Hollyhocks, Joseph Stella, c1919, Silverpoint and Crayon on Paper
View Similar Items
Joseph StellaHollyhocks, Joseph Stella, c1919, Silverpoint and Crayon on Paperc1919
c1919
About the Item
- Creator:Joseph Stella (1877-1946, American, Italian)
- Creation Year:c1919
- Dimensions:Height: 5.91 in (15 cm)Width: 4.77 in (12.1 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:Futurist
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Aerdenhout, NL
- Reference Number:Seller: JSTE/PW JSTE0041stDibs: LU153929037262
Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella was a visionary artist who painted what he saw, an idiosyncratic and individual experience of his time and place. Stella arrived in New York in 1896, part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken Southern Italy. But Stella was not a child of poverty. His father was a notary and respected citizen in Muro Lucano, a small town in the southern Apennines. The five Stella brothers were all properly educated in Naples. Stella’s older brother, Antonio, was the first of the family to come to America. Antonio Stella trained as a physician in Italy, and was a successful and respected doctor in the Italian community centered in Greenwich Village. He sponsored and supported his younger brother, Joseph, first sending him to medical school in New York, then to study pharmacology, and then sustaining him through the early days of his artistic career. Antonio Stella specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and was active in social reform circles. His connections were instrumental in Joseph Stella’s early commissions for illustrations in reform journals.
Joseph Stella, from the beginning, was an outsider. He was of the Italian-American community, but did not share its overwhelming poverty and general lack of education. He went back to Italy on several occasions, but was no longer an Italian. His art incorporated many influences. At various times his work echoed the concerns and techniques of the so-called Ashcan School, of New York Dada, of Futurism and, of Cubism, among others. These are all legitimate influences, but Stella never totally committed himself to any group. He was a convivial, but ultimately solitary figure, with a lifelong mistrust of any authority external to his own personal mandate. He was in Europe during the time that Alfred Stieglitz established his 291 Gallery. When Stella returned he joined the international coterie of artists who gathered at the West Side apartment of the art patron Conrad Arensberg. It was here that Stella became close friends with Marcel Duchamp.
Stella was 19 when he arrived in America and studied in the early years of the century at the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase, under whose tutelage he received rigorous training as a draftsman. His love of line, and his mastery of its techniques, is apparent early in his career in the illustrations he made for various social reform journals. Stella, whose later work as a colorist is breathtakingly lush, never felt obliged to choose between line and color. He drew throughout his career, and unlike other modernists, whose work evolved inexorably to more and more abstract form, Stella freely reverted to earlier realist modes of representation whenever it suited him. This was because, in fact, his “realist” work was not “true to nature,” but true to Stella’s own unique interpretation. Stella began to draw flowers, vegetables, butterflies, and birds in 1919, after he had finished the Brooklyn Bridge series of paintings, which are probably his best-known works. These drawings of flora and fauna were initially coincidental with his fantastical, nostalgic and spiritual vision of his native Italy which he called Tree of My Life (Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth Foundation and Windsor, Inc., St. Louis, illus. in Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994], p. 111 no. 133).
(Biography provided by Hirschl & Adler)
- Still life - XX century, Pastel figurative, ColourfulBy Ewa PelloLocated in Warsaw, PLEWA PELLO (born in 1964) She studied at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. She received her diploma in 1989. She specializes in painting and pastel. I...Category
20th Century Other Art Style Figurative Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Pastel
- Making SureBy Angela A'CourtLocated in New York, NYAngela A’Court’s narrative and still life drawings use a simple and direct vocabulary to show the relationship of experience to expression of beauty and the quirkiness of every day m...Category
2010s Contemporary Still-life Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Pastel
- Mid Century Modern Fruit Basket with Plate Still-LifeBy Mary ReevesLocated in Soquel, CAMid century modern still life of fruit basket and cobalt blue plate with rich, velvety surface treatment done in oil pastel by Mary Reeves (American...Category
1950s American Impressionist Still-life Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Oil Pastel
$560 Sale Price20% Off - Vibrant Colored Pastel with Blue Background- Waterside BloomBy June ZieglerLocated in Houston, TXPastel with dazzling colors (Orange and red flowers, hues of greens and different shades of blue in the background) of fiery flowers blooming by the water. Signed "June Ziegler" lowe...Category
1990s Still-life Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Pastel
- Delft, bright blue still life, plants in pots and vasesBy Angela A'CourtLocated in New York, NYA’Court begins each painting with a broad, color plane—red, blue, pink or yellow—which acts as a table for the artist’s still life vocabulary. This practice allows her to contain the...Category
2010s Contemporary Still-life Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Pastel
- One Peony, interior still life scene, green work on paperBy Angela A'CourtLocated in New York, NYA’Court begins each painting with a broad, color plane—red, blue, pink or yellow—which acts as a table for the artist’s still life vocabulary. This practice allows her to contain the...Category
2010s Contemporary Still-life Drawings and Watercolors
MaterialsPaper, Pastel