May 2018
We have been busy discovering new artworks for our clients and are pleased to share them with you.
We have begun the representation of Betty F. Helfen (1929-2019), your Gallery Director’s Mother, who was highly skilled in the medium of cloisonné enamel, as exemplified in Wild Poppies, which was exhibited at the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, and Irises. Helfen’s Rivalry is an ode to Japanese kabuki theater and won Honorable Mention in a competition in Japan. Over the years Helfen’s artworks were awarded First Prize at numerous LA County Fairs. Each of her artworks has a timeless elegance and beauty.
As you know, our Gallery’s focus is on both California and American Modernism. Recently, we discovered the work of Pennsylvania Modernist Thomas Flavell, whose renderings of buildings in White Barn are reminiscent of the work of the Precisionists, who depicted with exactitude the world around them. Little Blue Bell has a Regionalist feel in the depiction of the buildings in the foreground and background of a Pennsylvania backyard. Flavell was a well-exhibited artist whose work is held in major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
We also discovered the Modernist renderings of Harvey Prusheck, an Ohio Modernist whose works, while rare, all evoke a sensuality only seen in Modernist paintings of the 1930s. In Village in Utah, Prusheck’s blue-green palette lends a dreamlike quality to the depiction of a small town. His Still Life is an education in the Modernist rendition of everyday objects. It is both beautiful and serene with an intense Art Deco aesthetic.
