Bateba, (Lobi for – carved wooden figure), are anthropomorphic effigies created and used by the Lobi peoples of Western Africa as intermediaries to the spirits who watch over them. The Lobi are a small part, (less than 200,000 en masse), of an ethnic group of people originating from today’s Ghana that now occupy parts of…
Stanton MacDonald-Wright – 1911 Early modernist figure study by Stanton MacDonald-Wright. Stanton MacDonald-Wright, 1890-1973, was an American modernist and co-founder of synchronism. MacDonald-Wright was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. His first name, Stanton, was chosen to honor the women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As a young man, Staton enjoyed a fairly privileged life and studied…
Boyer Gonzales Jr. – 1950s-60s Abstract landscape by Boyer Gonzales. Boyer Gonzales, (Washington, 1909-1987), was an American modern artist who worked in Texas, California, and Washington. Gonzales was born in Galveston, Texas, and raised there and Woodstock, New York. He studied at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, in Roanoke, with his father…
Rinaldo Cuneo – 1930s Oil painting on canvas by American artist Rinaldo Cuneo. Rinaldo Cuneo, (1877-1939), was an American painter of Italian-American descent who spent the majority of his life in San Francisco, CA, living in the predominantly Italian-American neighborhood of North Beach. Cuneo was known as The Painter of San Francisco. He studied in…
Oscar Chelimsky – 1954 Mixed media painting on heavy paper by Oscar Chelimsky. Oscar Chelimsky, 1923-2010, was an American-born painter that spent the prime of his painting career in Paris, France. Chelimsky studied at Cooper Union in New York, the Art Students League in New York from 1939 to 1943, and the Hans Hofmann School…
Peter Camfferman – 1930s Abstract forest scene by Pacific Northwest modernist Peter Marienus Camfferman. Peter Camfferman, 1890-1957, was born in The Hague, Holland, and emigrated to the US at a young age. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Fine Art where he met his future wife, Margaret Gove Camfferman. Peter and Margaret traveled, created…
Seymour Franks -1945 Abstracted cityscape of New York City from 1945 by American artist Seymour Franks. Seymour Franks, 1916-1981, was born in New York City in 1916. At the age of 16, Franks was stricken with polio. He went on to work for the WPA and later studied at the National Academy of Design in…
Han Dynasty Ladle Green glazed, red clay bowl from the Han dynasty, China (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.). From the collection of June Schwarcz. Acquired from James Snidle Gallery, San Francisco in 2015. This bowl has a squared-off form with an arching handle and a green glaze with silvering highlights that may be due to…
Oronzo Gasparo – 1940 1940 still life painting by Oronzo Gasparo. Oronzo Vito Gasparo, 1903-1969, was an Italian-born American modernist painter. Gasparo studied, worked, and exhibited in New York in the 1930s and 1940s and was highly influenced by his mentor and teacher, Preston Dickinson. He worked for the WPA during the great depression and…
Robert Breer – c.1960 Abstract oil painting on canvas by Robert Breer. Robert Carlton Breer, 1926-2011, was an American avant-garde painter and filmmaker. Breer was born in Detroit, Michigan. He moved to California in the 1940s and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University. Breer then sailed to France where he studied and…
