Alexander Liberman, Large Modernist Alexander Liberman Contemporary Mixed Media Painting Svet III, 1984

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Alexander Liberman (1912-1999): Svet III Mixed media on board, 1984, signed 'Alexander Liberman' and dated at bottom= Hand signed, titled … Read more Alexander Liberman (1912-1999): Svet III Mixed media on board, 1984, signed 'Alexander Liberman' and dated at bottom= Hand signed, titled and dated on the reverse. 92 x 90 in. (overall), This piece is not framed as designed. Exhibited: Andre Emmerich Gallery, NY, Alexander Liberman: Recent Work, 1986. Provenance: Andre Emmerich Gallery, NY; The Abrams Family Collection. Harry N. Abrams and his son Robert amassed a collection of fine art and illustrated books from an industry they pioneered. Isamu Noguchi, Alex Katz, Bob Thompson, Marisol, Chryssa, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana, Fernando Botero, Marisol, John Wesley, Kenneth Noland, Christo, Lee Bontecou, Dan Christensen, Arman and more were included. The collection charts a remarkable and fearless story of contemporary art: there were no aesthetic boundaries to their collecting in terms of abstraction versus figuration, gender, racial or nationalistic guidelines—instead, the supreme unifying factor above all was quality. Alexander Semyonovitch Liberman (1912 – 1999) was a Ukrainian-American magazine editor, publisher, painter, (oil painting sand lithograph works) photographer, and sculptor. He held senior artistic positions during his 32 years at Condé Nast Publications. Alex Lieberman was born into a Jewish family in Kyiv. When his father took a post advising the Russian Soviet government, the family moved to Moscow. Life there became difficult, and his father secured permission from Lenin and the Politburo to take his son to London in 1921. Young Alexander Lieberman was educated in Ukraine, England, and France, where he took up life as a "White émigré" in Paris. He began his publishing career in Paris in 1933–1936 with the early pictorial magazine Vu, where he worked under Lucien Vogel as art director, then managing editor, working with photographers such as Brassaï, André Kertész, and Robert Capa. After emigrating to New York in 1941, he began working for Condé Nast Publications, rising to the position of editorial director, which he held from 1962 to 1994. He reshaped the look and layout of every publication he touched with his avant-garde vision. He orchestrated, for example, the use of Jackson Pollock abstract expressionist paintings in Cecil Beaton’s famous fashion shoot. Only in the 1950s did Liberman take up painting and, later, metal sculpture. His highly recognizable welded and painted steel sculptures are assembled from industrial objects (segments of steel I-beams, pipes, drums, and such), often painted in uniform bright colors. In a 1986 interview concerning his formative years as a sculptor and his aesthetic, Liberman said, "I think many works of art are screams, and I identify with screams." Before finding success in painting and sculpture, Liberman was a photographer. Beginning in 1948, he spent his summers visiting and photographing a generation of modern European artists working in their studios including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Maurice Utrillo, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, and Pablo Picasso. Liberman spent twelve years tracking down some of his favorite artists and photographing them in their studios. Among the 24 creators featured in the exhibit were Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Max Ernst and Jean Dubuffet. And three women: Natalia Goncharova, Marie Laurencin and Germaine Richier. In 1959 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited Liberman's photographs of artists and their studios. A year later the images were collected in Liberman's first book, The Artist in his Studio published by Viking Press (Kazanjian and Tomkins, 1993) Awards Gold Medal for Design, Exposition Internationale, Paris, 1937 Doctor of Fine Arts: Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, 1980 Publications La Femme Française dans l'Art, 1936 (in French) The Art and Technique of Color Photography: A Treasury of Color Photographs by the Staff Photographers of Vogue, House & Garden, Glamour, introduction by Aline B. Louchheim, Simon & Schuster (New York), 1951 The Artist in His Studio, foreword by James Thrall Soby, Viking Press (New York), 1960, revised edition, Random House (New York), 1988 (photographer) Greece, Gods, and Art, introduction by Robert Graves, commentaries by Iris C. Love, Viking Press (New York), 1968 Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970, Garamond Pridemark Press (Baltimore, Maryland), 1970. By James Pilgrim and Alexander Liberman. Exhibition catalogue for the Corcoran Gallery of Art Introduction to Vogue Book of Fashion Photography 1919–1979, by Polly Devlin (New York), 1979 Marlene: An Intimate Photographic Memoir, Random House (New York), 1992 (photographer) Campidoglio: Michelangelo's Roman Capitol, essay by Joseph Brodsky, Random House (New York), 1994 (photographer) Then: Photographs, 1925–1995, preface by Calvin Tomkins, selected and designed by Charles Churchward, Random House (New York), 1995 Liberman's work is held in the following collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art Storm King Art Center Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum Tate Gallery Guggenheim Museum Akron Art Museum Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park See less