Attributed to John Von Wicht, no coa, private collection, medium: oil,measurements: 20"WX26"H framed, mint condition Biography: John Von Wicht painter, muralist, printmaker, and mosaicist, was born Johannes Von Wicht on 3 February 1888 in Malente, Germany. At the age of seventeen, he apprenticed as a craftsman in a painting and decorating shop and spent his spare time drawing from nature. Von Wicht combined geometric abstraction and dense color in his paintings. In the late 1930s, he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors and, in 1939, his first solo show opened in New York at the Theodor A. Kohn Gallery. In 1944, he exhibited oils and gouaches at The Artist Gallery and, the following year, he showed at the Kleeman Gallery.During World War II, Von Wicht served as captain of a supply barge ferrying food to army transport ships in New York harbor. Harbor themes began to appear in his abstractions and, during the 1950s, his sensuously colored geometric abstractions gave way to loose expressionistic forms. In 1954 Von Wicht received the first of twelve annual residencies at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.Von Wicht exhibited his prints regularly with the New York Painter-Printmakers and the 14 Painter-Printmakers group. In 1959, a traveling exhibition of his work was organized by the Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporaine in Paris. In the 1960s von Wicht purchased a cabin in Majorca and divided his year with summers there and winters in at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. In the mid-1950's, Von Wicht developed his mature abstract style, which can be best described as lyrical expressionism. It is with these unique pieces that Von Wicht's life-long struggle to achieve a personal artistic breakthrough is finally achieved.