News-Antique.com - Dec 08,2008 - Fusco & Four Modern, specializing in modernist 20th Century fine art since 1988, announces the launch of its new website FuscoFourModern.com. The site features, among numerous artists, works of art from the estates of artists Karl Hagedorn and Sam Stetson. Now a content-rich resource for information on 20th Century artists, the site includes biographical information, artist portfolios and the insights of gallery owners Tony Fusco and Robert Four.
Fusco & Four Modern is thrilled to represent the estate of an important rediscovered Abstract Expressionist artist, Sam Stetson. Born in Kentucky in 1911, he was shown primarily in group and solo exhibitions in New York and Provincetown, where he was a member of the Provincetown Art Association. He lived and worked in New York City at the same time as the great Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollack, and was friends with Henry Botkin and Carl Ashby. Stetson studied with Andre Lhote and Fernand Leger in Paris, at the Bauhaus in Germany and with Hans Hoffman in New York.
Like many artists at the time, he was unable to earn his living from his art, and turned to commercial illustration and teaching to support his studio work. After becoming increasingly ill in the late 1970s, Stetson put his paintings into storage, where they remained. He died in 1990. The entire collection comprises over 250 watercolors and oils, and has remained largely intact since his death. The initial offering of paintings from the estate all date from the early to mid 1960s, a vibrant time in Stetson's artistic output at the core of his Abstract Expressionist period.
Karl Hagedorn, a German-born painter, is also represented. Born in 1922 in Guentersberge, Hagedorn began his career designing mosaics, murals and stained glass windows. He was a displaced person after World War II and ultimately immigrated to the United States in 1956, working in St. Paul, Minnesota as a free-lance artist and teaching. From 1973-1998, he lived and worked in New York City, ultimately moving to Philadelphia where he continued to paint and exhibit his work right up to his death in 2005.
Hagedorn was a successful working artist for much of his lifetime. His career included dozens of solo and group exhibitions, and his work is held by several museums. Never severing his ties with Germany, he is in many ways better known there than in the United States, where he is represented by Galerie Bode. Two major works of art by Hagedorn are in the permanent collection of the museum of modern art in Nuremberg.
Hagedorn’s bold, colorful work focuses on an intimate, almost physiological relationship between man and the machine. His paintings employ mechanical elements, graphic and cartographic symbols, words, letters and figures combined with biomorphic shapes. His works can be serious, humorous, evocative or contemplative. FuscoFourModern.com features over 30 of the artist’s oil paintings and gouaches complete with biographical details and a timeline of his exhibitions.
Fusco & Four has also long represented the estate of Vera Andrus, and
