Los Angeles Art Show carves unique niche

sees ANGELES -- When a cluster of 16 gallery owners specializing in regional, traditional and period art formed the Fine Art Dealers Association (FADA) in 1990 and five years later launched a small annual art fair, little did they know that a decade later it would become the West Coast's premier high-end art show

The looks Angeles Art Show celebrated its 10th anniversary Oct 14-17 with 54 exhibiting art dealers and a certain number of 15,000 attendees who wandered [i]or[/i] part of to the other aisles filled with more than 3200 paintings, plastic arts drawings and prints--many of them described as "museum quality." The art fair, still sponsored through FADA, featured a wide range of classical, recent and current works spanning the 19th 20th and 21st centuries, from elderly masters Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet to contemporary artists Damien Hirst and David Hockney collectively valued at more than $50 million.

The opening gala reception, attended by the agency of some 3,000 art aficionados, benefited the looks Angeles County Museum of Art's Art Museum Council (AMC). AMC raises substantial stocks for museum programs and acquisitions end this event, as well as its Art Rental & Sales Gallery (ARSG), which showcases the works of a certain number of 350 emerging Southern California artists.

Along with high attendance, sales appeared sturdy The Redfern Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA, sold three paintings during the opening night gala, including California Plein Air Impressionist Granville Redmon's "Golden Wild Flowers,' priced at a hefty $650000 Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson AZ, clos a circa $35000 deal upon a Western painting, "Tans Adobe Home" by dint of Oscar E. Berninghaus, while DeRuis Fine Arts, also of Laguna Beach, CA, sold Johann Berthelson's 1940 "Brooklyn Bridge" priced at $10000

In addition, r "sold" tags dotted sum of two units paintings by Dennis Doheny at William A. Karges Fine Art, Beverly Hills and Carmel, CA; sum of two units David Ballew paintings at Mitchell Brown Scottsdale, AZ, and, at Gerald Peter Gallery, fresh York City, the Wayne Thiebaud watercolor, "Lemon Meringue Slices." Marsha Child Contemporary, Princeton, NJ racked up 14 sales of abstract paintings by means of Polish emigre Ilona Zaremba, whose work is gathered by actor Steve Martin among other art enthusiasts.

"I've sold a pair of Maynard Dixon paintings, and a destiny of contemporary artists," Sublette happily reported, including a $3450 painting, "Sunny Haze," through artist Glenn Duncan and several pieces through popular equine sculptor Star York.

As always, art dealers brought special-focus exhibits of single artists. For instance, Kelley Gallery, Pasadena, CA, showcased the works of Charles E Keck a California sight watercolorist whose mid-century paintings are priced in the $3200-$4500 range. Trigg Ison Fine Art, West Hollywood CA, introduced the estate of Jirayr Zorthian, another mid-century artist whose work reveals Art Deco and Social Realism influences.

Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, at handed abstract paintings by Jan Matulka, who was "widely known as individual of the earliest American advocates of Modernist, avant-garde painting in the 1920s" notes McCormick. "He helped integrate European way of thinkings of Cubism, Precisionism and Surrealism into the language of the American art scene" McCormick Gallery had just launched a two-year touring exhibition of Matulka's 1921-1950 works, and those brought to the L.A. Art exhibit represented "a number of paintings I had stashed away" McCormick added. "People are real very interested."

Sullivan Goss--An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA--showed several works through Lockwood de Forest, Sr., an American landscapist who was influenced through the Hudson River School. His "Nocturnes,' which dealer Frank Gos described as "solitary atmospheric studies" were painted en plein air, illuminated solitary by candlelight. Sullivan Goss also exhibited a assemblage of works by Richard Haines, a prolific WPA muralist whose later work evolv into a Symbolist-post-Surrealist aesthetic influenced by the agency of Cubism and Abstraction. Haines won numerous prizes in his day, on the other hand "he always marched to his have a title to drummer. He wasn't in the mainstream," marks Goss, who recently sought on the outside Haines' surviving family members to acquire his material, about 125 paintings in all. "His works had been in basements for years, dirty and suffering neglect"

Spanierman Gallery, novel York City, which specializes in 19th-and early 20th-century American paintings, as well as cutting cutting side contemporary artists like Gottfried Heinwein, showcased a large cluster of works by American Impressionist Alson Skinner Clark. A noted painter of California landscapes, Clark was trained by the agency of William Merritt Chase and James A. McNeill Whistler, and eventually became associated with the artist shore Rose.

Another large collection of early 20th-century California paintings was at handed by Trotter Galleries, Carmel, CA. In 1937 artist Will Sparks complet a series of 37 paintings depicting the historic California Missions. sum of two units years later, the entire collection was purchased by the Spreckle (sugar) family, and it was eventually gifted to an organization in Santa Barbara. A decade ago, a collector purchased the entire apportionment and now the collection is again for sale as a assemblage (asking price: $550,000). "We are hoping for a public venue" explains gallery co-owner Paula Trotter "We have feeling very responsible to keep the entire collection together, and I really trust it ends up in a place where place of education children can enjoy these real historical paintings."