Stuart Davis

Augusta Stylianou Gallery

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Stuart Davis (December 7, 1892–June 24, 1964), was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his Jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.

Biography
Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

He was born in Philadelphia to Edward Wyatt Davis and Helen Stuart Davis. His parents both worked in the arts. His father was the art editor of the Philadelphia Press while his mother was a sculptor. Davis studied painting, and art under Robert Henri, the leader of the early modern art group the Eight; he was one of the youngest painters to exhibit in the controversial Armory Show of 1913.

Exposed at this exhibition to the work of such artists as Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, Davis became a committed "modern" artist and a major exponent of cubism and modernism in America.

Career

He was represented by Edith Gregor Halpert at the Downtown Gallery in New York City. He is probably most famous for his Hard-edge paintings, his abstract still lifes and landscapes; his use of contemporary subject matter such as cigarette packages, spark plug advertisements and the contemporary American landscape make him a proto-Pop artist.[1]

Among his ashcan paintings is Chinatown (1912), set in Lower Manhattan. A black cat in the picture represents a promiscuous woman who is depicted nearby dressed in black and standing next to trash cans in a seedy neighborhood.[2]

Davis died of a stroke in New York on June 24, 1964, aged 71.

Public collections

Among the public collections holding work by Stuart Davis are:

* Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts)
* Amon Carter Museum (Texas)
* Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (New York)
* Art Institute of Chicago
* Block Museum of Art (Northwestern University, Illinois)
* Brooklyn Museum (New York City)
* Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
* Cleveland Museum of Art
* Currier Museum of Art (New Hampshire)
* Dallas Museum of Art (Texas)
* Dayton Art Institute (Ohio)
* Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
* Fleming Museum (University of Vermont)
* Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (University of Oklahoma)
* Harvard University Art Museums
* Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.)
* Honolulu Academy of Arts
* the Hyde Collection (Glens Falls, New York)
* Johnson Museum of Art (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)
* Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, Missouri)
* Maier Museum of Art (Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Virginia)
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
* Montclair Art Museum (New Jersey)
* Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas)
* Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
* National Gallery of Australia (Canberra)
* National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.)
* Nevada Museum of Art
* Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida)
* Oklahoma City Museum of Art (Oklahoma)
* Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, California)
* Palazzo Ruspoli (Rome)
* Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia)
* the Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.)
* Pierpont Morgan Library (New York City)
* Pomona College Museum of Art (California)
* Portland Museum of Art (Maine)
* San Diego Museum of Art (California)
* Sheldon Art Gallery (Lincoln, Nebraska)
* Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.)
* Springfield Museum of Art (Ohio)
* Tacoma Art Museum (Washington)
* Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid)
* U.S. Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.)
* University of Kentucky Art Museum
* Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
* Walker Art Center (Minnesota)
* Westmoreland Museum of American Art (Greensburg, Pennsylvania)
* Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City)

* Yale University Art Gallery (Connecticut)

Selected works

Garage No. 1, 1917, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC..
*

Tree and Urn, 1921, 30 x 19 inches.
*

Lucky Strike, 1921, Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
*

Steeple and Street, 1922, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC..

References

1. ^ http://www.jasonkaufman.com/articles/stuart_davis_american_modernist.htm accessed online July 12, 2007
2. ^ Exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas

Sources

* 2007 - Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné (3 volumes) by William Agee (Editor), Karen Wilkin, (Editor), Ani Boyajian, Mark Rutkoski (ISBN 0-300-10981-4)
* Karen Wilkin 1999 - Stuart Davis in Gloucester (ISBN 1-889097-34-9)
* Lowery Stokes Sims et al., Stuart Davis: American Painter, 333 pages, 129 color illus., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1991.