Niko Kok

The Artwork of Niko Kok

Born in the Netherlands, Niko Kok is a Dutch visual artist who works in multiple mediums. From 1973 to 1978, he studied in the sculpture department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Strongly influenced during the 1940s and 1950s by the Brauhaus and De Stijl movements, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie focuses on the artist’s individual expression and the role and influence of autonomous visual art.

Kok brings a nearly fifty-year career in the steel industry to his artwork. In 1972, he began his employment at Tata Steel IJmuiden where he had the unique opportunity to engage with a diverse range of materials. This exposure increased Kok’s creative spirt and allowed him to devise new techniques for his artwork, including the employment of graphite crucibles, formerly used to measure nitrogen levels in steel, as a tool for his rubbings on paper.

Over forty years, Niko Kok has transformed ordinary shapes and materials into visual creations by using the specific properties of his chosen material in multiple and often unusual ways. The recurring themes that underlie his aesthetic ideology are simplicity and contrast. Kok has worked with stone, paper, fabric, metal, glass, wood shards, and both steel and iron wire. He has also created rubbings and geometrically designed works with graphite and paper; his Tear Series combined different pieces of torn paper arranged in patterns with added graphite effects.

A pivotal point in Niko Kok’s artistic career occurred during his travel in 1979 to Centre Pompidou in Paris. He visited the former atelier of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, an artist whose work had emphasized clean geometrical lines and the inherent properties of the materials used. Kok is also inspired by the Minimal Art movement, an extreme form of abstract art that emerged in the late 1950s and flourished into the 1970s. Minimalism saw art as its own reality. No attempt was made to represent an outside experience or emotion; the artwork’s medium and its form was the reality.

From 1990 to 2006, Kok created a series of small sculptures using black, white and red granite. The “Double Cube”, “Column” and “Stacking” series were fashioned of either polished or unpolished granite stones fitted together to form perfectly squared sculptures of various heights. Using his knowledge of material properties, Kok has also worked with granite spheres, a shape capable of motion in every direction. Once the sphere is bisected, the two existing hemispheres each possess stability. Even after being pushed off balance, their equilibrium brings them back to rest.

Among his exhibitions, Niko Kok presented his graphic work at a 2012 exhibition at the Swiss Art Space in Lausanne, Switzerland. Hie participated in a solo exhibition at Artphy in 2019 held at Onstwedde, Netherlands. In the following year, Kok was part of a collaborative Artphy exhibition held in the same city. He currently lives and maintains a studio in the Dutch town of Heemskerk, Netherlands.

Kok’s work has been exhibited and sold through the Alfa Gallery, an artist-operated space with locations in both the Miami Design District and the Chelsea area of New York City. His website, which include images of his work and contact information, can be found at: https://nicokok.exto.org

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Nico Kok, “Self Portrait”, 1988, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Niko Kok, “Cubes and Cubes”, 2018, Plastic on Base, 96 x 96 x9.4 cm, Private Collection

Mel Bochner

The Artwork of Mel Bochner

Born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1940, Mel Bochner is one of the leading figures in the development of Conceptual art in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. He is a member of that generation of artists who were seeking to break free from Abstract Expressionism and traditional composition. A scholar as well as an artist, Bochner’s influential critical and theoretical essays have always been a central component of his work.

Bochner pioneered the use of language into the visual arts; language progressed from talking about art to becoming part of art itself. Over his career, he has consistently probed the conventions of both painting and language- the way we construct and understand them as well as the way their relationship to each other increases our awareness of the world to which we belong.

Born to a sign-painter father in an Orthodox Jewish home, Mel Bochner graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts. He studied philosophy briefly at Chicago’s Northwestern University before making the decision to relocate in 1964 to New York City where he began work as a guard in Manhattan’s Jewish Museum. Encouraged by art critic Dore Ashton, Bochner applied for and was granted a teaching position in art history at the city’s School of Visual Arts.

Bochner’s first exhibition, the 1966 “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily To Be Viewed As Art” held at the School of Visual Arts, is now regarded as a seminal show in the Conceptual Art movement. Not having the necessary funds to frame all his original drawings, Bochner xeroxed copies of his friends’ works and inserted them in four black binders individually placed on four white pedestals. A later conceptual work, the 1998 “Event Horizon”, involved multiple pre-stretched canvases of various sizes, each marked with a horizontal line and the measurement of its length in inches. These canvases were arranged with the lines at the same height along the wall. Seen together, the canveses’ lines formed a horizon of a determined length.

In the 1960s, Bochner was one of the first artists to incorporate the physical gallery space into his art. Some of his works were actually drawn or painted on the gallery’s walls. His 1970 “Language is Not Transparent” presented the white-chalked sentence written on a dripping black square painted directly on the gallery wall. Bochner’s 1969-1970 installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, entitled “Theory of Painting”, involved newspapers, spray-painted with multi-sized blue rectangular shapes, spread on the floor of the enclosed exhibition space.

Along with artists Bruce Nauman and Joseph Kosuth both of whom integrated language into art, Bochner was an early proponent of photo-documentary art which included images of temporary works and performance art. Among his many photographic creations is the important 1966 “36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams”, an arranged collection of forty-eight 29 x 29 cm gelatin silver prints. Resistant to showing all the forty-eight mounted photographs and pen-and-ink drawings in their physical form, Bochner photographed each mounted piece and displayed the complete work as an assemblage of two-dimensional photographs, in essence a microcosm of the exhibition.

In the early 1970s, Mel Bochner began producing series of prints at San Francisco’s Crown Point Press. An avid print maker, Bochner has continuously explored new ways to experiment with traditional and non-traditional printmaking techniques. In 2022 for his latest edition of his iconic text “Howl”, he printed the piece with glitter and iridescent ink in a combination of shimmery copper, iridescent purple and glimmering black. As the viewer moves around the work, the purple shifts in tone depending on the viewer’s vantage point.

Bochner’s work covers a wide range of mediums including colorful paintings and prints containing words, cast pigmented works made from handmade paper, works on shaped canvases, and evocative installations. Among these many forms are the 1978 “Planar Arc”, three irregular shaped paper panels of different colors that are decorated with pastel marks; the 1999 “If the Color Changes (#?)”, a language piece written in gray-lettered German overlaid with scattered multi-colored alphabet letters; and the 1988 “Fourth Quartet”, four rectangular sheets of paper framed together in a pattern on which scattered geometric cubes were drawn in aquatint.

In 2007, Mel Bochner’s work was the subject of two major exhibitions in the United States: a focused retrospective of his language-based works at the Art Institute of Chicago; and a forty-year retrospective of Bochner’s drawings, that culminated a two-year museum tour, at the San Diego Museum of Art in California. Bochner’s works are contained in collections around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Mel Bochner’s website, which includes exhibitions, artist texts, public projects and recent works, can be located at: http://www.melbochner.net

Notes: The online Artforum magazine has an article written by Princeton University Professor Carol Armstrong entitled “Mel Bochner: Photographs 1966-1969” that reviews Bochner’s work in connection with the 2002 Carnegie Museum show of the same name: https://www.artforum.com/events/mel-bochner-photographs-1966-1969-178514/

David Lasry’s Two Palms Gallery in New York represents the work of Mel Bochner. Its website has a comprehensive section that contains his works, exhibitions, and articles published by major art periodicals: https://www.twopalms.us/artists/mel-bochner#tab:slideshow

The Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco also represents the work of Mel Bochner. A collection of his work is available for viewing at: https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/mel-bochner

The online ArtDependence Magazine has an interview with Mel Bochner entitled “The Art of Ideas” located at: https://artdependence.com/articles/the-art-of-ideas-an-interview-with-mel-bochner/

Second Insert Image: Mel Bochner, “Repetition- Portrait of Robert Smithson”, 2001, Charcoal and Pencil on Paper, 80 x 66 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Mel Bochner, “Portrait of Dan Flavin”, 1968, Ink on Graph Paper, Sheet 11.4 x 21.6 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Mel Bochner, “Wrap- Portrait of Eva Hesse”, 2001, Charcoal and Pencil on Paper, 64.8 cm Diameter, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Mel Bochner, “Thank You”, 2015, Four Color Direct Gravure Etching, Edition of 20, 55.9 x 45.7 cm, Private Collection

Howard Tangye

Portraits by Howard Tangye

Born in 1948 in Queensland, Howard Tangye is an Australian illustrator, portraitist, and educator who has been an influential force in fashion design for decades. A figurative abstract artist, he is best known for his portraits executed in a mixture of oils, watercolors, pastels, inks and graphite.

Howard Tangye studied at London’s Saint Martins School of Art where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Fashion and Textiles in 1974. He continued his studies at New York’s Parsons School of Art where he received in 1976 his postgraduate degree in Drawing. For seventeen years, Tangye was head of BA Fashion Design: Womenswear at Central Saint Martins where he taught such noted fashion designers as Wes Gordon, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Zac Posen, and Hussein Chalayan.

Over the course of his teaching career, Tangye developed a distinctly characteristic art practice that employs decisive fine lines and the bold use of richly layered materials. His extensive study of the subtleties manifested in the human form provides the basis for rendering his subject’s intrinsic nature. Although Tangye’s work bears similarities to that of Egon Schiele, Tangye’s line-work has an intriguing lyrical nature in contrast to the raw intensity of Schiele’s expressionist lines.

Although a fashion tutor with an extensive knowledge of textiles and textures, Howard Tangye does not define himself as a fashion illustrator. What he finds most interesting is drawing the sitter, not the clothes worn. Tangye draws those with whom he has developed a connection. Because of this, his vibrant works offer the viewer an insight into the sitter’s mind and personality. Tangye will often, in the same work, depict the sitter three or four times, each image slightly altered or shifted in position. Previous depictions of the sitter are not removed but drawn over. This practice of leaving alterations visible in the finished work is known in Italian as pentimenti, or repentance.

Tangye has been exhibited his work in many group and solo shows. From 1991 to 2001, he regularly exhibited at the charity auction at the Royal College of Art for St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospice. He has exhibited at the Lethaby Gallery of Central Saint Martins; Galerie Dessers in Leuven, Belgium; the John Soane Museum and the Amar Gallery in London; and the 2020 Armory Show in New York, among others. In 2013, the Victoria and Albert Museum selected fifty-six of Howard Tangye’s original works for their permanent collection. In 2014, London’s Hus Gallery hosted a solo exhibition, entitled “Casting the Line”, that contained twenty-five works created by Tangye created over a span of twenty years.

In addition to private collections and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Howard Tangye has work in London’s National Portrait Gallery and in the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His 2013 art book “Within” was released through a Kickstarter campaign and was completely sold out within a year. A second edition was released, with some small design changes, in 2020 through the publisher “Stinsensqueeze.

Howard Tangye’s website is located at: https://howardtangye.com

Top Insert Image: Adam Rogers, “Howard Tangye”, 2023, Photo Shoot for Water Journal, Volume 5°, London, United Kingdom

Second Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “In the Garden There Was a Lemon Tree”, 2018, Mixed Media on Bockingford Paper, 153 x 122 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Howard Tangye, “Mike (Writing at the Studio Table)”, 1988-1989, Mixed Media on Pergamenata Paper, 100 x 70 cm

Maurizio Bonfanti

The Paintings of Maurizio Bonfanti

Born in 1952 in Bergamo, a city in the alpine Lombardy region, Maurizio Bonfanti is an Italian painter and the son of fresco painter Angelo Bonfanti. He currently works from his studio in Bergamo close to his home in Torre Boldone.

Maurizio Bonfanti’s formal artistic education began with studies at the Liceo Artistico in Bergamo with additional courses in etching and intaglio at Bergamo’s Accademia di Bella Arti. In addition to his art studies, Bonfanti also studied modern literature at the Università Statale in Milan. In 1973, he left his study of modern literature and began to pursue his career as a painter.

Bonfanti spent the decade of the 1970s exclusively working in the medium of etching but later made the decision to concentrate on painting. His work, which deals with the themes of nature, the human body and urban landscapes, is produced using experimental techniques influenced by his knowledge of etching. Bonfanti paints in thematic cycles, many of which are influenced by his early religious upbringing. His work has been influenced by such figurative artists as painter Renzo Vespignani, sculptor Augusto Perez, and postwar painters Gionfranco Ferroni and Giuseppe Guerreschi.

The development of a specific viewing angle seen in many of Bonfanti’s paintings was influenced by his experience in the photographic field. The focus point for his figurative work lies with the faceless human figures placed central in his compositions. These figures are posed theatrically, either standing, seated or crouching, and often portrayed alone, naked and surrounded by darkness. These compositions, represented in large-format images on canvas paper, display tension between the fragility of man highlighted by body language and the dense mixture of the unraveling, surrounding space. Faceless, the central figure’s condition and emotional state are inferred by the viewer solely through the pose of the depicted body.

Since 1978, Bonfanti’s work has been shown in many collective and solo exhibitions, both in Italy and abroad. He has participated in two prestigious exhibitions at Utrecht’s Contemporary Art Centre in Schalkwijk and showed in major exhibitions in Belgium and Holland. In 2001, on the occasion of the first Day of Remembrance, Bonfanti exhibited a cycle of large-format works entitled “Five Doors in Memory of the Shoah” in the Tempietto of the Synagogue of Turin.

Bonfanti won the 2004 Prize of the Lord Mayor at the International Biennial of Drawing in Pilsen. In 2012, his cycle of works, inspired by the biblical text “Ezechiele: 37”, was exhibited at the Museo Bernareggi in Bergamo. Bonfanti showed his work at the 2015 “A Different Perspective: Artwork by the Laureates of the Biennial of Drawing Pilsen” held at the Museum of West Bohemia. In 2016, his solo show “Limen” was held inside the historic Palazzo Storico del Credito Bergamasco in Bergamo.

Maurizio Bonfanti taught painting techniques at the Liceo Artistico from 1976 to 1983. Since 1983, he has been a teacher of drawing and visual communication at a design and advertising school in Bergamo.

“The surface of the paper on which I create my nudes suffers a series of attacks, which are an integral part of the expressive language of my works. I try to give substance to a smooth and neutral surface, and make it undergo a deterioration alongside the image, which is also intentionally eroded and scratched. The “wounded” paper is then glued to the canvas, creating the image of a body which seems to re-emerge from the past, but carries with it the fragility and energy of contemporary man.” — Maurizio Bonfanti, Excerpt from the 2021 Novitas Gallery exhibition

Second Insert Image: Maurizio Bonfanti, “Figura maschile in Paesaggio Urbano”, 2008, Mixed Technique on Paper on Canvas, 110 x 80 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Mauricio Bonfanti, “Confinato VI”, 2020, Acrylic Charcoal and Oil on Paper on MDF Panel, 30 x 30 cm, Private Collection

Radek Husak

The Artwork of Radek Husak

Born in Poland in 1984, Radek Husak ia a contemporary process-driven mixed-media artist whose works in the expanded field of print. He earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art and is currently based in London.

Through his research and experimentation, Husak developed a new approach to printmaking. He works with pigment transfers twinned with carbon-drawn elements that are either placed on paper or sandblasted aluminum panels. Blasting through the outer layer of aluminum reveals a reflective inner core upon which the pigment transfers are placed. These images are then embellished with paint, soft pastels, bodycolor, and carbon and color pencils.

Radek Husak’s work is inspired by art history, fashion, and queer theory. He combines the tradition of the nude with the large color-elements of 1950s and 1960s Pop Culture. Husak’s images, with their overlapping figurative forms, create in essence a static glitch. The edges of one body blurs and melts into the next, thereby creating sense of movement. The resulting movement effect of these bold, modern images bring to mind the early movement studies by French scientist and photographer Étienne-Jules Marey, which he produced in the 1800s.

Husak creates works in the abstract form and constructs these images by taking elements of nature, such as skies, clouds and anatomical features, fragmenting and rearranging them to form flowing patterns. He also has produced figurative work in other mediums including ceramics and stained glass.

Radek Husak has shown his work in 2021 and 2011 at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in London. The Grove Gallery and Quantus Gallery, both in London, are the venues for Husak’s first solo show, entitled “Duality” which is running from November 23 until December 22 in 2022.

Radek Husak’s work can be seen at his website located at: http://www.rhusak.co.uk His work can also be seen at Artsy located at: https://www.artsy.net/show/grove-gallery-duality?sort=partner_show_position

Bottom Insert Image: Radek Husak, “Saint Sebastian (SS5)”, 2022, Pigment Transfer, Bodycolor, Carbon and Color Pencils and Collage on Sandblasted Aluminum, Edition of 3, 84 x 60 cm, Private Collection

Burgess (Jess) Franklin Collins

The Artwork of Jess Collins

Born in Long Beach, California in August of 1923, Burgess (Jess) Franklin Collins was an American visual artist best known for his elaborate collages that addressed science, mysticism, sexuality, history and popular culture. In his early years, he read books which ranged from Proust to L. Frank Baum, listened to classical music, and constructed scrapbooks with a great aunt.

In 1942, Jess Collins entered the California Institute of Technology to study chemistry; however with the start of World War II, he was drafted in 1943 into the Army Corps of Engineers. Collins worked in a junior position at the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the production of plutonium for atomic bombs until 1946. Upon his release from military service, he continued his education at California Institute and graduated with honors in the field of radiochemistry. Collins was given a position at the Hanford Atomic Energy Project located on the Columbia River in the state of Washington.

During his employment at the Hanford site, Jess Collins began adult education classes to study painting. Due to his growing concerns about the nature of his work in the atomic energy sector and the future of the industry, he left his position and decided to pursue a full-time career in the arts. Collins moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to study art: first at the University of California at Berkeley and later at the California School of Fine Arts. Due to an estrangement with his family, Collins changed his name during this period of study to the singular Jess.

At the California School of Fine Arts, Jess studied with visual artist Elmer Bischoff, a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism in the Bay Area; abstractionist painter Edward Corbett, known for his use of the color black in his work; painter Hassel Smith, whose work went through a succession of art forms from plein air to figurative expressionism; and Clyfford Still, whose work encompassed a wide range of materials. Jess quickly became a member of the 1950s San Francisco art scene and was actively engaged in exhibitions, poetry readings and other creative activities in the area.

In 1951, Jess met poet Robert Duncan, a member of the Black Mountain College and one of the most influential post-war American poets. They began a lifelong romantic relationship that evolved into a domestic household and an artistic collaboration that became central to the development of their art and poetry. This relationship lasted until Duncan’s death in 1968, thirty-seven years later. Along with abstract expressionist Harry Jacobus, Jess and Duncan opened the King Ubu Gallery in 1952, a venue which became an important exhibition space for alternative art in San Francisco.

Inspired by a gift from Duncan of “ Une Semaine de Bonté”, Max Ernst’s surrealist collage book, Jess began making collages, or Paste-Ups, in the early 1950s. These works, which combined text and image fragments from engravings, photographs, jigsaw pieces, and comic strips, became increasingly more complex over time. Eventually the Paste-Ups would contain thousands of distinct pieces. In 1959, Jess began a series of thirty-two works, entitled “Translation”. Each of the works were painted, enlarged reproductions of found images, such as children’s book illustrations and scientific drawings from old Scientific American periodicals, After being copied on new canvases, the paintings were combined with literary texts from such authors as William Blake, Gertrude Stein, and Plato.

The “Scavenger” series was based on painted or repainted canvases found in thrift shops. Thick layers of paint were applied covering parts of the former works while leaving other image areas exposed for viewing. Built in layers, the thick new paint reinterpreted the existing work with its added texture and images. The 1959 “Narkossos” began as a pencil drawing for a painting that was based on the myth of Narcissus. This initial drawing became a large scale mixed-media work of graphite rendering and paste-up fragments featuring references from literary and popular culture. This large-scale work with original artist’s frame is currently housed in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

For the remainder of his life, Jess lived and worked in San Francisco except for a period of travel with Duncan in the mid-1950s to Europe and the Black Mountain College. The couple entertained their extensive but intimate circle of friends at their large Victorian home in the Mission District. The household was filled with artworks by Jess and their many friends, Duncan’s vast library, the couple’s recorded music collection, and many beautiful domestic objects salvaged by Jess from thrift shops. Jess had a major retrospective of his work in 1993-1994 which toured museums in San Francisco, Buffalo, and Washington, DC.

Jess died of natural causes at his San Francisco home on the second of January in 2004 at the age of eighty. His work appears in major museum collections around the country including: the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco. His work is now represented by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City.

Note: The Jess Collins Trust established an archive for Jess’s papers and writings in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The Trust, which contains images of Jess’s work, exhibition and event information, and information on Robert Duncan’s work, can be found at: https://jesscollins.org

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jess, Berkeley, California”, 1956-57, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Helen Adam, “Jess Collins, Beach Near Pidgeon Point”, Date Unknown

Third Insert Image: Jess Collins, “Untitled (Car and Male Nude), Date Unknown, Collage, 30.5 x 20.3 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jess Collins and Robert Duncan, Stinson Beach”, 1958-59

J. Carino

The Artwork of J. Carino

Based in Riverside, California, J. Carino is a figurative artist whose work illustrates the interconnection between man with his sense of self-awareness and the natural world, both literal and symbolic. A 2011 graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York City, he works in a variety of mixed-media techniques and often uses distortion and abstraction in the construction of his work’s figures.

Carino’s images depict nude, queer figures, often monumental in size, who are set in landscapes both idyllic and suffused with danger. Applying ideas from his study of the decorative arts, he explores the concepts of queerness, self-identity, queer intimacy, sensuality, and man’s relationship with the natural world through images of richly colored and patterned, layered figures and flora. During the evolution of his work’s creation, Carino often adds and removes the layers of landscape and figures to achieve the desired result.

J. Carino’s work has appeared in multiple exhibitions both in the United States and overseas. These include both the Act 1 and Act 2 Summer Stage exhibitions at Auxier/Kline in New York, the 2021 online “Eye Candy” exhibition by the WB Gallery, the 2020 Art Pride International, and, in the United Kingdom, the 2022 collective “Come Out & Play” at London’s BEERS gallery and the 2019 exhibition at Rye’s McCully & Crane Gallery, among others.

“Like many queer people, there is a dichotomy of wanting to be seen as a whole person, sexuality included, but also the fear of people seeing too much. My figures, often self portraits, inhabit landscapes of abundance and fertility, lush with ferns and fruit, like an eden where these fears dissipate. Through my work, I explore the complicated influence of intimacy, sexuality, and being seen, especially as it relates to gay relationships and our ability to connect with one another and ourselves.” —J. Carino

J. Carino’s work can be found at the artist’s site located at https://www.jcarinoart.com and also at the following gallery locations https://linktr.ee/j.carino.art

Bottom Insert Image: J. Carino, “Self Portrait”, Date Unknown, Mixed Media on Paper

Paul Klee

Paul Klee, “Tale à la Hoffmann”, 1921, Watercolor, Graphite, and Transferred Printing Ink on Paper Bordered with Metallic Foil Mounted on Cardboard, 40.3 x 32.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, on December 18th of 1879. The son of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Frick Klee, he was a talented violinist, who at the age of eleven received an invitation to play with the Bern Music Association. Klee’s attention turned from music to the visual arts; and he enrolled in 1898 at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under portrait painter Heinrich Knirr and painter and print maker Franz von Stuck.

By 1905, Klee had developed his signature techniques and had completed a series of eleven zinc-plate etchings entitled “Inventions”, which would be his first exhibited works. He also worked on a series of fifty-seven experimental works, drawings scratched on blackened glass with a needle, which included his 1906 “Portrait of My Father”. Klee’s artwork progress steadily over the nest five years, and led to his first solo exhibitions in 1910 at three Swiss cities.

During the winter of 1911, Paul Klee, through association with art critic Alfred Kubin, met and collaborated with other artists, including expressionist painter Franz Marc and abstractionist Wassily Kandinsky. After returning to Munich in 1914 from a trip to Tunisia, Klee was inspired by Tunisia’s lightly-lit landscapes and painted his first pure abstract, “In the Style of Kairouan”, a composition of colored circles and rectangles.

By 1917, critics began to cite Klee as one of the best young German artists, which led to his representation for several years by German art dealer Hans Goltz, who was a pioneer for the modernist art movement. Klee taught with great effect at the Brauhaus schools from 1921 to 1931, as did his friend Wassily Kandinsky. Along with expressionist artists Lyonel Feininger and Alexej von Jawlensky and with the support of art dealer Galka Scheyer, they formed “Die Blaue Vier (the Blue Four)” in 1923, which exhibited and lectured in the United States from 1924. A extensive collection of their work is housed in the Städtische Galerie in Munich’s museum Lenbachhaus.

Paul Klee began teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy in 1931, After the emergence of the Nazi Party to power, he was denounced as a cultural Bolshevist by the emerging Nazi Party; his home was searched by the Gestapo; and he was relieved of his professorship at the Düsseldorf Academy. Klee and his family emigrated to Switzerland in late 1933, where he continued his most prolific year of work, producing nearly five hundred works in 1933. Back in Germany in 1937, seventeen of Klee’s work were included in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in July at the Institute of Archaeology in the Hofgarten; over one hundred of Klee’s works in public collections were seized by the Nazi Party.

Beginning in late 1933, Klee began developing symptoms of scleroderma, an autoimmune disease which results in the hardening of connective tissue. Enduring the pain, he was able to continue his work; his simpler and larger designs, with heavier lines and geometric forms, enabled him to keep up his large output over his final years. Paul Klee died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on the 29th of june 1940. He is buried at Schosshalden Cemetery, Bern, Switzerland. His legacy composes approximately nine thousand works of art.

Note: Paul Klee loved the tales of the German poet, writer and painter Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, who was nicknamed “Ghost Hoffmann” in his own country. Klee’s mixed-media “Tale à la Hoffmann” appears to be loosely based on the poet’s best-known 1814 lyrical tale, “The Golden Pot”, a magical story that switches back and forth between high fantasy and everyday life in Dresden.

“The Golden Pot” recounts the trials of the pure and foolish young Anselmus and his efforts to gain entry to Atlantis, the heaven of poetry. The tree from which he first heard fateful voices speaking to him might thus be on the left; the odd, tubelike construction on the right possibly represents the glass bottle in which Anselmus found himself briefly imprisoned. The tale’s repeated references to time are reflected in the two clocks, and the vessel in the center may stand for the golden pot with the fantastic lily that gives the story its name.

Bottom Insert Image: Paul Klee, “Self-Portrait Full Face, Resting Head in Hand”, 1909, Watercolor on Paper on Cardboard, 16.7 x 13.7 cm, Private Collection

Tony Fitzpatrick

Etchings and Collages by Tony Fitzpatrick

Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1958, Tony Fitzpatrick Is an American actor and artist. In the early 1980s, he seriously began drawing with colored pencils on slate boards in the gallery “The Edge”, located in Villa Park, Illinois. Working there during the day, he tended bar at night just across the street. It was during this time that Fitzpatrick developed strong friendships with film director Jonathan Demme and Chicago radio personality and bluesman Buzz Kilman.

During the late 1980s, Fitzpatrick began exhibiting in gallery shows in New York City and Chicago, selling his work and establishing a career as an artist. An accomplished poet, he has authored and illustrated eight books, including “The Hard Angels: Drawings and Poems” in 1988 and the 2015 essay and art book “Dime Stories”. With assistance from friends and local artists Theresa James and Steve Campbell of Landfall Press, Fitzpatrick opened in 1992 his Chicago printmaking studio, Big Cat Press, which exists today as the artist exhibition space Firecat Projects.

Tony Fitzpatrick’s artistic career originally centered on multi-colored drawings on slate, later followed by works presented through printmaking. He has more recently focused on producing multi-media collage drawings, which blend cartoonish drawing, found images, text, and ephemera, such as baseball cards and matchbooks. His subjects have included: memories of his father, the cities of Chicago and New Orleans, hobo symbols, super-heroes, and Japan.

Fitzpatrick’s works are in private collections and numerous public institutions, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has done cover art for albums, such as the Neville Brothers “Yellow Moon”, nominated for the Diamond Award: Best Album Cover, and Lou Reed’s album “Big Cat”. Working as an actor, Fitzpatrick had roles in “Primal Fear”, “Philadelphia”, and “Married to the Mob”.

Alan Spazzali

Photography by Alan Spazzali

Born in Trieste, Italy, Alan Spazzali is a photographer with Dutch citizenship. He graduated with a Bachelors Degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts Decoratief in Paris. Spazzali’s post-graduate work was done at the Rietveld Modern Art Academy located in Amsterdam.

Inspired by the work of surrealist artist Max Ernst and the minimalist style of Joan Mirö, Spazzail, a private person by inclination, constructs his work using various mediums to present a personal and symbolic narrative to his images. His work has been exhibited at the Biennale of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, the Biennale Lorenzo in Florence, and the Biennale Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Alan Spazzali’s site is located at: https://alanspazzali.wordpress.com/inicio/

Tina Schwarz

Tina Schwarz, Untitled, 2014, Acrylic, Oil, Pastels, and Ink on Canvas

Born in 1977 in Friedberg, Germany, Tina Schwarz completed a residency at Hooper Projects, a private residency program for artists located in Los Angeles. She is inspired by the graphics and drawings of the Old Masters, whose basic designs she sketches on paper, using them as starting points for her paintings. Schwarz combines these motifs with the theme of linking historical and current events.

Allegorical in nature, Tina Schwarz’s creations establish reference points between current political developments and the philosophies of artists such as Francisco Goya. The human body in its vulnerability and physical presence, often broken up in form and transformed, is presented as the central focus of her work. Paintings by Tina Schwarz has been exhibited at both Slag Gallery in New York City and Galerie Korfeld in Berlin.

Leonardo Lanzolla

Leonardo Lanzolla, “Visionary Influences to Believe”, Date Unknown, Mixed Media on Board, 12 x 16 Inches

From Torino, Italy, Leonardo Lanzolla was born in Torino, Italy, in 1958. He is a self-taught artist, influenced by Miro, Cobra avant-garde, art brut, folk art, Dubuffet, Basquiat, urban graffiti and cave paintings. His practice is very direct and unpretentious, displaying keenness for experimentation.

Leonardo Lanzolla studied in Torino and moved in 1986 to Seattle where he now lives and makes art. His timeless, colorful and original works are in private collections around the globe and have been featured in notable exhibits in France and Sweden.

Sean Landers

Sean Landers, “Painted Desert (Markhor)”, 2015, Oil on Linen, 86 x 64 Inches

Born in 1962 in Palmer, Massachusetts, Sean Landers received his B.F.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1984, and his M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art in 1986. He currently lives and works in New York City,

Sean Landers is an American conceptual artist, best known for using his personal experience as public subject matter and for utilizing diverse styles and media in a performative manner. Through the use of multiple mediums, Landers reveals the process of artistic creation through humor and gravity , reality and fantasy.

Michael Goro

Michael Goro, “La Belle Fenetre”, Etching / Engraving, Date Unknown

“Looking for subject matter I find simple things that we see every day, things that become symbolic once they are taken out of context. I experiment with the juxtaposition of places, faces, and architectural designs that reflect my diverse personal experiences. My story is a vivid illustration of the end of the last century – a time of deconstruction, discontinuity, and dislocation. I find that black-and-white prints convey contradictory images better than any other medium by reducing them to the most basic color contrast. My work provides the full spectrum of techniques ranging from renaissance engraving to digital photogravure.” – Michael Goro

Ian Ingram

Mixed-Media Work by Ian Ingram

Ian Ingram’s self-portraits are autobiographical reflections of meaningful events, such as his wedding or the birth of his child; that is, times when a decision or an action changes one’s worldview. Beyond serving as a vehicle to relay his feelings to the outside world, Ingram’s drawings become unflinching windows into his subconscious, and serve as a tool for his own self-reflections and ruminations. His hyper-realistic and intensely emotional self-portraits arrest the viewer with a direct gaze that at times seems almost uncomfortably intimate.

Ian Ingram’s tightly rendered canvases are dreamlike, the result of Ingram’s use of a range of techniques. From careful cross-contours, grids and lines to amorphous passages of blended charcoal, each method plays a role in building Ingram’s expression of the human face’s subtleties. Working with charcoal, pastel, ink and watercolor, Ingram also incorporates more unconventional materials such as beads, beeswax, metallic thread, silver leaf, string and even butterfly wings.