🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Another Artist Id

[Cariboo5]

Hoping someone may be able to id this signature. Thanks to all in advance .....

 

[Blackfoot58]

I’m really going out on a limb here…
I think it may be the title of the work rather than a signature.
I see:
X
E
51

I believe it is Vietnamese for “The Number 51 Bus”. There is a yellow bus in the center.

 

[Red-Coat]

I hate deciphering artist monograms and signatures but I don’t see the first character as an ‘X’. It could be a very flamboyant ‘H’ or something else entirely.

For sure the scene is not Vietnam and I would think European. The hats worn by two of the figures are very Western. I take the ‘51’ to be the date of the work (1951).

To the left of centre there’s a street sign (possibly on a black and white striped pole) with white lettering on a black background and perhaps a right-pointing arrow. Local traffic road signs usually employ black text on white and the only country I know of that uses white on black is Finland.

To the left of that, there’s a vertically-reading sign on a building that says “…LBECH” and of the kind you might expect to see on a department store, hotel, cinema, theatre or the like. Whatever precedes the visible letters must be fairly short, and I wondered if it might read “HOTELBECH” in full. Although not common in Finland, ‘Bech’ is a traditional Nordic surname, derived from the word for “stream”.

None of that brings me closer to the artist, except in narrowing down a possible date and location.

 

[Cariboo5]

Blackfoot58 and Red-Coat thanks for your input. It is my thought also that the sign should be HOTELBECH. I did not know that a black sign with white lettering could be from Finland and will follow up on this. Learn something new every day...

Thanks again to both of you & have a good one .....

 

[Red-Coat]

Blackfoot58 and Red-Coat thanks for your input. It is my thought also that the sign should be HOTELBECH. I did not know that a black sign with white lettering could be from Finland and will follow up on this. Learn something new every day...

Thanks again to both of you & have a good one .....

You’re welcome. As exceptions from the customary black text on a white background for local traffic road signs: Finland uses white-on-black; the Czech Republic uses yellow-on-black; Austria and Spain use white-on-green; Denmark, Iceland and Poland use blue-on-white.

 

[Cariboo5]

As a follow up from your comments I found that Bech is a commune and small town in eastern Luxembourg. So maybe that would confirm that the sigh should read HOTELBECH. I cannot say for certain however another path to follow.....

 

[Mine Shaft]

No idea but have you guys heard about the Gemini AI App for your phone ? Very impressed with the vocabulary it packs when you show it a object. They did a demo on our local news.

 

[Blackfoot58]

I don’t believe that a Vietnamese artist couldn’t paint a scene in a different country.