Attitude section of Yahoo News: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/6-pictures-iconic-photographer-https://uk.news.yahoo.com/6-pictures-iconic-photographer-stanley-130415741.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIwNAmykxGP71NvJgEczfNbjN6iGpmJ3cDlrIaDDOBhi0Wq4U-

New York-based writer Miss Rosen has written a short article about Stanley Stellar on her photography site Blind located at: https://www.blind-magazine.com/stories/new-york-queer-love-on-the-west-side-piers/

Tony Wilkes’s January 2022 article on Stanley Stellar for the online art magazine AnOther, can be found at: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13813/a-lost-utopia-stanley-stellar-s-portraits-at-new-york-s-gay-piers-kapp-kapp

Top Insert Image: Peter Hujar, “Portrait of Stanley Stellar”, 1981, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Stanley Stellar, “Late Afternoon”, 1980, The Piers Series, Gelatin Silver Print

Third Insert Image: Stanley Stellar, Untitled, circa 2000s, Color Print

Fourth Insert Image: Stanley Stellar, “Danny, September”, 1982, The Piers Series, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Stanley Stellar, “At a Pay Phone on the Corner of Christopher and Bleecker Streets, NYC”, 1981, Gelatin Silver Print

Ernst Neuschul

Ernst Neuschul, “Messias”, Self-Portrait, 1919, Oil on Canvas, 95.5 x 55.5 cm, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, East Midlands, England

Born in 1895 in Aussig, North Bohemia now the Czech Republic, Ernst Neuschul was a painter of the German Expressionist movement. He was the eldest of three sons born to ironmonger Josef Neuschul and Jeanette Feldmann, members of the town’s prestigious and influential Jewish community. Neuschul received his primary education at Auseig’s State Gymnasium but left without graduating.

Neuschul wanted to study at the Academy of Arts in Prague; however, his parents refused to financially support his attendance. He worked in Prague as a painter and attended courses at the Academy as an extern participant. Neuschul then went to Vienna, attended the K.K. Graphische Lehranstalt, and became captivated by the paintings of Austrian artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as those by Oskar Kokoschka whose theories on vision played an important role in the development of Viennese Expressionism.

At the outbreak of World War I, Ernst Neuschul avoided conscription by relocating to Kraków, Poland in 1916. He continued his studies at Kraków’s Art Academy studying under Art Nouveau artist Józef Mehoffer. In the summer of 1918 Neuschul went to Prague, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Franz Thiele. In Prague during August of that year, he met Lucie Lindermann, a Dutch-Javanese dancer raised in Berlin who performed under the name Takka-Takka, When the war ended, Neuschul entered Berlin’s Academy of Art where he was awarded the Rome Prize in 1918.

In July 1919, Neuschul had his first solo exhibition of 39 works at Weinert’s salon in Prague. He and Lindermann took an apartment in Berlin and embarked on a series of trips to Java and the East Indies. Upon his return, Neuschul became involved with East Indian dance, wrote scripts for experimental films based on Asian myths, and designed dance costumes for his wife, who performed with them in theaters in Lucerne and other cities. On the twenty-fourth of July in 1922, Neuschul and Lucie Lindermann were married in Berlin; in the following years she became his most important model.

In 1926, Neuschul became a member of Berlin’s November Group, a collective of expressionist artists and architects who shared socialist values and sought a greater voice in the organization of art schools and new laws surrounding the arts. An important breakthrough came to Neuschul in 1927; for the first time, he was noticed by a broad public in Germany. Neuschul successfully participated in eight exhibitions, six of them in Berlin with his work praised in multiple press articles. In the same year Neuschul received a contract with Berlin’s renowned Neumann-Nierendorf Gallery, which now ensured the artist a regular income. In the following years he also participated in exhibitions in many German cities.

On November 13, 1928, Ernest Neuschul and Lucie Lindermann divorced. In 1929 he became a member of the Reich Association of Visual Artists in Germany. Two years later, Neuschul took over the chair of drawing and painting at the Charlottenburg Municipal Art School. In 1933, Neuschul became the last chairman of the November Group before it was banned by the Nazis. At his last exhibition in February 1933 at the “Haus der Künstler” on Schöneberger Ufer in Berlin, his works on display were confiscated and many of them destroyed. Immediately after these events, Neuschul fled to Czechoslovakia. Lucie Lindermann and Neuschul’s later second wife Christl Bell saved the works in his Berlin studio and brought them to Aussig.

In mid-1935, Neuschul received an invitation to Moscow from the Moscow Artists’ Union. In September of1935, he and his wife Christl traveled to Moscow with forty works created between 1929 and 1934. The state newspaper Pravda reported very positively on his solo exhibition at the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow; as a result, Neuschul subsequently received a number of commissions. Among others, he was commissioned to paint portraits of Josef Stalin and Georgi Dimitroff. On January 1, 1936 Neuschul became a member of the Moscow Union of Artists and the Union of Soviet Artists. Shortly before the beginning of Stalin’s second purges, Ernst Neuschul received advice from Andrei Bubnov, the People’s Commissar for National Education, to leave Moscow as soon as possible.

In February 1936, Neuschul gave a lecture on the Soviet Union in Aussig. The Prague press’s June 1936 pictorial supplement “Die Welt am Sonntag” reported in detail on Neuschul’s stay in the Soviet Union. In 1937, his last exhibition took place in his hometown of Auseig. In this exhibition two of Neuschul’s works were cut up and smeared with swastikas. On the third of November in 1937, Neuschul left his hometown of Aussig for good and moved with his family to Prague before the Czechoslovak borderlands were annexed by Hitler’s Germany in 1938.

Neuschul became a member of the Oskar Kokoschka Club and gave lectures on Degenerate Art, a category that was given to his own work. In 1938, Neuschul was on the Nazi blacklist and, as a Sudeten German, was threatened with extradition to the Third Reich by the Czech authorities. On March 10, 1939, Neuschul deregistered with the police and continued to live as an “illegal” in Prague. Through a connection to the British Labour Party, he was able to prepare his family’s emigration to England. The German Wehrmacht, not yet connected to the Gestapo, issued the exit permit, and on March 24, 1939, the Neuschul family left for England via Holland. Neuschul’s mother, who stayed in Prague to care for Neuschul’s sick brother, was later murdered in Auschwitz with those family members still in Prague.

On May 19, 1939, Neuschul became a member of the Free German Artists Association in England. As a rejection of the past, he changed his name from Neuschul to Norland. Neuschul lived in the family house in London-Hampstead until the end of his life. On September 11, 1968, Ernest Neuschul died at the age of 73.

At the beginning of Ernst Neuschul’s artistic activity, expressionism was in vogue, with intense colors in abstract forms. For his own work, Neuschul transformed this style into the more concrete style of New Objectivity. Gradually socially critical themes found their way into his range of motifs. Neuschul depicted the fringe groups of society; he painted drunkards, women on the streets, and workers in the fields or at their machines. During his time in Moscow, Neuschul was given to understand that he should paint the workers in the style of Socialist Realism that expressed the ideal state. He rejected this idea and continued to paint what he saw and not what he was supposed to see. After the war, Neuschul continued to abstract his style, but like other émigrés who had left Germany, he was unable to match the success he had enjoyed before he fled. Neuschul was rediscovered in Germany in 2001, when the Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, in cooperation with the Czech Republic, organized a four-week retrospective of his paintings in Regensburg.

Notes: The University of Birmingham, England, has a short article on Ernst Neuschul’s 1931 painting “Black Mother”, painted at a time in which the Nazi Party was making significant gains in elections. The article can be found at: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/lcahm/departments/historyofart/research/projects/map/issue3/arts-trail-pages/ernst-neuschul-black-mother.aspx

In 1924, Ernst Neuschul painted his biblical scene “Samson II”. An interesting article on its creation process can be found at Berlin’s Jewish Museum website located at: https://www.jmberlin.de/en/ernest-neuschul-samson-II

Top Insert Image: Helen Craig, “Ernst Neuschul”, circa 1960s, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Helen Craig

Second Insert Image: Ernst Neuschul, “Black Mother”, 1931, Oil on Canvas, 100.5 x 65.5 cm, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, England

Third Insert Image: Ernst Neuschul, “Laundress”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvass, 100.3 x 65.1 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Ernst Neuschul, “Woman ironing”, circa 1930, Oil on Canvas, 65 x 46 cm, Staattiche Museen, Berlin

Bottom Insert Image: Ernst Neuschul, “Meine Drei Frauen”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Private Collection

Antoni Rząsa

The Artwork of Antoni Rząsa

Born in February of 1919 in Futoma, a village located at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, Antoni Rząsa was a Polish sculptor whose works were inspired by native folk art. He was born in an area where Catholic churches, having been erected since the sixteenth-century, were later surrounded by Orthodox temples. The art of creating both practical and spiritual objects from wood was a common and flourishing tradition in Poland’s Subcarpathian Voivodeship.

Attracted by the characteristics of wood and its carving, Rząsa carried on local tradition and began combining the religious experience with the folk art of the region. His work presented to the viewer an uncharacteristic understanding of faith, suffering and humor. Rzasa’s figures of weeping Marys and Crucified Christs captivated both priests and atheists with their gestures and openness to more than one interpretation. In addition to his iconic figures, Rząsa also created figures drawn from family experiences and a series of carved chairs and benches with elements of flora and fauna.

Antino Rząsa graduated from the High School of Fine Arts in Zakopane, a southern Polish town in the region of Podhale. In 1938, he studied at the city’s School of Wood Industry under Polish sculptor Antoni Kenar, who was reforming the educational system by placing an emphasis on traditional folk art and its connection to contemporary art. In his own work, Kenar combined elements of the Podhale region with influences from Cubism and Art Déco.

In 1939, Rząsa’s studies were suspended with the outbreak of World War II. He joined the local guerrilla group in 1940 within which he served as a messenger runner. During his war service, Rząsa received notice that his mother had died in 1941. He returned to Zakopane in 1948 and resumed his studies under the guidance of Antoni Kenar at the School of Wood Industry. Rząsa graduated in 1952, the same year his father died. Invited by Kenar to teach sculpture at the school, he taught and lectured there until 1973. During his tenure, the school was renamed the Antoni Kenar Art School Complex after Kenar’s death in 1959.

Antoni Rząsa created the majority of his work through the creation of multiple series revolving around themes both secular and religious. His first series was the “Days of War” which covered a two year period from 1956 to 1958. In 1960, Rząsa started the one-year “Saint Annes”cycle and also began a twelve-year cycle entitled “The Pietas”. The most prolific of his series was “The Cycle of Crosses” which include six cycles created over a period of thirteen years from 1962 to 1975.

Rząsa’s first group showing was the 1952 “Utility in Art” exhibition held in Zakopane. Other group exhibitions followed regularly In Berlin, Geneva, London, Warsaw, Shanghai and Beijing. In 1963, Rząsa had two solo exhibitions: the Artist and Viewer Gallery in Warsaw’s Łazienki Park and Kraków’s PAX Gallery. Other solo presentations included an exhibition at Warsaw’s Gallery of Sculpture in 1966, two shows in Zakopane in 1968 and 1973, and a 1972 solo exhibition in Chester, England. Polish directors Anna Micińska and Grzegorz Dubowski premiered their short 1973 biographical film “Portret Antoniego Rząsy (The Portrait of Antoni Rząsa)” at the Kraków Film Festival where they each were given a bronze award for their directorial work.

In 1974, Antoni Rząsa with his wife Halina and son Marcin began construction of a home and gallery on Bogdańskiego Street in Zakopane. The next year, he showed his new work at a solo exhibition in Kraków’s Gallery of Contemporary Art. In 1976, Rząsa began his last Cycle of Crosses entitled “The Women of Ravensbrück” in honor of the one hundred and thirty thousand, mostly female, prisoners at that concentration camp. In July of the same year, the newly opened Antoni Rząsa Gallery on Bogdańskiego Street had its first exhibition.

On the twenty-sixth of January in 1980, Antoni Rząsa died and was buried in the Cemetery for People of Merit at the Pęksowy Brzyzk Cemetery in Zakopane. He was survived by his son Marcin and wife Halina Rząsa, who died on the fourteenth of December in the same year. Rząsa’s work is included in the collections of the Polish Army Museum; the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, and Poznań; the Reconciliation Chapel of the Ark of the Lord Church in Kraków-Fieńczyce; and in private collections in the United States, Denmark, Belgium, France, Italy and the Vatican. The Antoni Rząsa Gallery is currently managed by Marcin Rząsa and family.

The Antoni Rząsa Gallery website contains images of Rząsa’s work, testimonials from his friends, and contact information. The site address is: https://antonirzasa.pl/en/

Top Insert Image: Krystyna Gorazdowska, “Antoni Rząsa”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Thoughtful”, 1960, Wood, 67.5 x 29 x 21.5 cm.

Third Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Pieta Tobruku”, 1960, Polychrome Wood, 121 x 81 x 45 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Pieta Tobruku”, 1960, Reverse, Polychrome Wood, 121 x 81 x 45 cm

Geoffrey Laurence

The Artwork of Geoffrey Laurence

Born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1949, Geoffrey Laurence is an American painter, illustrator, educator and designer of both graphic and interior work. Although considered an artist of the realism school, he is more concerned with the emotional responses that can be achieved through various painting techniques. Laurence finds figurative painting to be artificial by its very nature and, thus, an abstraction of the observed life-experience. For him, the goal of all painting is to engage the viewer in an emotional narrative.

Geoffrey Laurence’s parents were naturalized Americans, refugees from Europe and Holocaust survivors. At four years of age, Laurence moved with his family to England where he received his education. In 1965, he entered London’s Byam Shaw School of Art where he studied under geometric painter Bridget Riley. After receiving his London Certificate in Art and Design in 1968, Laurence studied graphic design for a year under poster artist Tom Eckersley at the London College of Printing. In 1969, he studied under Frederick Gore, the Head of the Painting Department, at Saint Martins School of Art where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1972.

Laurence moved to New York City in 1992 and attended the New York Academy of Art where he studied with painter and draftsman Eric Fischl and realist painter Vincent Desiderio. Laurence received his Master of Fine Arts Cum Laude in 1995. He worked freelance for the next tweety years in different art-related fields. Laurence was an illustrator for several magazines, including “Woman’s World” and “Look Now”, as well as a graphic designer for such companies as Pineapple and British Petroleum.

In the fashion industry, Geoffrey Laurence created a range of t-shirts for Walt Disney, the British online clothing retailer Burton and the UK-based global retailer French Connection. He also created work for fashion designer Katherine Hamnett and such companies as PampleMouse and Muscle Sport. During the 1990s, Laurence did interior design work for restaurants including London’s Zen restaurant chain. His design work has appeared in Vogue Magazine, the Royal Institute of British Architects magazine and the London Evening Standard. In addition to applying his skills to freelance work, Laurence continued his focus on figurative drawing and painting, work which regularly appeared in exhibitions.

Exposed to art since early childhood, Laurence has always been fascinated with the history of its development from early cave paintings to European masterworks. He sees art, which is older than verbal language, to be a major part of being human, that distinction which establishes human identity and elevates man from mere mechanical life. Laurence’s work has evolved over the course of his career and developed into two general themes. The first is maintaining a balanced link between pre-1900 classical painting and work of a more contemporary nature. The second is the continuation of a meaningful visual response to the Holocaust, a personal dedication resulting from his being the offspring of concentration camp survivors.

Geoffrey Laurence has been painting and exhibiting his work both in the United States and Europe for over forty-five years. In addition to group and solo gallery exhibitions, his work has been exhibited at the Brighton Museum in the United Kingdom; Taos, New Mexico’s Van Vechten-Lineberry Museum; Sacramento’s Center for Contemporary Art; the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin; and Chicago’s Zhou B Art Center, among others. Laurence was recently a finalist at the 2023 ARC Art Renewal Centre Salon in New York City.

Among Laurence’s many honors have been the 1995 Walter Erlebacher Award, the 2004 Robert Rauschenberg Award, the 2006 George Sugarman Foundation Grant, the 2017 Palm Art Award, the 2018 PoetsArtists/Bauhaus Award, and the 2023 Robert Rauschenberg Grant. Laurence has taught at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, the Santa Fe School of Art at SFCC, Seattle’s Gage Academy of Fine Art, and Santa Fe’s Bettina Steinke Studio. He is currently represented in the United States by Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery in Romeo, Michigan.

Geoffrey Laurence’s website, which includes technical resources for artists, classes, and contact information, can be located at: http://www.geoffreylaurence.com

Second Insert Image: Geoffrey Laurence, “Animal Nature”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 50.8 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Geoffrey Laurence, “The Brother”, 2006, Oil on Canvas, 96.5 x 71.1 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Geoffrey Laurence, “Hold Fast”, 2004, Oil on Canvas, 198.1 x 182.9 cm, Private Collection

Steve Huston

The Paintings of Steve Huston

Born in 1959 and raised in Alaska, Steve Huston is an American painter, draftsman and educator. He graduated with his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Prior to graduation, Huston was creating illustrations for such clients as Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Caesar’s Palace, and Universal Studios.

As an academic, Huston taught life drawing and painting, as well as, composition and anatomy at the Art Center College of Design. He later taught such classes at Warner Brothers Studios, Disney’s Animation and Gaming Divisions, Blizzard Entertainment, and DreamWorks Studios. In 1995, Huston began a career as a fine artist; he won top prizes for his work at both the 1995 and 1996 California Art Club Gold Medal Exhibitions.

Passionate about having an artistic life, Steve Huston has created and taught art for the last forty years. He ia a painter of both landscapes and figurative works. Among Huston’s figurative works are scenes of men engaged in activities that require energy and movement, either in labor or sport. He has created an extensive series that depicts the sport of boxing; this Boxer series reveals both the tension and the energy that pervades the sport. Huston’s Worker series presents men intensely engaged in heavy labor work that requires both strength and stamina. These manual workers are depicted in the everyday tasks of carrying wooden beams, lifting large wooden crates, and moving objects.

Among those sources which have influenced Huston’s artwork are the works of Rembrandt and Italian Renaissance painter Titian; the early American Tonalist painters such as George Inness and Charles Eaton; the art projects of the the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration; and the graphic power and heroic character of the American Comic Book form.

Steve Huston’s work has been featured in American Art Collector, Art News, Southwest Art, Harper’s Bazaar, American Artist and Western Art & Architecture, among other publications. His work has been exhibited at the Academy of Art College of the Carnegie Art Museum, the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art, London’s Albemarle Gallery, the Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara and the Timothy Yargar Fine Art Gallery in Beverly Hills. Huston was also a frequent exhibitor at New York City’s prestigious Eleanor Ettinger Gallery from 1998 to its closing in 2013.

Steve Huston’s website, which features images of his work, livestream classes and limited edition prints, can be found at: https://stevehustonart.com

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Steve Huston”, 2019, Color Print for CGArchives January 2019

Second Insert Image: Steve Huston, Figure Studies from Sketchbook, Brown Ink and Gouache on Paper

Bottom Insert Image: Steve Huston, Title Unknown, (Three Workers), Date Unknown, Worker Series, Oil on Canvas

Gaston Goor

Gaston Goor, “Homere et les Bergers (Homer and the Shepherds)”, 1940, Oil on Panel, 81.3 x 119.4 cm, Private Collection

Born in Lunéville, the capital city of Lorraine in October of 1902, Gaston Goor was a highly accomplished, albeit controversial, French illustrator, painter, muralist and sculptor. He is best known for his illustrations in “Amitiés Particulières (Special Friendships)” and other works by French writer and diplomat Roger Peyrefitte, his primary patron.

The son of Auguste Léon Goor and Marie Angèle Berthe Becker, Goor entered the École des Beaux-Arts at the age of seventeen. He left his native province in 1925 to travel to Paris where he worked in the studio of painter and writer Amédée Ozenfant. In 1917, Ozenfant and painter Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, had founded the doctrine of Purism, a style of art in which elements are represented as robust simplified forms with minimal detail. Through his association with Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, Goor was introduced to modern art and prominent artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jean Lurçat, best known for his tapestries.

During his stay in Versailles, Gaston Goor was introduced by poet André Salmon to author André Gide who guided him to the profession of illustrator. Working with Capitole Editions, Gore became a prominent artist and created illustrations for forty volumes under that title. He created illustrations for Léon Daudet’s “Écrivains et Artistes”, Henry de Montherlant’s “L’Etoile du Soir”, Lucien Daudet’s “Le Voyage de Shakespeare”, and François Mauriac’s “Hommes Devant Dieu”. Goor also provided illustrations for both the Horizons de France and the Trianon editions.

In 1929, Goor was commissioned to produce decorative work for the Colonial Exhibition in Paris. After a study trip to Morocco, he returned Versailles where he worked briefly for its Department of Fine Arts before locating to the resort town of Hyères where his family had settled. Goor’s nude studies of the young model Jean Joerimann caught the attention of writer Jean Renaud Icard who gave him an exhibition in his Lyon gallery. After the exhibition, Goor received a commission to illustrate Icard’s latest book “Mon Page”.

In the 1930s, Gaston Goor received private commissions, both illustrative and decorative, from wealthy clients and art collectors. Among these prominent men was the owner of a large luxury hotel in Hyères, who was the father of Jean Joerimann, the model for the “Mon Page” illustrations and an unreciprocated love interest for Goor. In 1942, he received a commission from architect Maurice Novarina to create murals for the Church of Douvaine in the Auvergne-Rhõne-Alpes regional city of Haute-Savoie.

While in Haute-Savoie, Goor was accused by German police of helping Jewish people to cross the Swiss border; as a result, he was given ‘voluntary worker’ status and sent to the camp near Zittau in Saxony. Noticed for his talents, Goor was employed as an artist; he remained in the camp until February of 1945 when the city of Dresden was destroyed by Allied bombing. After the war, Goor initially returned to Paris before he moved to Cannes for an exhibition of his work.

There is little information available on the remainder of Gaston Goor’s life. This period was marked by several disappointments, including that his other illustrations for the “Satyricon” were not published. It is known that Goor retired and remained in Hyènes until his death from cancer at the French Riviera city of Toulon on the thirteenth of December in 1977.

Note: Gaston Goor’s illustrations for Volume I and Volume II of Roger Peyrefitte’s
“Les Amitiés Particulières” can be found on E. Neagle’s site “Homo Fabula: At the Intersection of Art & Luterature” located at: https://homofabula.blogspot.com/2017/05/front-free-endpaper-gaston-goor.html

Top Insert Image: Gaston Goor, “Mythological Subject”, 1947, Lead Graphite on Paper, 21 x 27 cm, Catherine Gide Collection

Second Insert Image: Gaston Goor, “The Battle of San Romano after Paulo Ucello”, 1970, Oil and Pastel Highlights on Panel, 94 x 121 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Gaston Goor, Mougin Vase, “The Fairy of the Water Lilies”, Height 31 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Gaston Goor, “Eros and Hymenaeus”, 1949, Oil on Canvas, 37 x 45 cm, Private Collection

Amalas Rosa

The Artwork of Amalas Rosa

Amalas Rosa is a visual artist known for combining her skills at illustration with story telling. She spent her formative years in Germany where she was exposed to the wide range of European comics, particularly those from France and Belgium: “Tin Tin”, “Lucky Luke”, “Asterix” and “Gaston”. In later years, Amalas discovered the graphic work done in the genre of anime, as well as the illustrative work of manga comics.

Born into a family with strong interest in the arts, Amalas grew up surrounded by artwork and began drawing at an early age, first characters from fairy tales and later the people around her. Through her parents, she was exposed to a wide range of interests: museums, the pleasure of reading, music, photography, and both fine art and illustrations. Although she had an early interest in the field of archaeology, Amalas decided to study for a career as an illustrator, a field which enabled her to use both her writing and drawing talents.

In her studies, Amalas Rosa studied integrated design, which included fashion and product design, as well as typography and illustration. Drawn with an extensive knowledge of color theory, her illustrations are known for their technical perspective and abundance of small detailed objects carefully placed throughout her scenes. Amalas’s characters also are created with the same amount of attention to detail in their dress, posture and expression. Amalas, a skilled photographer, will often shoot images of interesting objects, scenery and architecture for both inspiration and detailed references for her work.

Amalas almost always starts an illustration with her characters and their environment. Once the initial idea is formed, she develops her illustrations through a lengthly and technical process. First, a rough sketch of the setting and the characters is drawn; then the lines of both are cleaned up. Perspective lines are place on the sketch to map and solidify the area. Using these lines, Amalas draws the surface areas that surround the characters.

With these areas established, Amalas Rosa slowly adds all the scene’s objects into the drawing; these range from large tables and cabinets to smaller detailed items such as electrical cables and cups. In the next stage, a block of single color is initially used to establish the drawn characters. Once this is accomplished, Amalas chooses a color palette suitable for the mood of the illustration. The colors of this palette are then applied to the work with consideration to both light and shadow. To finish her work, Amalas applies layered tones as a final adjustment.

Amalas was in her mid-teens when she first created a fantasy story line with two male characters: Aran and Tao. Over time, these characters further evolved into persons of specific heritage: Aran became the Syrian son of a single mother and Tao became a member of a large Taiwanese family. Separated for a period when Tao and his family moved away, the close childhood friends were later reunited to share the experiences and emotions of life in the city. Over time, Amalas continued to expand these characters through her own memories, feelings and experiences. In a collaboration with writer Suzanne Samin, both artist and writer are further developing Aran and Tao into an illustrated graphic novel format that would continue their life story.

Amalas Rosa’s social media sites are located at: https://www.tumblr.com/amalasdraws and https://twitter.com/AmalasRosa

For literary and graphic illustrative work, Amalas Rosa can be contacted through her agent at the Azantian Literary Agency.

Prints of Amalas Rosa’s artwork are available at the online INPRNT gallery located at: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/amalasrosa/

Second Insert Image: Amalas Rosa, “God’s Bathroom Floor”, 2021, Digital Art, Cover Art for Atmosphere’s 7 Inch Vinyl “God’s Bathroom Floor”, Rhymesayers Entertainment, Art Director Alex Everson

Bottom Inset Image: Amalas Rosa, “Sharing Food is Love”, 2021, Aran and Tao as Adults, Digital Art, 4000 x 5000 Pixels, 600 DPI, Artist Collection

Ben Kimura

The Art of Ben Kimura

Born in 1947, Ben Kimura (木村べん) was a Japanese artist known for his gay erotic artwork. As noted by historian and artist Gengoroh Tagame, he and Sadeo Hasogawa were among the central figures in Japan’s resurgence of gay artwork in the 1970s.

Ben Kimura began his career in 1978 as an illustrator and cover artist for “Barazoku”, Japan’s first commercially circulated gay men’s magazine. The monthly magazine, edited by Bungaku Itō, began publication in July of 1971 and published four-hundred issues, the last being in 2008. Kimura was a regular art contributor until his departure in 1989. During this time, he was also a major contributor for cover and story illustrations for “Sabu”magazine.

Kimura also contributed illustrations to the early yaoi magazines “June” and “Allan”, both male to male romance-fiction magazines for a female audience. His work for these magazines placed him among the first gay artists to achieve crossover success with a female audience.

Ben Kimura’s artwork was highly sought after by the Japanese gay publications throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Unique among contemporary Japanese homoerotic artists, his work typically depicted masculine, handsome men rendered in a style that was romantic and sensual rather than explicitly pornographic. Kimura’s fit and stylish young men evoked both familiarity and a sense of nostalgia for life’s past encounters .

In addition to work done for periodicals, Kimura self-published two collections of his homoerotic illustrations. The first collection was the 1997 “Tan-Pan Body (画集)” which was primarily a collection of cover art done for Sabu magazine prior to 1997. Kimura’s second collection “Go-One Boy (作品集)” was published in 1998.

Ben Kimura died from a pulmonary embolism at the age of fifty-six on the eighteenth of February in 2003. As a tribute, a second printing of his “Tan-Pan Body” was reissued shortly after his death. Kimura’s collected works are managed by his partner and artistic executor Kihira Kai.

Curtis Holder

The Artwork of Curtis Holder

Born in 1968, Curtis Holder is an English artist based in London. He works primarily in colored pencil and graphite to create large-scale figurative works and portraits on paper. Raised on an estate in Leicester in the 1980s, Holder majored in Graphic Design at the prestigious Kingston University and completed his postgraduate studies in Character Animation at Central Saint Martins in London.

Curtis Holder’s multi-layered drawings emerge through an unpredictable series of energetic lines that reveal the form, as well as, the emotional state of his subject. He works briskly, layering pencils and graphite for their dynamic effect. Holder does not alter any marks after they are laid on the paper. All pencil marks, including preparatory ones, remain on the paper in the finished work. The complexity of the lines, the pose of the sitter, and the graphic quality of the work combine to form images of great insight.

A prolific artist, Holder has entered his work in many group exhibitions. Among these are the Society of Graphic Fine Art’s 2021 Centenary Exhibition “Unlocked” in London; the 2021 United Kingdom Colored Pencil Society’s 20th Anniversary Gala Exhibition at Oxo Tower Wharf in London; the 2022 Portrait Artist of the Year at Compton Verney, Warwickshire; and the 2023 Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition in London.

Curtis Holder’s debut solo exhibition “Something Unspoken” was held from November of 2021 through January of 2022 at the 45 Park Lane Gallery in London. His solo exhibition “The Makers: Portraits from Backstage” opened at the National Theater, South Bank, London in January and continues to the 4th of November in 2023. These multilayered pencil portraits depict those valuable theater people who work backstage at the National Theater. In 2022, Holder was awarded the honor of being the National Theater’s first artist in residence.

Holder is a member of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters and an Associate Member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art. His work is held in private and public collections including London’s National Portrait Gallery, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the Soho House, and the National Theater in London.

Curtis Holder and his partner, Steve Goggin, a digital content manager for the Historic Royal Palaces, reside in a midcentury house in south London. Holder holds summer drawing classes in the garden for neighbors and also teaches part-time at the local primary school.

“What prevents people from breaking into that (art) world is visibility. If you don’t see yourself represented, you’ll think there’s no way in. I’d like to take my story to as many children as possible and say, you can survive as an artist. It’s like any other job, you have to work hard. But it’s as real as becoming a doctor. I want to show others that art can be a career, and a way of life.” —Curtis Holder, December 2020, The Guardian, London

Note: Curtis Holder’s website contains information on current exhibitions and the commission of work, as well as, available original drawings and limited edition prints. His site is located at: https://www.curtisholder.co.uk

A podcast interview between Curtis Holder and Alyson Walsh can be heard at Alyson Walsh’s “That’s Not My Age” on Spotify: https://thatsnotmyage.com/age/thats-not-my-age-podcast-portrait-artist-of-the-year-curtis-holder/

Second Insert Image: Curtis Holder, “Gaylene”, 2021, Colored Pencil on Paper, 90 x 66 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Curtis Holder, “One Man and His Dog”, 2022, Colored Pencil and Acrylic Gouache on Paper, 120 x 120 cm

Alejandro Pasquale

The Artwork of Alejandro Pasquale

Born in Buenos Aires in 1984, Alejandro Pasquale is an Argentine painter. In 2002, he entered the Universidad Nacional de les Artes in Buenos Aires to pursue an arts education. Two years later, Pasquale left the university and continued his education under the tutelage of local artists. Among those artists active at this time in Buenos Aires was painter Eduardo Stupia who works almost extensively in black and white with occasional use of color. In both 2013 and 2014, Pasquale participated in Stupia’s workshops at the highly regarded Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires.

Alejandro Pasquale’s work resides in the art category of magic realism, a realistic portrayal of the world with additional mystical or cryptic elements. His intriguing drawings and paintings, predominately figurative, abound in highly detailed elements. With a background in art based on his love of nature, Pasquale places his figures in lush, natural surroundings; however, he obscures their faces and emotions through masks composed of foliage and flowers. With their sense of sight covered, the figures are removed from the external world and absorbed into a state of internal contemplation.

In 2011, Pasquale was recognized for his drawings in the Salon de Mayo held at the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts “Rosa Galisteo de Rodriguez” in Santa Fe, Argentina. In 2015, he was a finalist at the National Painting Biennial in the city of Rafaela. In the same year, Pasquale won the first award at the National Exhibition of Contemporary Art held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Junin, a provincial city of Buenos Aires. In 2017, he was awarded a scholarship to participate in the Encontro de Artistas Novos exhibition held at the Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pasquale also participated in the Salón Nacional de Arts Visuales held in 2021 at Buenos Aires’s Palais de Glace.

Alejandro Pasquale is a regularly appearing artist with the Beinart Gallery in Melbourn, Australia; the Victor Lope Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; the Quimera Gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Stone Sparrow Gallery in New York City; and the Daniel Raphael Gallery in London. In addition to his many solo and group exhibitions, he continues to exhibit in many international art fairs. Alejandro Pasquale’s work is included in many private collections around the world.

“The intention of my work is to be a necessary reminder that, even though we often overlook it, we are a horizontal part of the great network of living beings that co-inhabit this earth. We belong, on the day we allow ourselves to recognize this, to this immense and magical nature. We are nature.” —Alejandro Pasquale

Notes: Images of Alejandro Pasquale’s work and contact information can be found at the artist’s website located at: https://alejandropasquale.com

Alejandro Pasquale’s work can also be seen at Saisho, an online art market site, and at the avante-garde Beinart Gallery where Pasquela has had several solo exhibitions.

Saisho is located at: https://www.saishoart.com/alejandro-pasquale

Beinart Gallery is located at: https://beinart.org/collections/alejandro-pasquale

Juan Adán Morlán

Juan Adán Morlán, “Luchadores de Florencia (Wrestlers of Florence)”, 1773, Terra Cotta, 36 x 40 x 28 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Born in March of 1741 in Tarazona, a provincial town of Zaragoza, Juan Adán Morlán was a Spanish painter and sculptor. The son of Juan and Manuela Morlán, he was baptized at the local parish church, Iglesia Parroquial San Pedro Apóstol, located in the town of Buenache de Alarcón.

Juan Adán moved with his family around 1755 to Zargoza, the provincial capital, where he entered the workshop of Baroque architect and sculptor José Ramírez de Arellano. After being appointed sculptor to King Carlos III in 1740, José Ramírez had been commissioned in 1751 to oversee the work done at the capital’s Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar. Once the works at the Cathedral were finished in 1765, Juan Adán at the age of twenty-four traveled to Rome.

Juan Adán Morlán lived on the resources he had saved from his work at the Basilica until they were exhausted. He then approached Tomas de Azpuru y Jiménez, a native of Zaragoza and the appointed Charge d’Affaires of Spain who oversaw King Carlos III’s business in Rome. Through Jiménez’s assistance, Juan Adán received several commissions for work in Rome. Among these were sculpturing a copy of Camilo Rusconi’s 1718 marble “Saint John the Evangelist” and a drawing that was later presented to Francisco Preciado de la Vega, a scholar elected both prince and secretary of the Academy of Artists, as well as, an Arcade of the College of Roman Arcades.

Juan Adán was granted a pension from the government in October of 1767 and began work on new commissions in Rome. In 1773, he created his terracotta “Luchadores de Florencia (Wrestlers of Florence)” and sent it to the Academic Board in Rome which extended his pension. In the following year, Juan Adán created his “Compassio Mariae”, a terracotta sculpture of the Virgin Mary supporting the body of the dead Christ. This technical exercise was sent that same year to the Academy as a pensioner’s work.

In January of 1775, Juan Adán Morlán was appointed an Academic of Merit at the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. He reproduced his “Compassio Mariae” again in 1791 for the church of the Royal College of Pious Schools of San Fernando. For this, Juan Adán was appointed Academic of Merit of Saint Fernando. He returned to Spain in 1776, where the Lérida Cathedral council commissioned him to work in the city until 1782. During Juan Adán’s stay in Lérida, construction work authorized by King Carlos III was still proceeding at the new Cathedral of Lérida that would serve as a replacement for abandoned Cathedral of St. Mary of la Seu Vella,.

Juan Adán stayed in the province of Granada from 1783 to 1786, where he worked at a chapel in the city of Cámenes. He returned in 1783 to the king’s court in Madrid where he was appointed lieutenant-director of Sculpture under the directorship of Isidro Carnicero, who rose to his position upon the death of director Roberto Michel. In May of 1793, Juan Adán received the appointment of Chamber Sculptor to King Carlos IV, a honor which became effective in February of 1795.

In 1795, Juan Adán Morlán sculpted the busts of Carlos IV and his wife Maria Luisa of Parma, the youngest daughter of Philip, Duke of Parma and fourth son of Philip V of Spain. Numerous portrait commissions at this time were made by the nobility; among these was the 1794 portrait of Prime Minister Manuel Godoy y Álvarez de Faria, Duke of Alcudia. In 1807, Juan Adán Morlán made the Relief of San Miguel at his chapel inside the Cathedral of Granada and, in the following year, created the Anteo Fountain in the gardens of Aranjuez.

Juan Adán was appointed in 1811 the Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando. In 1815, he became Chamber Sculptor to King Fernando VII who, after the defeat of the French invasion, was again legally recognized by the 1813 Treatry of Valençay as King of Spain.. A year after his royal appointment, Juan Adán Morlán died in Madrid on the 14th of June in 1816. He was buried in the Puerta de Fuencarral Cemetery in Madrid.

Top Insert Image: Juan Adán, “Manuel Godoy y Álvarez de Faria, Duke of Alcudia”, 1794, Marble, 72 x 53 x 35 cm, Real Academia de Belles Artes de San Fernando, Spain

Second Insert Image: Juan Adán Morlán, “Moisés (Moses)“, 1775, Terracotta, 67 x 32 x 30 cm, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

Third Insert Image: Juan Adán, “San Juan Evangelista (St. John the Evangelist)“, 1767, Terracotta, 70 x 40 x 28 cm, Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid

Bottom Insert Image: Juan Adán Morlán, “Priamo y Hector (Priam and Hector)”, 1770s, Terracotta, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid