Joseph Stella Italian, American, 1877-1946
47 x 41.9 cm
During World War I, Joseph Stella began attending the famed salons of Walter Arensberg in New York, where he encountered leading figures of the avant-garde, including Marcel Duchamp. Over the next six years, Stella worked closely with the Dada artist, who inspired him to experiment in a range of materials. In this portrait of his friend, Stella used silverpoint, an antiquated preindustrial technique chosen expressly for its existence prior to the devastating and destructive technology used during World War I. While other modernists—including Otto Dix, Marsden Hartley, and John Storrs—also experimented with this unusual medium, Stella was by far the most prolific.
Provenance
The artist;
[Barbara Mathes Gallery Inc., New York]; to
Private collection, acquired by at least 1994 and until the present
Exhibitions
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Joseph Stella, April 22–October 9, 1994, no. 145Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature, October 15, 2022–September 24, 2023 (exhibited in West Palm Beach and Atlanta only)
Literature
Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994, p. 274, no. 145, illus. p. 122Stephanie Mayer Heydt, Ellen E. Roberts, Karli Wurzelbacher, Ara H. Merjian, and Audrey Lewis, Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature, Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2022, p. 203, pl. 18, illus. in color p. 82
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