Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella | |
---|---|
Born | Giuseppe Michele Stella June 13, 1877 |
Died | November 5, 1946 New York City, U.S. | (aged 69)
Nationality | American |
Education | Art Students League of New York, William Merritt Chase |
Known for | Painting |
Movement | Precisionism, Futurism |
Joseph Stella (born Giuseppe Michele Stella, June 13, 1877 – November 5, 1946) was an
Early life and education
Stella was born to a middle-class family in Italy, in
Career
United States
Stella's first paintings were Rembrandtesque depictions of city slum life. A remarkable draftsman, he made drawings throughout the various phases of his career, beginning as an academic realist with a particular interest in immigrant and ethnic life. From 1905 to 1909, he worked as an illustrator, publishing his realist drawings in magazines. "He prowled the streets, sketchpad and pencil in hand, alert to catch the pose of the moment, the detail of costume or manner that told the story of a life."[4] In 1908, he was commissioned for a series on industrial Pittsburgh, later published in The Pittsburgh Survey.
Europe
Stella returned to Italy in 1909. He was unhappy in the United States, writing that he longed to be back in his native land after "an enforced stay among enemies, in a black funereal land over which weighed ... the curse of a merciless climate."[5] His return to Europe led to his first extensive contact with Modernism, which would ultimately mold his distinctive personal style, notable for its strong color and sweeping and dynamic lines. By 1911, he had departed Italy, where the omnipresence of the Renaissance presented its own kind of obstacle for contemporary painters, and relocated to Paris. When he arrived, "Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism were in full swing," he wrote, and "[there] was in the air the glamor of a battle."[6] It was the right place to be, at just the right time, for a man of Stella's curiosity, openness to new trends, and ambition.
In
Having met Umberto Boccioni and befriended Gino Severini in Europe, he became associated with the Italian Futurists and began to incorporate Futurist principles into his art, though he was also interested in the structural experiments of the Cubists and the dynamic color of the Fauves.[8]
Return to United States
Returning to
Following the Armory Show, Stella also became a much-talked-about figure in the New York City art world, an object of virulent attacks from conservative critics who found Modernism threatening and inexplicable and an object of fascination to younger, more adventurous artists. In the view of art historian
In New York City during the 1920s, Stella became fascinated with the geometric quality of the architecture of
In the 1930s, Stella worked on the Federal Art Project and later traveled to Europe, North Africa, and the West Indies, locations that inspired him to work in various modes. He restlessly moved from one style to the next, from realism to abstraction to surrealism. He executed abstract city themes, religious images, botanical and nature studies, erotic and steamy Caribbean landscapes, and colorful still lifes of vegetables, fruits, and flowers.
Stella's works from his post-Armory Show period, however, were problematic for the cultivation of a sustained career. Once he had ceased painting in a Futurist or quasi-Cubist mode and had finished with his period of Precisionist factory images (circa 1920), he was not aligned with any particular movement. His concerns, as well as his approach to painting, became less timely, more personal and idiosyncratic. Tree of My Life (1919), like many later Stella works, is "baroque and operatic,"[14] a garden scene out of Bosch, and his figure studies (usually female, often Madonna-like) are decoratively, extravagantly embellished. His numerous floral works border on the surreal but, in their lushness and excess, could not accurately be characterized as a part of the Surrealist movement. Critic Lewis Mumford called him a "puzzling painter" at that point, commenting, "I have seen the fissure between his realism and his fantasy widen into an abyss."[15]
Stella's strong draftsmanship is evident in the many different kinds of images he created throughout his life. He is especially respected today for his portraits on paper drawn in silverpoint, or silverpoint and oil, most from the 1920s. His renderings of
A lesser-known aspect of Stella's work is the collages he made in the 1920s, consisting of scraps of discarded paper, wrappers (some with the commercial logo or label still visible), and other bits of urban debris, often slashed with brush strokes of paint. Though Stella was "attracted to the grandiose, mechanized aspects of the city, [he] was also drawn to its anonymous, unnoticed discards...the detritus of human existence."[16] These are works in the spirit of the German collage artist Kurt Schwitters and the anti-"high art" ethos of the Dada movement, which always interested Stella.
By the late 1930s, Stella's work attracted considerably less attention than it had in previous decades. His truculent personality had alienated many old friends, and his style no longer spoke to the times.[17] "Stella's health and critical fortunes sank in [the years prior to World War II]. Emotionally cut off from the New York art world, even his retrospective at the Newark Museum in 1939 failed to reestablish him. Though successful as a presentation, the show was less enthusiastically reviewed than Stella had anticipated, and he later complained of not being able to induce anyone living in New York City to see it."[18]
Death
Stella was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease in the early 1940s and became subject to increasing periods of morbid anxiety. On November 5, 1946, he died of heart failure at age 69. He is interred in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Major works in public collections
- Pittsburgh Factory Scene (1908–1918): Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis[19]
- Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913–14): Yale University Art Gallery[20]
- Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1913–14): Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln[21]
- Der Rosenkavalier (1914): Whitney Museum of American Art[22]
- Pyrotechnic Fires (1919): Museum of Fine Arts Houston[23]
- Brooklyn Bridge (1919–20): Yale University Art Gallery
- New York Interpreted (The Voice of the City) (1920–22): Newark Museum
- Factories (1920): Museum of Modern Art[24]
- The Birth of Venus (1922): Salisbury House[25]
- By-Product Plants (1923–26): Chicago Art Institute[26]
- The Amazon (1925–26): Baltimore Museum of Art[27]
- The Virgin (1926): Brooklyn Museum[28]
- Tree, Cactus, Moon (1927–28): Reynolda House Museum, North Carolina [29]
- American Landscape (1929): Walker Art Center[30]
- Lotus (1929): Hirshhorn Museum[31]
- Flowers, Italy (1930): Phoenix Art Museum
- Smoke Stacks (1935): Indiana State University Art Collection
- Old Brooklyn Bridge (1941): Museum of Fine Arts, Boston[32]
Art market
On 13 November 2018 a painting by Stella titled Tree of My Life (1919) sold at Christie's New York for US$5,937,500; a world record for a work by Stella at public auction.[33][34]
Selected works
-
Purissima (Purest),1927
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Hibiscus, Shell, and Plate
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Serenade a Christmas fantasy
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Spring (The Procession)
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Madonna
-
Still Life
-
Men and women around the world united around Jesus
-
Flowers, Italy
References
- ^ biographical information for this entry is taken from Salvatore Pagliuca Basilicata Regione.
- ^ Biographical information for this entry is taken from Barbara Haskell and Irma Jaffe.
- ^ "Joseph Stella". Retrieved 17 August 2022.
- ^ Jaffe, p. 16.
- ^ Hughes, p. 374.
- ^ Hughes, p. 375.
- ^ James Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Co. (New York, Henry Holt, 2003 edition), p. 181.
- ^ Haskell, p. 88.
- ^ Corn, p. 135.
- ^ Calvin Tomkins, Marcel Duchamp: A Biography (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), p. 181.
- ^ Hunter, p. 85.
- ^ Jaffe, p. 47.
- ^ Corn, 137. Corn's chapter on Joseph Stella in The Great American Thing contains an extended treatment of this painting, as does Jaffe's biography, pp. 64–80.
- ^ Haskell, p. 110.
- ^ Haskell, p. 170.
- ^ Davidson, pp. 101–102.
- ^ Haskell, p. 162.
- ^ Haskell, p. 176.
- ^ "Pittsburgh Factory Scene, Joseph Stella ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art". collections.artsmia.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras". artgallery.yale.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ Art, Sheldon Museum of. "Stella, Battle | Sheldon Museum of Art". www.sheldonartgallery.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Whitney Museum of American Art: Joseph Stella: The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme". collection.whitney.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Pyrotechnic Fires | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston". www.mfah.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Joseph Stella. Factories. 1918 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Photo Gallery - Salisbury House". salisburyhouse.org. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
- ^ "By-Products Plants | The Art Institute of Chicago". www.artic.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "The Baltimore Museum of Art". collection.artbma.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Tree, Cactus, Moon | Reynolda House Museum of American Art". reynoldahouse.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "American Landscape". walkerart.org. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Lotus | Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution". collections.si.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ "Old Brooklyn Bridge". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2018-02-16. Retrieved 2018-02-17.
- ^ Joseph Stella, 1919, Tree of My Life, oil on canvas, 213.4 x 193 cm, Christie's New York, An American Place, The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection Evening Sale, 13 November 2018
- ^ Results: Christie's 20th Century Week Totals $1.1 billion. Individual Artist Records, Christie's
Sources
- Sullivan Goss, Joseph Stella
- Brown, Milton. American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.
- Corn, Wanda. "An Italian in New York" (pp. 135–190) in Corn, The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–1935. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
- Davidson, Abraham A. Early American Modernist Painting, 1910–1935. New York: DaCapo, 1994 edition.
- Haskell, Barbara. Joseph Stella. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art (exhibition catalogue), 1994.
- Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Knopf, 1997.
- Hunter, Sam. Modern American Painting and Sculpture. New York: Dell, 1959.
- Jaffe, Irma. Joseph Stella. New York: Fordham University Press, 1988 edition.
- Salvatore Pagliuca "Antonio Stella, medico e filantropo, a New York", Basilicata Regione
External links
- Pittsburgh Portraits by Joseph Stella: Menu of Portraits, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
- AskArt page for Joseph Stella
- Flowers, Italy Archived 2019-01-28 at the Wayback Machine (1931) Phoenix Art Museum
- Works by Joseph Stella at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Joseph Stella at Internet Archive