Signed Morris Kantor Painting - Still Life, 1931

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Art & Artifacts of North America

By Artemis Gallery

Nov 18, 2021

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• Lot Description
  Morris Kantor (Russian-American, 1896-1974). Oil on canvas, 1931. Signed and dated by the artist on the lower right. A still life painting by Morris Kantor that demonstrates the artist's unique blend of realism and surprising visionary effects. The composition features traditional still life elements - a glass vase of white gardenias on a tabletop that is dressed with a green and red striped white fringed tablecloth; an ornate, perhaps Gothic Revival chair behind the table, and a spinet piano decorated with two portraits and a pair of brass candlesticks flanking the music stand against the wall behind. Kantor is depicting the furnishings within a traditional New England house; however, a few things about the image provides sense of mysterious instability. The tablecloth seems to billow precariously beneath the fragile vase. Objectes that are farther from the viewer should of course appear to be smaller; however, the piano looks exceedingly smaller than the chair and table. This size shift is far from realistic, suggesting that Kantor was intentionally playing with scale to conjure an eerie, surreal effect. Size: 24.125" L x 29.125" W (61.3 cm x 74 cm) Size of frame: 24.625" L x 29.8" W (62.5 cm x 75.7 cm)
  
  Born in Minsk, Russia (now Belarus) Morris Kantor immigrated to the United States in 1906 when he was just a child. There is some debate as to whether he was with family or alone, but we know that he was very young, lived in New York City, and earned enough money working in the Garment District to enroll in art school by age 20. Kantor began attending the Independent School of Art in New York in 1916 and went on to teach at Cooper Union during the 1940s and the Art Students League from 1936 to 1972. Many of his students - including Robert Rauschenberg, Knox Martin, Susan Weil, and Sigmund Abeles - became quite famous in their own right.
  
  Kantor maintained a studio in Manhattan, close to Union Square, as well as on Cape Cod in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. During the 1920s, he also worked in Paris. His arts circle included notable modernists such as the sculptor Isamu Noguchi. During the 1930s, Kantor supervised a Federal Arts Project Easel Painting Project in Rockland County, New York. The following decade he spent some summers in Monhegan, Maine, and in the 1960s his work was shown at Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York City. Kantor's work has also been exhibited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and other prestigious institutions. His honors include receiving the Logan Medal of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Temple Medal of the University of Illinois. Kantor's oeuvre was vast and impressive, as he explored numerous styles ranging from realism colored by a hint of Surrealism, as we see in this example, to abstract movements including Cubism and Futurism.
  
  Provenance: Private M. C. collection, Irvine, California, USA - acquired from the grandson of Morris Kantor; Ex-Morris Kantor collection
  
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  Display stands not described as included/custom in the item description are for photography purposes only and will not be included with the item upon shipping.
  
  #168240

  Condition

  Signed and dated in red pigment by the artist on the lower right. Expected age wear to the painting. A few scuffs/losses to the peripheries as shown. Slight impressions of stretcher bars are visible. "More To Come" (perhaps referring to the title) is handwritten in white on one of the stretcher bars on the verso. Frame shows age wear with some loss to left side of lower slat.
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