Room Space

A simple arrangement of geometric lines and shapes on a flat surface, Room Space is typical of the spare, refined abstract compositions of Albert Eugene Gallatin. The artist divided his picture plane irregularly into four differently colored fields, on which appear superimposed a blue stripe at upper left and, near the lower edge, a bar bent at two places to form oblique angles and divided arbitrarily into black and orange sections. Gallatin sets bright colors against dark, neutral ones, and plays with the notion of relative color by overlaying the bent orange band on the contrasting expanses of brown and blue. The painting itself is quite removed from reference to objective reality, but the title teases the viewer to see the room’s defining boundaries—walls, floor, ceiling—and perhaps its furniture in the casually angled lines, edges, and planes. Right angles appear only at the corners of the canvas, a reflection of the visual experience of a room’s interior as it defies humanity’s abstract ideal of architectural order. The mechanized impersonality of Gallatin’s painting is relieved by subtle suggestions of the artist’s presence and process in the evident brushstrokes and slightly irregular edges of his shapes. Nonetheless, the artist declined to impinge on the abstract purity of his painting by signing it.

Gallatin took up painting seriously only in 1936, after many years as a pioneering collector of modern art. In the museum he founded in New York City in 1927, the Gallery (later Museum) of Living Art, he particularly promoted abstract art, including European and American examples of cubism (the portrayal of everyday objects as simplified arrangements of flat shapes) and other movements that satisfied his taste for purity and geometric integrity. Their influence is clearly demonstrated in Gallatin’s own paintings. Room Space is indebted particularly to the works of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), who advocated a rigidly geometric style of pure abstraction. The bright blue and yellow Gallatin used in his painting reflects two of the limited number of colors to which Mondrian confined himself, while the drab brown and black against which they are set pay homage to the neutral palette favored by such influential artists as Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Juan Gris (1887–1927) in their cubist portraits and still-life compositions. With such references to artists he admired, Gallatin dedicated his art, as he did his collecting, to championing abstract art during a period when figurative art and nationalist sentiment seemed to reign supreme on the American art scene.

Albert E. Gallatin, Rose Fried Gallery, New York, New York, 1937–1938, no. 131.

Albert E. Gallatin, Galerie Jacques Seligmann, New York, New York, January 16–February 8, 1939.

"Rot konstruiert" und "Super Table": Eine Schweizer Sammlung moderner Kunst 1909–1939, Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland (organizer). Venue: Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland, March 2–April 13, 1980. [exh. cat.]

L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

On Process: Studio Themes, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 4, 2001.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–July 1, 2001.

American Moderns, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 14–October 7, 2001.

Paris, capitale de l'Amérique: L'avant-garde américaine à Paris (A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American Artists in Paris, 1918–1939), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, August 31–November 30, 2003; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington, December 18, 2003–March 2004; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 17–June 27, 2004. [exh. cat.]

Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945  Art Institute of Chicago and Terra Foundation for American Art (organizers). Venue:  Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China, September 28, 2018–January 6, 2019.   [exh. cat.]

Terra Collection-in-Residence, Tougaloo College Art Collections, Jackson, Mississippi, February 18, 2021–December 30, 2022.

   

"Rot konstruiert" und "Super Table": Eine Schweizer Sammlung moderner Kunst 1909–1939. (exh. cat., Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland). Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland, 1980. Text p. 128; ill. p. 129.

Sotheby's New York, New York (May 25, 1995): lot 114. Ill. lot 114.

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 13, p. 40 (color).

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Pl. 13, p. 40 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. An American Point of View: The Daniel J. Terra Collection. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text p. 176.

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Un regard transatlantique. La collection d'art américain de Daniel J. Terra. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text p. 176. Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865-1945. (exh. cat. Shanghai Museum with Art Institute of Chicago and Terra Foundation for American Art). Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, 2018. Text p. 140; ill. p. 141 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 274; ill. p. 274 (color).