Canadian-born painter Philip Guston lived most of his life in the United States. Early in his career, he worked for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project, painting murals on public buildings in New York. In the 1940s, he was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism. In the late 1960s, Guston returned to a more figurative style, featuring cartoon-like shapes and recurring motifs, such as the soles of shoes. There have been numerous posthumous solo shows devoted to his art, including a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2003.
A Son of the Ancient Race is one of the few paintings with Jewish themes made by Jozef Israëls. It is from a series of paintings and drawings of secondhand clothing peddlers in Amsterdam’s Jewish…
When the Allatini Mills building was built in 1898, it was considered the largest industrial building in the “Orient” (then the catch-all term for the non-European world east of Europe). The first…
These silver and filigree Torah finials used by Amsterdam’s Ashkenazic community are shaped like four-tiered towers. They have gilt bells in their arches and gilt urns on their corners and are topped…