John D. Graham, 1881-1961 (Ukraine/USA)

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FINE ART & ANTIQUES

By Cultural Tradition

Jun 2, 2026

Set Reminder 2026-06-02 12:00:00 2026-06-02 12:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : FINE ART & ANTIQUES https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/cultural-tradition/fine-art-antiques-23545
Fine Art & Antiques auction featuring 150 lots, including paintings, prints, decorative and applied arts from the 19th to the 21st century. Cultural Tradition support@cultural-tradition.uk

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• Lot Description
  John D. (Ivan Dabrowsky) Graham (1881/1886-1961). Ukraine/Russia/USA/Unired Kingdom
  Still Life with Guitar and Playing Cards.
  Oil on canvasboard, size 61,5 x 48 cm (24 1/4 x 19 inches). Frame dimensions 72 x 58 cm (28 1/3 x 23 inches).
  Signed and dated upper left.
  John D. Graham was a figure of immense influence in the early years of American modernism, both as an artist and as a connoisseur. He is credited as a major influence in the formation of Abstract Expressionism and in his work alternated between Abstraction and Realism,Graham was born in Kiev on January 8, 1881 (or 1886 or 1887) with the name of Ivan Gratianovich Dombrovski. He is thought to have arrived in New York City in about 1920. Once in New York, he hid himself behind a curtain of fact and myth. In 1923 Graham was enrolled at the Art Students League, working briefly as an assistant to John Sloan. There is little concrete information that Graham had any previous art experience. In 1925 he participated in the ‘Tenth Whitney Annual Exhibition’. That year he moved to Baltimore with the painter Elinor Gibson, the first of his two American wives. In Baltimore, he became associated with the renowned collector Duncan Phillips, who gave Graham his first one-person museum exhibition in 1929. Phillips described Graham's bearing, with his air of Russian émigré officer of noble descent, his classical education and commitment to art, as an ‘ambition for martyrdom’, one which gave him an aura of Old World mystery and romance. He became an American citizen in 1927, although he lived and worked in both New York and Paris, becoming a catalyst in the transmittal of European modernism to America. He counted among his friends such names as Stuart Davis, Dorothy Dehner, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, David Smith, Katherine Dreier, Willem de Kooning, and, in later years, Jackson Pollock. Late in his life he was financially secure, but isolated from the art world because of his highly personal style. He spent many hours doing meditation and yoga, and corresponding with women friends, who included Ultra Violet, Andy Warhol's movie star, as well as well as the artist Francoise Gilot, friend of Pablo Picasso. His final works were similar to those of the Renaissance Old Masters. His art can be seen in several public collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and The Phillips Collection of Washington, D.C. Graham died in 1961 in London, England.

  Condition

  Good condition, general surface soiling. No restoration.
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