Walter Kuhlman

Walter Kuhlman (1918–2009) was a 20th-century American painter and printmaker. In the late 1940s and 1950s, he was a core member of the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism. He later worked in a representational style related to American Figurative Expressionism.
Walter Kuhlman was born in 1918 in St Paul, Minnesota to Peter and Marie Kuhlman, Danish immigrants. Part of his childhood was spent living with an aunt in Saeby, a coastal town in northern Denmark.In 1936, Kuhlman enrolled at the St. Paul School of Art, where he studied with Cameron Booth (1892–1980), a modernist who had trained in Europe with André Lhote and Hans Hofmann. Kuhlman completed his studies at the St. Paul School in 1939, and then taught there. He was also enrolled at the University of Minnesota, from which he earned a bachelor's degree in 1941.
During World War II, Kuhlman was drafted into the U.S. Navy and assigned a position as a medical illustrator. He married his first wife, Nora, who was also in military service. After both were discharged in 1945, the couple lived briefly in New Orleans and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Kuhlman enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in 1947. (This is now the San Francisco Art Institute.) The CSFA faculty, notably Clyfford Still, encouraged an exploration of Abstract Expressionism and thus established San Francisco as a recognized center distinct from the New York School. Kuhlman was among the core group of San Francisco Abstract Expressionists.

 At this time, Kuhlman became interested in printmaking. He joined five other artists associated with CSFA – Richard Diebenkorn, James Budd Dixon, John Hultberg, Frank Lobdell, and George Stillman – to create a portfolio of 17 lithographs. This 1948 portfolio, titled Drawings, has been acknowledged as a landmark in Abstract Expressionist printmaking. The group has been referred to as "The Sausalito Six," because most, including Kuhlman, lived in Sausalito, north of San Francisco. Kuhlman also produced important intaglio prints at CFSA.
The artist went to Paris in 1950, and he was among a group of Americans who exhibited in the 1951 Salon des réalités nouvelles (or "new realities"). It was among the first exhibitions in Europe to feature American Abstract Expressionism. Kuhlman was also included in a second Paris exhibition, Un art autre ("art of another kind"), curated by Michel Tapié.

Kuhlman returned to his home in Sausalito, and he continued his focus on Abstract Expressionist painting through the decade of the 1950s. While some early abstracts reveal experimentation with gestural abstraction, Kuhlman's later abstracts show an affinity for Color Field painting. His work was included in the United States exhibition at the 1955 International Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil. Kuhlman received a fellowship in 1957 from the Chicago-based Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.In 1960, Kuhlman became a member of the faculty of the University of New Mexico. At the same time, the artist became increasingly drawn away from Abstract Expressionism and toward figurative imagery. This figurative work can be enigmatic, often seeking to express subjective emotional and archetypal themes. Although this work is highly personal, it can be placed within the broad movement of American Figurative Expressionism.

 Kuhlman left the University of New Mexico in 1965. After teaching stints at Stanford University and Santa Clara University, Kuhlman joined the faculty at Sonoma State University. The California Arts Council awarded him a Maestro Grant as an "Outstanding Artist and Teacher" in 1982. Kuhlman retired from teaching in 1988.
While teaching, and after his retirement, Kuhlman continued to paint and exhibit. He also became committed to monotype printmaking. Kuhlman continued to live in Sausalito, with his second wife, Tulip. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1995. His papers were accepted into the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.The artist died in 2009.Wikipedia

Salvatore Fiume

Salvatore Fiume (23 October 1915 – 3 June 1997) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, writer and stage designer. His works are kept in some of the most important museums in the world, among which the Vatican Museums, the Hermitage of Saint Petersburg, the Museum of Modern Art of New York, the Pushkin Museum of Moscow and the Galleria d'arte moderna of Milan

 

Salvatore Fiume was born in Comiso, Sicily, in 1915. At the age of sixteen, thanks to his enthusiasm and his passion for art, he won a scholarship to attend the Royal Institute for Book Illustration at Urbino, where he mastered printing techniques from etching to lithography. He ended his studies at the age of twenty-one and moved to Milan, where he came into contact with intellectuals and artists such as Salvatore Quasimodo, Dino Buzzati and Raffaele Carrieri. In 1938, at the age of twenty-three, Fiume moved to Ivrea, where he became art director of Tecnica e organizzazione (Technique and Organization), a cultural magazine sponsored and overseen by Adriano Olivetti; during this time, he wrote his first successful literary work, the novel Viva Gioconda!, published in Milan in 1943 by editor Bianchi-Giovini.

Although the literary circle he attended was stimulating, he wanted to devote himself more to painting, and in 1946 he left Ivrea to settle in a 19th-century silk mill in Canzo, not far away from Como, where he began an intense and versatile search for pictorial, sculptural and architectural expression. In the same year, in Milan, a set of drawings in tempera and Indian ink was shown to the art critic Raffaele Carrieri and to the painter and writer Alberto Savinio, brother of the metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico, who was thrilled.Wikipedia

Avant Garde Art John Christoforou

John Christoforou is a French painter born in London to Greek parents in 1921.Il developed in his work, a strong expressionist painting, where black dominates.
The themes developed by the figurative painter are those of the war, births, crucifixions, including scarecrows.(artfinding.com)

 In 1941 he begins four years of active service in the Royal Air Force two years of which in air-sea rescue missions over the Indian Ocean for victims of the war and cyclones. After demobilization, he subsequently devotes his time to painting, while also discovering modern and contemporary art during visits to the principal museums of London.In 1949 Christoforou gets his first solo show in London at the Twenty Brook Street Gallery. He settles in the working class district of Shepherds Bush, where he embarks on a period of intense activity. Due to the figurative elements and expressionist content in his painting from the very beginning, Christoforou stands as an outsider in the art world of the time.

 

 With the return of figuration in painting at the beginning of the 1960’s. Christoforou is recognized as one of the forerunners of the movement known as “New Figuration”. This important period of transition between the abstract art of the 1950’s and the figuration appearing in the early 1960’s, is often overlooked in books of art history. He receives the award of the International Critics Association (ICA), London, and have numerous exhibitions follow in Sweden,  Belgium, and Holland, and in 1966, Galerie Birch presents Christoforou´s  first one-man exhibition in Denmark and with huge success which leads to more in 72-76-80-99.In 1990 Christoforou acquires French nationality. John Christoforou have had many exhibitions all over Europe and is represented in many countries museums.(galeriebirch.dk)

Avant Garde Art