Phyllis Kapp (American, b. 1930) Abstract Watercolor Painting. Signed and inscribed "Phyllis Kapp '86 Santa Fe" in lower right corner. Phyllis Kapp, a renowned watercolorist, began her artistic journey in her childhood home in Chicago. Despite facing challenges and pursuing various academic interests, she consistently returned to painting. Her move to Santa Fe ignited her passion for landscape painting, inspiring her to create vibrant, expressive works. Kapp's art is characterized by its bold use of color and emotional intensity. She continues to be a prolific artist, drawing inspiration from the beauty of the New Mexican landscape and her own inner creativity. Overall Size: 28 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. Sight Size: 23 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. #5003
Signed on the lower right corner, secondary signature and number 2/75 on reverse. Frame measures approximately 39in x 39.5in. Artwork measures approximately 28.75in x 29.25in. Some scuffs present on frame please see photos for condition consideration. NR30369 BP
Phyllis Kapp (b. 1930) Slow Sinks the Sun, 2010 watercolor on handmade paper signed and dated right of lower center: Phyllis Kapp / Santa Fe / 2010 artist's stamp lower right
Phyllis Kapp (b. 1930) Our Days in the Sun, 2012 watercolor on handmade paper signed and dated lower left: Phyllis Kapp / May 2012 / Santa Fe / New Mex
Phyllis Kapp (Born 1930) "New Mexico Landscape" Watercolor on Paper. Phyllis Kapp is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost interpreters of the southwestern landscape. She has been recognized by the Albuquerque Museum, which included a number of her paintings in its ‘Landscapes of New Mexico’ show in July 2001. Artist: Phyllis Kapp Title: "New Mexico Landscape" Medium: Watercolor on Paper Signature Type: Hand Signed Signature Location: Lower Right Site Measurement: 8.25" x 12.5" Image Keywords: Southwestern, Western Artwork, Art; Ref: BD2023
Phyllis Kapp (American, b. 1930) Blue Remembered Hills, 2000 Watercolor on paper Signed Phyllis Kapp, lower right Dated 1/2000 and located Santa Fe, New Mexico, lower right.
23 7/8" by 17 3/4" Phyllis Kapp (Born 1930) is active/lives in New Mexico, Illinois. Phyllis Kapp is known for Abstract, richly colored landscape watercolor painting, gallery professional. "Watercolorist and gallery legend Phyllis Kapp pours her heart into uplifting scenes inspired by New Mexico’s landscape," By Norman Kolpas, December 2018 issue of Southwest Art magazine. IN 1935, In a Jewish immigrant neighborhood of Chicago, 4-year-old first-generation American Phyllis Waxlander set up her art studio under the family’s large dining table, her creative efforts shielded from view by the Quaker lace tablecloth that descended down to the floor on all sides. That’s where she’d gather her crayons and paints, along with scissors, the Sears catalog, and a paste she mixed herself from flour and water. "That dining-room table was my studio," she recalls with a laugh, "though at the time I called it my hideout." Like a mini Michelangelo at work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, little Phyllis reclined on her back, transforming the underside of the tabletop into a creative masterwork, using that paste to apply a collage of Sears product cutouts and her own drawings. From time to time, her mother would call the young girl to come help with the dishes or other household chores. But her father, perhaps sensing the power of his daughter’s nascent creative drive, usually intervened, responding in Yiddish, "Lozen ir aleyn"—"Leave her alone" Some 84 years later, now widely known as an artist by her married name, Phyllis Kapp, she has long since traded that hideout in Chicago for the open air and vast skies of northern New Mexico, where she has established a global reputation as a painter of what she calls "expressionist landscapes"—joyously colorful scenes inspired by her adopted Southwest homeland in which, rather than faithfully reproducing actual geographic settings, she aims to "get to the essence of the mountains and the land and the sky." Kapp's Journey, however, did not follow a straight line from Chicago to her eventual home in Santa Fe, where she established her reputation as not just a successful painter but also a widely respected gallerist. Over the decades, she traveled and studied on both coasts, raised a family, taught crafts, and pursued advanced studies not only in fine art but also in ceramics and biology—"because I loved biology," she states matter-of-factly. Nevertheless, painting remained her primary creative passion. Whatever else she was doing in her life, she says, "I was always painting, all the time. I never stopped." During her grade-school days, she enjoyed a solid reputation as the class artist. Whatever the subject might be, she recalls, “the teacher would say, ‘Phyllis, go to the blackboard and draw a picture of what we’re talking about.’ Whether it was Potawatomi Indians on the Chicago River or local plant life or mid-19th-century Chicago steel mills, she successfully portrayed them all. “I loved science because you would have to diagram what you were doing. I could draw cells in biology, so I was happy. After a year studying locally at Roosevelt College, she headed to the West Coast to live with an older sister while studying both art and biology, first at Los Angeles City College and then at the University of Southern California. Back in Chicago, she married Arnold Kapp and studied at the Art Institute while he pursued a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Then they moved to Ithaca, NY, where Arnold started a copper-enameling business while he taught that same craft at the local farm grange and at Cornell’s student union. By the time they returned to Chicago again, settling in the suburb of Evanston, she was the mother of three girls and a boy. But that didn’t stop her from pursuing her studies further at the local campus of the Art Institute, where she was mentored by German-born figurative and abstract painter Paul Wieghardt, who himself had studied directly under both Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. "On the very first day", she remembers, “he came over to my piece, pointed at it, and said, ‘Why is this spot red?’ I was terrified. But she finally replied that she had wanted that particular red spot where she had placed it. After a dramatic pause, Wieghardt told her, “‘All I do is ask, so that you will get strong and defend your work.’ By her mid-30s, her strength as an artist continuing to grow, Kapp had her first solo gallery show, featuring a series of paintings “all about Lake Michigan and people in the park. Other shows followed over the next two decades; her work gradually progressed to abstract sculptural pieces made from liquid resins that eventually made her so ill she wound up in the hospital. While recovering, she returned to the basics by making “very tight narrative drawings of life in colored pencil on paper, and then eventually in the watercolor medium she still concentrates on to this day. Throughout those years, on summer vacations, she and Arnold would bundle the family into the car and head west on road trips, one of which took them to Santa Fe. Not long after arriving there, she recalls, she turned to Arnold and told him, “I love it. I want to stay here. Eventually her daughter Ellen moved there with her own young family, strengthening the city’s appeal for the artist. After Arnold died at the age of 53, Phyllis felt less of a need to stay in Chicago. Almost two years later, she decided to move permanently to Santa Fe herself. “I was visiting Ellen, walking on Canyon Road, and saw a little sign in the window of a small gallery space saying ‘For Rent.’ She took the lease, wrapped up life in Illinois, and arrived back in Santa Fe on her 55th birthday, December 5, 1985. “The day I opened the gallery, I called it ‘Phyllis Kapp,’ she says. But since she’d be showing her own works along with those of other artists, she soon had second thoughts: “What if they didn’t like my work? I would be embarrassed. So she changed the name to provide some measure of anonymity and also, more importantly, to honor the man who had supported her artistic endeavors five decades earlier. "I named it for my dad, Waxlander Gallery." The gallery, which she finally closed a year ago after 33 successful years of business, eventually grew to 15 rooms with 4,000 square feet of exhibition space and a roster of artists including such well-respected names as Marshall Noice, Javier López Barbosa, Jim Budish, Andrée Hudson, Matthew Higginbotham, and of course, Phyllis Kapp. “It was really my love of art that made me represent artists. My intent was always to be promoting artists, she says. “We grew to become one of the most noted galleries in Santa Fe because I knew what it was like to be an artist myself. I shaped the gallery so that artists could have a full room to themselves, so that people could feel their work. I just loved making other artists’ dreams come true. For the past year, Kapp has been free to make her own dreams as an artist come true more fully than ever before—while also having the time to travel around the United States and to Israel to visit her children, eight grandchildren, seven grandchildren-in-law, and 27 great-grandchildren now ranging in age from four months to 21 years. “It’s an amazing life, she says in summation. And, as can be seen in her latest show at Pippin Contemporary in Santa Fe, which has represented her since January, Kapp’s work itself is filled with more amazement than ever. As often as she can, she says, “I go outdoors. I hike. I go into the mountains. She finds inspiration all around her. Back home in her light-filled studio, the day will begin with a cup of coffee. “And I walk into my studio and look at my paints. I have six different palettes, and each has 23 spaces for color. One is all blues, one all the blue-reds, one all red-reds, one all greens, she says, enumerating the exuberant range of watercolor choices she gives herself. “I know all those subtle differences. And when I wet them, they come alive. She’ll take a large sheet of rough-edged watercolor paper—which she has handmade for her by Twinrocker in Brookston, IN—weight it down at the corners with rocks or crystals, and go straight to work. “I don’t work from pictures, and there’s no sketching, she says. “I just start painting right on the paper. The paint talks, and your brain remembers a shape, and you just put it down and look at it. There’s a flow. Sometimes a painting’s done in a day, sometimes I’ll leave a piece for months. All the while, she’s listening to music, from opera to classic love songs and Broadway shows by the likes of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, or Stephen Sondheim. Many of those titles or lyrics, in turn, inspire her own titles: BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED; LET ME SPEND MY LIFE MAKING LOVE TO YOU; DANCING IN THE DARK. “There’s a rhythm in life, and the paintings feel musical to me, she explains. The results are as energetic and uplifting as the artist herself. “People who buy my work tell me, ‘Looking at your painting, I’m refreshed,’ Kapp says. That effect no doubt results, in part, from the positive energy she puts into her work. “For me, when I’m painting, it’s pure joy. That joy, and the world around her, continue to feed Kapp’s creativity as she celebrates her 88th birthday this month. While she’ll continue painting watercolors, she says, she’s also exploring working in glass and other media, and she can’t wait to see what re-sults. “I’ve got big plans, she says. Allard Auction Collection Inv: AX
Phyllis Kapp (American, b. 1930) Sunrise Over the Ortiz Watercolor on Aquarelle Arches paper Signed Phyllis Kapp, lower left Dated and located Santa Fe, New Mexico, lower left. Titled with artist's number PK164 on The Waxlander Gallery tag, verso.
Giclée print on paper, 2006, signed and inscribed 'A/P' in pencil (the edition was 50), with label from Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe, NM. 9 x 12 in. (sheet), 19 x 22 in (frame).
Phyllis Kapp (b. 1930) Untitled (New Mexico Landscape) watercolor on paper inscribed, signed and dated lower right: Santa Fe / N Mex / Phyllis Kapp / 2013 28 1/2 x 38 1/2 in. (72.39 x 97.79 cm.), Frame: 41 1/2 x 50 7/8 x 1 3/4 in. (105.41 x 129.22 x 4.45 cm.)
PHYLLIS KAPP (NEW MEXICO B 1930-), SOUTHWEST WATERCOLOR, DESERT LANDSCAPE:Depicts a painted desert and mountain landscape. Illegibly signed lower left. FRAMED, matted and floated under glass.
Original watercolor on paper painting depicting a vivid Southwestern mountainous canyon sunset scene with Saguaros, Prickly Pear, and other cacti & plants. Signed to lower left, 1996. Work measures 24" H x 16" W, frame 31" H x 25" W. Gallery sticker: "Rye Ridge Art Gallery, Rye Brook, New York". THIRD PARTY SHIPPING REQUIRED
Phyllis Kapp, (American, b 1930), watercolor, "Cactus Canyon", signed Phyllis Kapp 6/1996 lower left, New Mexico modernist artist, bears exhibition label from Waxlander Gallery, 40" x 33" in a 40-1/4" x 32-3/4" frame, excellent condition, from the Forbes Collection
Artist: Phyllis Kapp (1930-); Title: "I Suggest We Have a Dance"; Medium: Mixed media on paper; Year or Era Produced: Dated 1999; Signature: Lower right; Sight Area Approximate Measurement: 29.25" x 8.25"; Frame Approximate Measurement: 41.25" x 20.5" x 1.25"; Approximate Weight: 11 lbs; Frame: Framed and matted beneath glass; Note: Includes a copy of the Waxander Galleries receipt with the sale price of $2,200.00
Artist: Phyllis Kapp (1930-); Title: "Desert Chorale"; Medium: Watercolor; Year or Era Produced: 1997; Signature: Lower right; Sight Area Approximate Measurement: 23.5" X 17.5"; Frame Approximate Measurement: 32.75" x 26.75" x 2"; Approximate Weight: Frame: Framed under glass.
Artist: Phyllis Kapp (born 1930); Medium: Watercolor; Media: Paper; Year or Era Produced: Dated 1987; Signature: Lower right; Sight Area Approximate Measurement: 17.375" x 23.5"; Frame Approximate Measurement: 26.375" x 32.375"; Weight: 9 lbs; Framed and matted beneath glass.
