The Age Of The Fish by Buffie Johnson Start Price USD 30,000.00 Current Price USD 30,000.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, July 09, 2008 End Time Saturday, July 19, 2008 Location Miami, FL See more about 'The Age Of The Fish by Buffie Johnson' Description The name of this beautiful oil painting is The Age of the Fish.  It is a Buffie Johnson original from 1964.  It is signed and dated by her in the lower right corner.  It measures  3' high x 3' 6.5" wide.  Free shipping in the US.  No overseas bidding accepted. Buffie Johnson, born February 20th 1912, died Friday August 11th, 2006.   “Buffie Johnson”, 1943, by Edward Weston   Her work evolved into metaphors for the cyclical mystery of life”. She began regular studies, which included courses in art in the 1920’s, and in the 30’s traveled to Paris to study with Francis Picabia and Stanley William Hayter.  By the 1940’s Buffie returned to exhibit her work in Peggy Guggenheim’s “Art Of This Century”, the first large commercial show devoted exclusively to the work of women. In the catalogue for the exhibition, which was recreated by the Pollock-Krasner House in 1997, Siobhán Conaty wrote, “From among these women and the many thousands who will follow them will certainly come great women painters who will be known, not as women painters, but simply as painters.” Buffie’s friends at this time included Tony Smith, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, for whom Buffie arranged his first gallery. During the height of Abstract Expressionism her circle also involved Lee Krasner, Willem DeKooning, and Robert Motherwell. By the 1950’s, she felt New York and the Hamptons were not supportive communities and began to make more frequent trips to Europe where she was always well received and was more comfortable as an artist. It was then that she began to collect photographs of images of the Great Mother for a book that she began the decade before. In 1954 during a research trip she met and befriended Carl Jung. She was influenced by his “passionate exploration” of human consciousness. Buffie believed, “From its inception, art has ventured into the unknown realm of the spirit, a world that manifests itself through symbols rather then words. Magic images have for millennia expressed the timeless fears and concerns on the human mind”. During this time, Buffie Johnson continued painting and joined Betty Parsons gallery. In 1959, she unveiled her work for the Astor Theatre in New York, the world’s largest abstract mural. It was in the 1960’s and 70’s that Buffie turned to incorporating realism in her painting to better express her vision. Her work included monumental plant images, but was still painted with abstract expressionist energy, brushstrokes, and texture. She painted large up-close portraits of flowers that are abstracted and distilled to forms that were both sexual and sacred. Her flowers become metaphors for life and fecundity. Buffie moved from the Hamptons, Long Island, to SoHo in New York City in the 1970’s, where she continued to live until her death. “Just as, within the recognizable look of all Johnson’s work, there is a palette specific to each one, so, too, her brushstroke changes from painting to painting. It is always hers, yet the form and texture of each plant always generates a definite variant, a touch which not only ‘expresses devotion to the object’ but expresses a particular devotion to that object in all its complexity-actual and virtual, of fact and of metaphor.”                                                                                                          Carter Ratcliff After years of study and investigation on Goddess mythology she published the reference book “Lady of the Beasts” in 1988. Among the important collections that Buffie’s work belong to, is Clement Greenberg’s permanent collection, now in Portland, Oregon. Greenberg was a champion of the individual artist. Museums and Corporate Collections – (partial listing)The National Collection of Fine Arts, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, D.CBoston Museum of Fine Arts, MAYale University Art Gallery, CT Baltimore Museum, MD Fine Arts Museum of Cincinnati, OHRhode Island School of Design, RIUniversity of Michigan Museum, MIUniversity of New Mexico Museum, NMMunson-Williams-Proctor InstituteNew York University Art Collection, NYHerbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, NYNewark Museum, NJ Israel Museum Whitney Museum of American ArtUniversity of Texas at AustinState University of New York at Purchase, NYInternational Nickel CompanyCity Investing CorporationNew Orleans Museum of ArtThe Brooklyn Museum of ArtPortland Art Museum, Portland, OR In celebration of Buffie Johnson’s 90th birthday (February 2002) the Anita Shapolsky Gallery and A.S. Art Foundation presented a retrospective of Buffie’s development (catalogue). She also exhibited in Betty Parsons and the Women in 2005 (catalogue). Always striving to represent divine female power even when met with resistance and discouragement, Buffie Johnson herself embodied that very power. An extraordinary woman, who lived her entire life producing and celebrating art, Buffie has blazed a trail for artists and women alike. After nearly a century, the wisdom and body of work that Buffie offers is unparalleled in quality and spiritual intensity.   Place a Bid!