Signed lower right, ‘K. Sanzenbach’ for Keith Sanzenbach (American, 1931-1964) and dated 1956. Additionally signed, verso, and with the artist’s Lagunitas, California address.

The influential Bay Area critic, Thomas Albright, in his monumental history, ‘Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980’, commented that Keith Sanzenbach “..made some of the era’s most interesting paintings”. Peter Plagens, in ‘Sunshine Muse, Contemporary Art on the West Coast’, deemed him to be “… the beats… only decent formal artist”. Frida Forsgren, in her outstanding study of the period, ‘Beat Lives, 13 San Francisco-based Artists of the Fifties’, observes that Sanzenbach showed “…a strong artistic personality with a raw creative energy and a distinctly personal style”. She deems him “..one of the most talented artists of the early 1960’s California Beat scene.”

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Keith Sanzenbach studied at Syracuse University, graduating in 1954 with a Bachelors in Fine Arts. He first moved to Berkeley in 1955, then settled in San Francisco a year later to pursue a career as an artist. Sanzenbach showed his works in bars and local galleries and lived on a houseboat in Sausalito with fellow-artists Wallace Berman, Jack Carrigg and Arthur Richer. The beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, remembered living on Gough Street above the artist and his pretty wife, Nikki. Sanzenbach’s earliest works are figurative, but he later developed an abstract, visionary style characterized by the juxtaposition of intense colors. In 1962, to avoid the “influx of wannabe beatniks” flooding North Beach, he removed to the wildness of Big Sur where, two years later, he was to die, unrecognized at the age of 33.

Reference:
Albright, Thomas, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945 – 1980, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1985, s. 103, 105; Merrill Green, Art as a muscular principle. 10 artists and San Francisco 1950-1065/roots and new directions/ mount Holyoak college 1975, pp. 82-84; Frida Forsgren, San Francisco Beat Art in Norway, Forlaget Press, Oslo, 2008, pp. 156-157; Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse, Contemporary Art on the West Coast, Praeger, 1974; Frida Forsgren, Beat Lives, 13 San Francisco-based Artists of the Fifties, Portal Books, 2013, page 48-53; et al.

Signed lower right, ‘Rob Leepin’ for Robert Leepin (Danish, 1884-1967) and painted circa 1925.

Robert Leepin first studied under Lauritz Tuxen and Viggo Johansen at Denmark’s Royal Academy of Art (1909-1914). Beginning in 1921, Leepin took study trips abroad including to Moscow (1921), France (1923-26), Italy (1924, 1930), Algiers (1927-28) and Norway (1950). Leepin’s work testifies to the influence of the early years of Danish Modernism and the artist’s experience of working beside the artists of the first generation of the School of Paris. Over the course of a long and successful career, Leepin exhibited widely, including in Paris at the Salon d’Automne (1924), at Malmo (1914) and, regularly, at the Charlottenborg Museum from 1930. Robert Leepin’s work can be found in numerous private and public collections including the permanent collections of the state museums of Denmark.

Reference:
Weilbach, Dansk Kunstnerleksikon, the Castle and Cultural Agency, Copenhagen; et al.

Vintage, 1975, Leo Castelli New York Gallery exhibition poster; signed, lower right, in felt pen, ‘R. Lichtenstein’ for Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997).

Roy Lichtenstein first studied under Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League of New York, and the following year under Hoyt L. Sherman at the College of the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus. He served in the army from 1943 to 1946, after which he resumed his studies and was hired as an instructor. He obtained an MFA in 1949. In 1951, the Carlebach Gallery, New York, organized a solo exhibition of his semi-abstract paintings of the Old West. Shortly thereafter, the artist moved to Cleveland, where he continued painting while working as an engineering draftsman to support his growing family.

From 1957 to 1960 Lichtenstein obtained a teaching position at the State University of New York, Oswego. By then he had begun to include loosely drawn cartoon characters in his increasingly abstract canvases. From 1960 to 1963 he lived in New Jersey while teaching at Douglass Residential College, a division of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He met artists such as Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, George Segal, and Robert Whitman, all of whom were experimenting with different kinds of art based on everyday life. In 1961 he began to make paintings consisting exclusively of comic-strip figures, and introduced his Benday-dot grounds, lettering, and balloons; he also started cropping images from advertisements. From 1964 into the next decade, he successively depicted stylized landscapes, consumer-product packaging, adaptations of paintings by famous artists, geometric elements from Art Deco design (in the Modern series), parodies of the Abstract Expressionists’ style (in the Brushstrokes series), and explosions. They all underlined the contradictions of representing three dimensions on a flat surface.

In the early 1970s he explored this formal question further with his abstract Mirrors and Entablatures series. From 1974 through the 1980s, he probed another long-standing issue: the concept of artistic style. All his series of works played with the characteristics of well-known 20th-century art movements. Lichtenstein continued to question the role of style in consumer culture in his 1990s series Interiors, which included images of his own works as decorative elements. In his attempt to fully grasp and expose how the forms, materials, and methods of production have shaped the images of Western society, the artist also explored other mediums such as polychromatic ceramic, aluminum, brass, and serigraphs.

Beginning in 1962, the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, held regular exhibitions of the artist’s work. Lichtenstein participated in the Venice Biennale in 1966, and was honored with solo exhibitions in 1967 and 1968 at the Pasadena Art Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, respectively. The artist was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1994, three years before his death on September 30, 1997.

(with thanks to the Guggenheim Museum)

An abstract Lithograph by Lebadang , known as Hoi ( Vietnamese , French 1921 – 2015) of a horse in red with a hint of blue, yellow and black. The art work is signed by the artist “Lebadang” in the bottom right and also numbered 136/190. The lithograph is finely matted in pink and presented in a custom frame with glass top to protect the artwork.

About the artist:
Lebadang was a Vietnamese-born French artist best known for his densely textured mixed-media paintings of molded pasteboard, limestone, and pigment on burlap or canvas surfaces. Lebandang’s work often depict forms of horses, floral imagery, Vietnamese villages, and other subjects, seemingly oscillating between abstraction and representation a muted background. Born in 1921 in Bich-La-Dong, Vietnam, Lebadang emigrated to Paris in 1939 where he fought in the French Resistance Army against the Nazi invasion. He was subsequently captured and held in a prison camp, eventually being released and going on to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Today, Lebadang’s works are in the collections of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Rockefeller Collection in New York, and the Phoenix Museum of Art, among others. Lebadangon died March 8, 2015 in Paris, France. Source: Artnet.

Dimensions: Framed – 14.5” H x 18.5” W x 1” D
Unmated – 8.25” H x 12” W

A captivating oil on canvas painting, titled ‘Street of Jerusalem”. The artist M. Schneider skillfully captures the essence of this revered city. The palette of pale green hues breathes life into the cobblestone pathway, evoking a sense of tranquility and antiquity. The arched passage, rendered in soft beige tones, beckons viewers to wander through its timeless corridors, each step echoing with centuries of history and reverence. A single ray of sunlight breaks through the narrow alleyways, illuminating the scene with a divine warmth. The painting is signed in the bottom left corner, ‘Schneider’ and is matted with precision and encased in a custom gold frame. This artwork stands as a testament to the enduring allure of Jerusalem, one of the oldest and most sacred cities in the world.

Dimensions: Framed – 20” H x 15.75” W x 1” D
Unmated – 16” H x 11.5” W

Vintage 1998 giclee print on paper by Bev Doolittle, titled “No Respect”, ground squirrel vs. grizzly bear. Printed by Greenwich Workshop with their stamp on lower right corner and printed logo lower left in image. Likely a gallery showing or book promotion edition. Unsigned. Unframed.

Antique shoe sculpture made from original shoe forms. Bring the past to life again in an interesting way with 3 wood shoe forms. These were for women’s shoes/boots with heels. Artist TMT has refashioned into a beautiful sculpture to adorn any boudior or room.

Dark moody still life of fruit and fabric. Really strong mid century vibe with its muted colors of black gray cream with the touch of red. Very thick textured paint. Signature lower right but hard to read. See all pic. Even being unframed it still could be proudly hung on wall as is. Gorgeous

Available for your consideration: Acrylic on board cityscape scene. It depicts a man painting his surroundings. Original frame

Vintage Cityscape tinted Photograph. Tape is still on the front of the glass as shown. painted wooden frame. Vintage Condition Consistent with Age as Pictured. Stand not included.

Dimensions. 19 W ; 1/2 D ; 15 H