Robert Fontaine Gallery

07/31/2025

Bedroom view, Ellsworth Kelly, Leaf I from the Twelve Leaves series, 1978

Ellsworth Kelly’s plant drawings represent one of the most enduring and foundational aspects of his artistic practice. “The drawings from plant life seem to be the bridge to the way of seeing that brought about the paintings in 1949,” Kelly wrote in 1969. “That way of seeing,” he said, “was the basis for all my later work.”

The drawings demonstrate what Kelly called “looking without thinking” - a process of pure visual perception stripped of conceptual overlay. This approach allowed him to distill complex natural forms into their most essential elements, creating works that hover between representation and abstraction.

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015)
Leaf I (from Twelve Leaves Series), 1978
Lithograph
30 x 42 inches
Edition of 20
Signed, Titled and Dated

07/16/2025

While Abstract Expressionism dominated the American art scene and conceptual art was beginning to emerge, Alex Katz was quietly revolutionizing figurative painting with an unexpected subject, tulips.

Alex Katz, at 98, stands as one of America’s most enduring contemporary artists, known for his bold, graphic portraits and landscapes that bridge the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.

Alex Katz (b.1927)
Red Tulips, 1967
Oil on Canvas
12 x 18 inches
Signed front left

Provenance:
-Irving Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida

04/18/2025

Otis Hope Carey (b.1988) lives and works in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales on Bundjalung country and is a proud Gumbaynggirr / Bundjalung man. Carey’s work embodies his practice to the spiritual totemic identity of the Gumbaynggirr people called Gaagal (Ocean). When surveying Otis Hope Carey’s works in their totality, three distinct bodies of work can be discerned, those being; Gaagal (Ocean), Ngalunggirr Miinggi (Healing Spirit) which focuses on the Ocean’s healing qualities and Ngiinda Darrundang Gaagal (I Thank The Ocean) which incorporates his interpretations of Gaagal Yuludarla which is a ceremonial Ocean dreaming dance. The pieces hold powerful visually metaphoric line work expressing the flow of tidal patterns, rippling energy emanating from dancing feet and the unison of spirit and country for his people.

Link in bio for more info!

03/11/2025

Robert Rauschenberg believed that art should reflect the complexity and randomness of life. His work challenged viewers to see beauty and meaning in ordinary objects and encouraged a more inclusive, democratic approach to artistic expression, the core meaning behind the Publicons.

Continue reading on Artxiom: “Behind the Sophisticated and Smart Series of Sculptures - Publicons - by Robert Rauschenberg” , link in bio!

Featured works: Publicon Stations I & IV will be spotlighted at Robert Fontaine Gallery, booth A1 during the Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary Art Fair commemorating the centennial of the artist. The fair will be held March 20-23.

02/28/2025

We are please to announce our participation this year at Palm Beach Modern & Contemporary Fair, Booth 310 !

Featured work:
Robert Rauschenberg (American 1925-2008)
Publicon Station I
Painted wood cabinet with fabric collage, plexiglass mirror, polish aluminum with gold-leaf paddle and electric light.
59 x 30 x 12 inches
1978

Publicons are a series of six wall-mounted sculptures Rauschenberg made “Related to the Stations of the Cross”, the Rauschenberg Foundation explains, “the Publicons are cabinets, each of which opens to reveal an enshrined object. The title merges ‘icon,’ a reference to medieval reliquaries and Renaissance altarpieces, and ‘public,’ since sculptures can be manipulated by the viewer.

In 1978, Leo Castelli showed Publicons at his gallery, and Leo Rubinfien had this to say in Artforum magazine about the exhibition:

“Robert Rauschenberg’s six “Publicons” begins as an inscrutable, blank white cabinet which unfolds, usually in several directions and very colorfully. The inside of each, where most of the work is, is a collage of patterned fabrics and utilitarian objects typical of Rauschenberg. Also typically, these items—an oar, a bicycle wheel, makeup mirrors on extendable brackets—appear in odd contexts or unusual colors, and hence become objects of irony.

The central device with which the “Publicons” work is the difference between their blank and unyielding exteriors and their exuberant contents. Since they are modeled on icon cases, a hint of the sacred still adheres to them, reinforced by their individual titles—Station 1, Station II, etc. Thus one approaches and opens them a little cautiously, to find a crazy Pop/Surreal confusion inside. They are, in fact, as much jack-in-the-box as icon. I think a good part of what the “Publicons” are about is this mockery of their own audience of culture-lovers. “

01/26/2025

01/24/2025

Visit us at Art Palm Beach 22-26 booth 715!

12/08/2024

Last day to visit us at Art Miami. The fair closes at 6 pm today.

Come to Booth 228, we are showing a selection of works by Chico da Silva, Wilf Kahn, Bernar Venet, Ellsworth Kelly, Tom Wesselmann, Milton Avery, Eddie Martinez, Richard Diebenkorn

12/07/2024

Chico da Silva
Untitled
1971

Day 5, visit us in Art Miami booth 228.

12/04/2024

Art Miami is now open until December 8th. Visit us at Booth 228 !

12/02/2024

French conceptual artist , Bernar Venet, rose to prominence in the 1960s when he began making works based on mathematical and scientific formulae.

We will be showing 83.5 ARC x 8 (Image 2) and 218.5 Arc x 13 (Image 3) in our booth during Art Miami, December 3-8. Come by! Booth 228

Image 2:
Bernar Venet
83.5 ARC x 8, 2017
Unique sculpture, Rolled steel
39 x 21.25 x 11.75 inches

Image 3:
Bernar Venet
218.5 Arc x 13, 2007
Unique Sculpture, Rolled steel on steel base plate with patina
12 ½ x 15 2/3 inches
(on a base plate measuring: 19 2/3 x 19 2/3 inches)

11/27/2024

Happy Thanksgiving 🦃🍁🍽

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
Thanksgiving Day
Unique painting on glazed ceramic stoneware
Signed lower right & also signed on verso
13 1/2 x 17 1⁄2 inches (framed 16 x 20 inches)
1973

Frankenthaler’s series Thanksgiving Day comprises a series of 71 individual, unique ceramic tiles, each painted over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973. Painting over a holiday was typical for Frankenthaler: ‘It’s just for the time I am totally creating a work. I am obsessed and the energy flows, the adrenalin flows, the ideas flow’. Inspired by Míro’s ceramic wall at the Guggenheim Museum, Frankenthaler had experimented with painting on stoneware at a ceramic studio in upstate New York. Thus galvanized, she prepared over one hundred tiles to paint on over Thanksgiving weekend. Every tile was the same size and shape, but each was a unique creation.

Frankenthaler’s tender painterliness allows the glaze on each work to run and bleed, whilst lines frame the composition on three sides. This pattern is loosely followed throughout the series. The U-shaped format relates back to the drawn squares in her paintings of the late 1950s and to her works completed in Provincetown in 1961. There is also a distinct connexion between the Thanksgiving Day series and her banner paintings of the late 1960s.

Exhibited:
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Helen Frankenthaler: Tiles, May - June 1975, no. 37. (SRGM 687.74 (37)).
New York, Rosa Esman Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Ceramic Tiles, September 9 – October 4, 1975

Literature
J. Elderfield, Helen Frankenthaler, New York 1989, p. 244.

Provenance:
Private Collection, New York
Rosa Esman Gallery, New York

DM for more info