Spring

Charles DemuthWW-1921-143280

1921·Oil and graphite on canvas·56.2 × 61.3 cm (22 1/8 × 24 1/8 in.)

In Spring Charles Demuth depicted the sample cards used to advertise new spring fabrics. Pablo Picasso was the first to create such painted collages—a practice called Synthetic Cubism. Although Demuth saw examples of the style in both New York and Paris, he only experimented with it once, in this work. Here his subject allowed him to construct the ideal modernist painting by using overlapping planes that remain faithful to the canvas’s inherent flatness. However, the sample cards also connect his picture to everyday concerns. By titling his painting Spring, Demuth wryly highlighted the new reality of American life, in which the changing of seasons was heralded not by nature but by commerce.

Catalogue

Year: 1921
Medium: Oil and graphite on canvas
Dimensions: 56.2 × 61.3 cm (22 1/8 × 24 1/8 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Charles Demuth

Artist

Charles Demuth

Painting

Charles Demuth was an American painter who developed a distinctive approach to modernism through sharply angled, semi-abstract compositions of industrial structures, flowers, and architectural forms. Working primarily in watercolor and oil, he synthesized Cubist fragmentation with precise linear geometry and a restrained palette of grays and warm ochres. His paintings of grain elevators and factory buildings transformed utilitarian American landscapes into formal studies of intersecting planes and light. Demuth's work bridged European modernist abstraction and American precisionist aesthetics during the early twentieth century.

Lancaster, PA, USA

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