Works on paper exhibited at Mireille Mosler Ltd., span more than five centuries, are by a diverse group of artists from The Netherlands, and exemplify several stylistic periods. The earliest drawing exhibited in the gallery’s show, “Made in Holland – Master Drawings from the 17th through the 21st century” is a Study of the Gery Tulip by Jacob Marrel (1614-1681) from 1638. Tulip mania started around 1634, culminating in 1637 when more than 10,000 guilders was offered for one Semper Augustus and single bulbs represented a vast capital investment. Another emphasis is on a group of Dutch artists active around the turn of the nineteenth century when international movements developed different styles. The double portraits in pastel of Fritz Meyer (1847-1917) and his wife Nina by Jan Toorop (1858-1928) from 1909 are a testimony to this prominent Swiss art collector’s patronage of contemporary artists. It is the first time the portraits will be exhibited in America. Wealth accumulated through the tobacco trade allowed Meyer to develop a prominent art collection in the 1880s. Well-known paintings of theirs are now in institutions in the United States and abroad, such as Vincent Van Gogh’s Madame Augustine Roulin with Baby, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cypresses in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The White House at Night in the Hermitage. The collection included paintings by Cézanne, Gauguin and Mondrian’s Boom A from 1913, now in the Tate in London. In 1916, Meyer’s substantial financial support to Theo van Doesburg allowed him to publish De Stijl, the influential journal of the movement’s theories.

Leonard Hutton galleries is presenting “Drawings and Watercolors: To Observe and Imagine.” It showcases a selection of important 20th century European and American works on paper, including an outstanding 1916 Sonia Delaunay gouache featured in the Sonia Delaunay Retrospective exhibitions at Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Tate Modern, London. Sonia and Robert Delaunay were in Portugal from 1915-1917 where they formed an association called Corporation Nouvelle to stimulate “artistic action” to publish collaborative albums of poetry and art accompanied by interpretations executed in pochoir, a stencil process for making colored prints or adding color to a printed key illustration, by various artists including Cendrars, Apollinaire, Rossine and a group of Portuguese architects and critics. They intended to circulate exhibitions of the art of simultaneity throughout Europe. Sonia Delaunay executed numerous studies in gouache for the cover of Album No. 1, which unfortunately never appeared because of the difficulty a number of the artists experienced employing the pochoir technique. Also on view is an important 1955 Sam Francis Untitled watercolor, a 1965 Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale work on paper, a Louis Marcoussis Couple Assis tempera on paper executed in 1922 and artworks by Gontcharova, Gottlieb, Jenkins, Kandinsky, Klee, Krasner, Kupka, Léger, Magnelli, Miró, Motherwell, Matisse, Nicholson, Picasso, Popova, Suetin, Survage, Tworkov and others.

New York dealer David Tunick just announced an important addition to his MASTER DRAWINGS exhibition: He will be featuring a very important pencil drawing by Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) Celestial Orbit – Study. Giacomo Balla was a founder of the Futurist movement and particularly concerned with light and movement. His personal interest in scientific methods contributed to the practical and ideological bases of Futurism, but his own approach was highly individual. He achieved the representation of light and pulsation, of speed and movement in a way that captured the most transitory of effects in superb abstractions. Tunick says, “Between 1913 and 1914 Balla formulated the idea of representing speed by using essential lines, unstable and increasingly abstract rhythms…. Straight lines were replaced by curves, ellipses and spirals in an uninterrupted sequence of dynamic solutions; Balla visualized the effects of whirling or centrifugal movement, sometimes seen in expansion, sometimes in ascension.” (P. Pacini, The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, vol. 3, London, 1996, pp. 114-15.)

“The title of the drawing, Celestial Orbit, refers to the curved path, usually elliptical, of a celestial body around another celestial body. We cannot be sure whether Balla named the drawing or whether the additional word in the title, “Study”, meant it was preparatory for or was surmised to be related to the only painting of the same title in Balla’s oeuvre (Lista 309, 1913) or possibly to another painting that shares closer similarities with the drawing, Tutto si muove (Lista 304, 1913). All are plausible. What is known is that Balla’s scientific interests extended to astronomy, and there were publications that he and the other Futurists subscribed to such as Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, a hypothesis focused on kinetic work and movements of a rotary type. (G. Lista, Giacomo Balla, Turin, 1982, p. 67) Whatever its inspiration, the present drawing is from Balla’s most creative period, and it brilliantly defines his Futurist paradigm. A major graphic work by Balla, it has been in the same private collection since it last traded more than 50 years ago. Futurist works on paper of this importance rarely come on the market.”

Lowell Libson Ltd., leading dealers in British art, will be showing a series of masterpieces including important works by Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, Samuel Palmer and John Robert Cozens. British Art: Recent Acquisitions will feature John Russell’s 1792 pastel portrait of Thomas Wignell, founder of the Chestnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, and John Constable’s “Sunset: a stormy evening” dating to the 1820s.