Orange and Green Fine Art Essay

Orange and Green
Fine Art by Noted Artists
Visual Essay

1
Green Pears
Milton Clark Avery (1885-1965), American
Oil on board, 13" x 5" (w x h), 1959
Grogan & Company, Boston 2023 auction, sold $18,750

Milton Avery (1885-1965) always painted in his home, never in a separate studio, and his subjects were those people and scenes close at hand. He said, "I like to seize one sharp instant in nature, imprison it by means of ordered shapes and spatial relationships. To this end, I eliminate and simplify, leaving apparently nothing but color and pattern. I am not seeking pure abstraction; rather the purity and essence of the idea-expressed in its simplest form." Although successful in his lifetime and friends with some of the leading artists of his era, he was seventy-seven years old when he was finally honored with a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1962.

2
Two Panels: Green Orange
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), American
Oil on canvas, 107" x 70" (w x h), 1970
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was a noted painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, color field painting and minimalism. His works exemplify simplicity by emphasizing line, color and form, often using bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York. Kelly commented, "I realized I didn't want to compose pictures ... I wanted to find them. I felt that my vision was choosing things out there in the world and presenting them. To me the investigation of perception was of the greatest interest. There was so much to see, and it all looked fantastic to me."

3
Chinese Evergreen
Leonard Havens (1914-1973), American
Color woodcut, #1 of 12, 8" x 12" (w x h), 1941
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Leonard Havens (1914-1973), born in Pittsburgh, attended the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and, afterward, created his woodcuts and other prints under the auspices of the W. P. A. New Deals Federal Art Project. He often found inspiration in Chicago's urban landscape before he was called to serve in the Second World War. Eventually he earned degrees from Northeastern University, in Boston. Leonard M. Havens' work, mostly linocuts, woodcuts, lithographs and watercolors have been sold at auctions with prices ranging from $140 USD to $300 USD.

4
Summer in the Garden
Roger Fry (1866-1934), British
Oil on panel, 22" x 18" (w x h), 1911
The Rollins Museum of Art, Orlando, FL

Source: Wiki (edited):
This is a painting of Vanessa Bell, an English painter and one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury Group, who was also the sister of Virginia Woolf. Vanessa Bell had intimate relationships with art critic Roger Fry and with bisexual painter Duncan Grant. See another oil study of Vanessa Bell wearing the same sweater and dress painted the following year HERE.

Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. As a painter Fry was experimental (his work included a few abstracts), but his best pictures were straightforward naturalistic portraits. He didn't consider himself a great artist, "only a serious artist with some sensibility and taste". Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of the recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry". His success lay largely in alerting an educated public to a compelling version of recent artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde.

5
Day Lily 2
Alex Katz (1927- ), American
Lithograph, #75/90, 28" x 21" (w x h), 1969
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase

Source: Wiki  and Whitney (edited)
Since 1951, Alex Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. This vibrant illustration of a large, orange lily with yellow highlights and dark spots on its petals, set against a dark green background has a stylized, almost abstract quality, with visible brush strokes.

6
Seated Woman in a Green Robe /
Femme assise dans une robe verte
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), French
Oil on canvas, circa 1890
Private Collection

Source: Archive (edited)
Renoir captured the transient effects of light and color, which is evident in this particular piece. The green of her robe contrasts to the warm, reddish-brown background, isolating and emphasizing her figure. Renoir's technique, characterized by the Impressionist movement, showcases his ability to capture the interplay of light and color, as well as the spontaneity of the moment. The brush strokes are visible and dynamic, giving the painting a sense of life and movement.

7
Entrance I / Sisaantulo I
Juhana Blomstedt (1937- ), Finnish
Serigraph, #58/100, 8" x 14" (w x h), 2001
Ateneum Art Museum, Property of the Finnish State

Juhana Blomstedt (1937- ) was one of the central figures in Finnish abstract art whose career extended over five decades. His father, Aulis Blomstedt, was an architect and his mother, Heidi Sibelius, was a ceramist, daughter of Jean Sibelius, regarded as Finland's greatest composer of symphonic music. Juhana studied under Sam Vanni at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts from 1957 to 1961. Sam Vanni had a decisive influence on Blomstedt's conception of art. Juhana belonged to the second generation of Finnish modernists. Of this group he lived and worked abroad for the longest period, living in Paris intermittently from 1966 to 1972. He was visiting professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and design in 1971-1972 and Head of painting at the Finnish Art Academy School and professor from 1989-1994.

8
Lady in a Green Jacket /
Dame in gruner Jacke
August Macke (1887-1914), German
Oil on canvas, 17" x 18" (w x h), 1913
Haubrich Collection,
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Source: Wiki (edited)
August Macke (1887-1914) was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter). He traveled to Tunisia in April 1914 with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet. It was fundamental for the creation of the luminist approach of his final period, during which he produced a series of works now considered masterpieces. Unfortunately, he was one of the young German artists who died in the First World War.

This painting was one of the first paintings created by Macke, after he moved to Hilterfingen, in Switzerland. Macke had developed this favorite motif, a walk in the park, since the beginning of his career. Macke said: "The generally accepted attribute of men is bowler hats, and I put bowlers on them. Women with slender necks and hips hold umbrellas in their hands to protect them from light." The woman in a green jacket at the center of the composition, presented half-turned, divides his canvas into two vertical parts. The branches of the trees extend from each other almost at right angles; their drawing was borrowed from A Treatise on Painting, compiled from the theoretical works of Leonardo da Vinci. Macke studied the book during his stay in Berlin in 1907-1908. The houses on both banks of the river are conceived in simplified forms, and the mountains in the distance are represented in the form of triangles. His reduction of familiar objects to simple geometric shapes was characteristic of early Cubism.

See his pencil sketch study for this painting at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany HERE.