Currently on View at the Art Institute of Chicago

Stuart Davis

Date: 1925

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.37

Text Entries: The son of two artists, Stuart Davis grew up with family friends such as John Sloan, George Luks, and Robert Henri. Davis enjoyed an art career that spanned five decades and by the early 1940s was acknowledged as an important figure in twentieth-century American art. Davis's formal art training began at the young age of sixteen when he enrolled in Robert Henri's newly opened school in New York. Three years later, five of his watercolors were included in the pivotal exhibition of modern art, the 1913 Armory Show. This show also initiated Davis's interest in European modernist movements. In particular, the work of Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh greatly appealed to Davis for their depictions embodied his ideal that even abstract art had subject matter. If Davis's work shows an influence of European art, it is always fused with American elements. In a list of items that determined his abstract paintings, for example, he included: "Civil War and skyscraper architecture; the brilliant colors on gasoline stations; chain-store fronts and taxicabs; the music of Bach; synthetic chemistry; the poetry of Rimbaud; fast travel by train, auto and airplane which brought new and multiple perspectives; electric signs; the landscape and boats of Gloucester, Mass.; 5 and 10 cent store kitchen utensils; movies and radio; etc." Super Table-a modern twist on the traditional still life-represents a pivotal stage in Davis's oeuvre, before recognizable subject matter is subsumed to form and color.