Figure Study

Avrum Rubenstein
Figure Study
1988
Polyvinyl on Paper
21 1/2" x 29 3/4", Unframed

Excellent Condition - Minor wear consistent with age and history. Tearing along edges of paper. Small crease upper right.

Expressionist, figurative painting by San Francisco artist, Avrum Rubenstein. Painting is titled, "Figure Study", signed and dated 1988 on reverse in ink. Like many painters of his era he numbered his paintings, this is one is 88-1. Mr. Rubenstein used a medium called polyvinyl which is acrylic paint mixed with a glue-like material done on paper. This series is from the later part of his artistic career. Signed Avrum, in paint on lower right.  Painting measures 21 1/2" x 29 3/4" unframed. These paintings were acquired from his daughter in San Francisco.

Avrum Rubenstein (1918-1995)

He was born in Eugene, Oregon in 1918 of Russian Jewish parents.  They moved to Vallejo, CA when he was a kid, and thereafter to San Francisco, where he grew up in the Western Addition.

He was a completely self taught painter, potter, sculptor, lithographer, etc.

He went to Lowell High School in San Francisco, and UC Berkeley, where he majored in math.  He did various jobs - taught high school math, worked as a ceramicist at Heath Pottery and California Faience Pottery, and taught art, but mostly he was an artist selling at fairs and festivals around San Francisco and Marin.  He hung out with a lot of the old North Beach denizens and started a gallery in North Beach with two other artists in the 1950s called The Scene Gallery, located on Grant Avenue in SF.  He sold paintings, lithographs, sculpture, pottery and jewelry - all made by him - from the Gallery for almost 40 years. In the 70s he opened a store next door to the Scene called the Shlock Shop.  He'd always been a collector of various ephemera, and used the Shlock Shop to sell it - collectibles, antiques, hats, etc.  The Gallery remained open throughout that time, but the hours were 8-11 p.m.  He mostly did pottery in the 60s and 70s, and lived off of his art (ah, the good old days of San Francisco where one could live on air!) Toward the end of his life, Mr. Rubenstein commenced a furious schedule of painting, resulting in several themed shows - “Horses”, “Nudes”, and “Jazz” - through the 80’s and 90’s. His final series - a huge array of self portraits, in which he always sported the hats for which the Shlock Shop became so famous - reflected a realization that his life, like the 20th Century, was coming to an end. He died in 1995.