The paintings were confiscated by the Nazis when they took over the Bloch-Bauer mansion in Vienna and the rest of Austria in 1938. They are currently in the hands of the Austrian Gallery, which claims that Bloch-Bauer willed the paintings to the gallery before her death.
Not many artists begin an ambitious new series at 76, but Arnold Mesches did just that after receiving a large box stuffed with FBI documents in 1999. It had taken the Jewish American painter three years and dozens of letters to obtain the 760-page dossier, his FBI file from 1945 to 1972. The papers — obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — chronicle his left-wing activities from the Communist red scare of the 1950s to the Vietnam War era.\n\n
When she was 18 years old, Desy Safán-Gerard conducted an a cappella choir in her native Chile and won a yearlong scholarship to study musical composition in Jerusalem.
Today, the Venice-based artist has long since left music, but not her love of it. Now an abstract painter and psychoanalyst, Safán-Gerard insists the fields are not mutually exclusive, saying that her interests in music, in painting and in psychology are thematically linked.
For local artist Rebecca Levy, building a body of work literally begins with the building. "Each one is different and has a charm of its own,"
Betty Green\’s paintings work on so many levels — seriously.
Sherrie has cerebral palsy, which causes her hands to tremble. So when she was hired to work as an artist for L.A. GOAL in Culver City, she was concerned.
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