Original 1968 Abstract Oil Painting by John Ferren, Listed Artist

Original 1968 Abstract Oil Painting by John Ferren, Listed Artist

Offered for sale is a 1968 abstract oil painting on canvas by the well listed artist John Ferren. The colorful composition is signed Ferren in the lower right and also signed and dated 1968 on verso. A similar 1955 painting titled "Medanus" by the artist was sold in the November 7, 2000 Christies East Post War and Contemporary Art Auction.
The painting is in untouched original condition and has not been cleaned. It includes the vintage frame that accompanied it. We belive that it would be benefit from reframing.

Frame size 28.5"w x 1.75"d x 35"h

John Dzubas Ferren (1905-1970) was born in Pendleton, Oregon. He grew up in California, where his interest was in carving stone sculptures. He visited Europe for the first time in 1929. Together with Hans Hoffmann, he attended a Henri Matisse exhibition in Munich that so stimulated his interest in color that he abandoned sculpture for painting. The following year, Ferren’s first solo exhibition was held at the Art Center in San Francisco.

Ferren traveled to Paris in 1931, where he stayed until 1938. He soon achieved recognition as an abstract painter and befriended many of the artists working in Paris, including Jean Hélion, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso. Ferren frequented Parisian art academies and studied at the Sorbonne and other European universities. His first group show in Paris was held in 1932 at the Galerie Zak. He showed regularly with the Abstraction-Création group and Le Groupe d’artistes anglo-américains. Ferren studied printmaking with Stanley Wiliam Hayter at his Atelier 17. In 1936 Pierre Loeb gave Ferren his first solo exhibition in Paris, followed by others at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.

Upon his release from the army in 1946, he took a teaching position at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, at Cooper Union and at Queens College. He was an important part of the social and intellectual center of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists. The Stable Gallery in New York held a solo show of his work each year from 1954 to 1958. In 1955 he participated in the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. In 1961 Ferren was included in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Abstract Expressionists and Imagists exhibition. He was the first recipient of an American Specialists Abroad Grant awarded by the United States State Department, which allowed him to lecture on contemporary American art in Beirut and elsewhere in the Middle East, Pakistan, and India, between 1963 and 1964.