Artmain

09/05/2026

09/04/2026

09/03/2026

Magnolias in Bloom

Stanley Spencer (British, 1891–1959)
Magnolias, 1938
Oil on canvas

Stanley Spencer is best known for paintings that brought together everyday life, landscape and intensely personal observation. His home village of Cookham in Berkshire was a constant source of inspiration throughout his career.



Which flower would you choose to paint?

08/24/2026

Marion Post Wolcott (American photographer) 1910 - 1990
Baptismal Service of Primitive Baptist Church in Triplett Creek, Rowan County, near Morehead, Kentucky, s.d.
gelatin silver print, printed later
21.59 x 29.21 cm. (8.5 x 11.5 in.)
signed and titled in pencil on verso
private collection
© photo Bonhams

Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7, 1910. Her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School.
Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer. Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography.

While in Vienna she saw some of the N**i attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. At the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. When she found that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin kept sending her to do "ladies' stories," Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration, and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately.
Post's photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered.
In 1941 she met Lee Wolcott. When she had finished her assignments for the FSA she married him, and later had to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of travelling and living overseas.

Source: Wikipedia

08/10/2026

Giorgio Morandi - Matura Morta (Still Life), 1945. Oil on canvas, 30 x 35 cm. @ Sotheby's, Milan

08/10/2026

“When you wake up asking ‘What’s wrong?’ you’ll find plenty that’s wrong. But, when you wake up asking ‘What’s possible?’ you’ll discover opportunities you never noticed before.”
Christine Caine

Lauritis Tuxen - Morning Atmosphere: From My House in Skagen, 1916.

08/10/2026

Niki de Saint Phalle (French sculptor, painter and filmmaker) 1930 - 2002
Baigneurs ou Danseuse (Bathers or Dancers), 1980-81
painted polyester resin
47 x 47 x 30.5 cm. (18.5 x 18.5 in.)
stamped with the artist's name and numbered 'Niki 24/150' (on the underside)
Executed in 1980-1981. This work is number 24 from an edition of 150 plus 20 artist's proofs.
private collection
© photo Christie's

Niki de Saint Phalle (born Catherine-Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle) had a difficult and traumatic childhood and education, which she wrote about decades later. After an early marriage and two children, she began creating art in a naïve, experimental style. She first received worldwide attention for angry, violent assemblages which had been shot by fi****ms. These evolved into Nanas, light-hearted, whimsical, colorful, large-scale sculptures of animals, monsters, and female figures. Her most comprehensive work was the Tarot Garden, a large sculpture garden containing numerous works ranging up to house-sized creations. Her idiosyncratic style has been called "outsider art"; she had no formal training in art, but associated freely with many other contemporary artists, writers, and composers.

Throughout her creative career, she collaborated with other well-known artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, composer John Cage, and architect Mario Botta, as well as dozens of less-known artists and craftspersons. For several decades, she worked especially closely with Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, who also became her second husband. In her later years, she suffered from multiple chronic health problems attributed to repeated exposure to glass fibers and petrochemical fumes from the experimental materials she had used in her pioneering artworks, but she continued to create prolifically until the end of her life.

A critic has observed that Saint Phalle's "insistence on exuberance, emotion and sensuality, her pursuit of the figurative and her bold use of color have not endeared her to everyone in a minimalist age". She was well known in Europe, but her work was little-seen in the US, until her final years in San Diego. Another critic said: "The French-born, American-raised artist is one of the most significant female and feminist artists of the 20th century, and one of the few to receive recognition in the male-dominated art world during her lifetime".

Source: Wikipedia

08/10/2026