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Joseph StellaWW-1923-028852

1923·Oil on canvas·61 × 61 cm (24 × 24 in.)

<p>While studying art in Italy and France from 1909 to 1913, Joseph Stella was captivated by Italian Futurism, a movement that employed Cubism’s fragmented forms to express the mechanization and speed of modern life. After he returned to the United States, Stella used Futurism to convey the dynamism of American industry in paintings like this one, which depicts the factories that extract ammonia, tar, and light oils when coal is burned. Such mechanical processes fascinated Stella, and he later recalled, “opposite my studio was a huge factory . . . towering with the gloom of a prison. At night fires gave to innumerable windows menacing blazing looks of demons.”</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1923
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 61 × 61 cm (24 × 24 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Joseph Stella

Artist

Joseph Stella

Painting

Joseph Stella was an American painter and sculptor who worked in Futurism and Precisionism during the early twentieth century. Born in Italy and based in New York, he is best known for his dynamic urban landscapes and industrial scenes rendered in sharply defined geometric forms and vivid color. His monumental works, including the five-panel painting Brooklyn Bridge (1919, 1920), capture the energy and scale of American modernism through fragmented perspectives and machine-age aesthetics. Stella's synthesis of Italian Futurist dynamism with American industrial subject matter established him as a defining figure in early American modernism.

Lucano, Italy

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