Floral Oil Paintings and Plant Art for Sale

More conventionally associated with images of celebrities and brand items, Andy Warhol’s 1964 Flowers series was considered a prominent departure for the artist at the time. Warhol created 12 blocks of non-specific flowers defined by bold colors, their underlying beds of soil and grass separated by muted grey lines. He used different color schemes, including painting flowers red and orange in one square, blue and lavender in the next, and all white in the next. Because screen printing enabled him to produce varied representations of a single idea, he created shadows of multiple flowers in some.

Rumor has it that the incentive behind Flowers came during the visit of friend, curator, critic, and art historian Henry Geldzahler, who surveyed the artist’s studio seeing only “Marilyn and disasters and death.” Geldzahler purportedly opened the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography, randomly landing on a feature describing a new Kodak color processing system. The layout consisted of seven hibiscus blossoms, repeated numerous times to illustrate the progressive effects of the system. A concept for Warhol’s series was born.

Warhol once said, “My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat—or in the case of film ‘run on,’ manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.”

Philanthropists and patrons of art luminaries inc luding Warhol, Calder, Picasso, Johns, Liechtenstein, and Miro, Miles and Shirley Fiterman amassed a collection whose roots ran deeper than a passion for the visual arts. Known as much for their collection as for the relationships they maintained with the artists they collected, the dealers with whom they worked, and the museum directors and curators they held in high esteem, the Fitermans knew the value of giving back.

At the outset of his career in 1946, Minneapolis native Fiterman developed a small, local garage and lumber company to provide individual homebuyers the opportunity to personally build their own homes. In time, Miles Homes became a nationwide precut housing business. In 1958, following the diagnosis of the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Fiterman created and funded the National Foundation for Research in Ulcerative Colitis. To stimulate national interest and create a more facile network for shared information, he financed the publication of worldwide abstracts on ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, distributing them to physicians free of charge. He continued to support medical research with grants to the American Gastroenterological Association and an endowment to the Mayo Clinic.

The Fitermans also founded the Associates of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

According to an obituary in Gastroenterology News, Fiterman “also understood that medicine is an art as well as a science, and along with Shirley, gave many works of art to medical institutions. They knew that few things are spiritually more relaxing than great art.”

UGallery artists bring the natural world to the canvas, producing vibrant scenes filled with hydrangeas, tulips, and daisies. Read what contemporary floral artists Ruth-Anne Siegel and Colette Wirz Nauke have to say.

“My floral paintings flow from memory and love of music, drawing energy from the sounds of Etta James, Marvin Gaye, and Pete Townshend. My paintings begin with a layer of collaged book pages chosen for their fonts. I add many transparent layers of paint to build the mood of the scene.” - Ruth-Anne Siegel, Abstract flower painter

“As a child I was always mesmerized by the beauty of the cherry blossoms in my grandfather’s backyard. Each flower caught my attention and each falling petal in the wind fired my imagination. The blossoms created a fantasy world of magic for me. When painting the blossoms as an adult I try to find that magical feeling I experienced so long ago and capture it on the canvas.” - Colette Wirz Nauke, Expressionist floral painter