
Primordial Pool
<p>Leafless autumn trees cast their reflections on small eddies of algae that swirl at the surface of a shallow pond. This pensive photograph was made by Howard Dearstyne, the only American student to graduate from the German Bauhaus, having studied at its Dessau and Berlin locations. After returning to the United States to teach architectural history, he continued to make photographs, specializing in color images of nature. Dearstyne thought of these works in relation to painting: “All the kinds and categories of visual effects found in painting,” he wrote, “can at some time, somewhere, be observed in the physical world about us.”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1940
- Medium
- Chromogenic print
- Dimensions
- Image/paper: 24 × 34.8 cm (9 1/2 × 13 3/4 in.); Mount: 24.7 × 35.6 cm (9 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Howard Dearstyne
Artist

Photography
Howard Dearstyne was an American painter and printmaker whose work synthesized geometric abstraction with architectural principles. Active through the postwar period, he developed a distinctive visual language rooted in ordered compositions of color, line, and plane.
Full artist profile →More
More by Howard Dearstyne
Untitled
1958 · Chromogenic print, printed 1958
Untitled (Bottles in Wooden Crates)
1957 · Chromogenic print
April Reflection
1953 · Chromogenic print
Untitled (Stalks in Icy Water)
1952 · Chromogenic print
Untitled (Plants Against Blue Water)
1952 · Chromogenic print
Untitled
1952 · Chromogenic print
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Howard Dearstyne
- Year
- 1940
- Medium
- Chromogenic print
- Dimensions
- Image/paper: 24 × 34.8 cm (9 1/2 × 13 3/4 in.); Mount: 24.7 × 35.6 cm (9 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1940-116311
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





