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Joseph Stella
1877–1946
BirthplaceMuro Lucano, Italy
Death placeAstoria, New York, United States of America
BiographyAn experimental artist who worked in many graphic and painting media, Joseph Stella combined a lyrical sensibility drawn from his beloved American romantic poets Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) with an eclectic artistic vision that was modernist both in subject matter and style. Stella was born in the mountain village of Muro Lucano, near Naples, Italy, and moved to New York City with his family as a young man. Defying his family’s aspirations that he pursue a professional career, he studied art under famed instructor and painter William Merritt Chase. As an illustrator creating magazine images of immigrant, industrial, and mine workers in New York’s Lower East Side, Pittsburgh, and Virginia, Stella became fascinated with America’s industrial landscape.
Stella returned to his native Italy in 1909 and studied the work of Renaissance painters in Rome and Florence. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where he met leaders of the European avant-garde and immersed himself in the latest developments in modern art. He was especially impressed by the work of a group of Italian artists known as the futurists, who derived a new, abstract aesthetic from the dynamic speed of machines and modern life. Stella created his own futurist-inspired paintings after his return to the United States in 1912; his large, kaleidoscopic Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913–1914, Yale University Art Gallery) created a sensation when it was exhibited at New York’s Montross Gallery in 1914. By the late 1910s, his more geometric, ordered images of such urban icons as New York’s Brooklyn Bridge anticipated the so-called precisionism of American artist Charles Sheeler.
In the 1910s Stella was a dynamic figure in New York avant-garde art circles, including both the artists gathered around photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) at his gallery “291” and those associated with adventurous collector Walter Arensberg (1878–1954), especially French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who became his close friend. Inspired both by cubism’s fragmentation and flattening of forms, and by Duchamp’s experimental creations that used found objects to question the very meaning of art, Stella made collages of discarded materials as another means to express his belief in the fundamental bond between art and life.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Stella’s art ranged widely. He returned to nature and to representationalism in exquisite botanical studies and delicate portraits that often combine drawing and printmaking media; his ambitious canvases incorporate private symbolism, religious motifs, and natural elements. Stella traveled in Europe, North Africa, and Barbados, returning to New York permanently in 1938. Since the 1920s he had been increasingly isolated from the contemporary art world, partly the result of his fierce independence, his volatile personality, and the violent swings of what he described as his artistic “pendulum.” Always experimenting in new media and directions, Stella created a body of work that defied classification. Until recently, his posthumous reputation rested largely on the urban and industrial scenes he created relatively early in his career.
Stella returned to his native Italy in 1909 and studied the work of Renaissance painters in Rome and Florence. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where he met leaders of the European avant-garde and immersed himself in the latest developments in modern art. He was especially impressed by the work of a group of Italian artists known as the futurists, who derived a new, abstract aesthetic from the dynamic speed of machines and modern life. Stella created his own futurist-inspired paintings after his return to the United States in 1912; his large, kaleidoscopic Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras (1913–1914, Yale University Art Gallery) created a sensation when it was exhibited at New York’s Montross Gallery in 1914. By the late 1910s, his more geometric, ordered images of such urban icons as New York’s Brooklyn Bridge anticipated the so-called precisionism of American artist Charles Sheeler.
In the 1910s Stella was a dynamic figure in New York avant-garde art circles, including both the artists gathered around photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) at his gallery “291” and those associated with adventurous collector Walter Arensberg (1878–1954), especially French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who became his close friend. Inspired both by cubism’s fragmentation and flattening of forms, and by Duchamp’s experimental creations that used found objects to question the very meaning of art, Stella made collages of discarded materials as another means to express his belief in the fundamental bond between art and life.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Stella’s art ranged widely. He returned to nature and to representationalism in exquisite botanical studies and delicate portraits that often combine drawing and printmaking media; his ambitious canvases incorporate private symbolism, religious motifs, and natural elements. Stella traveled in Europe, North Africa, and Barbados, returning to New York permanently in 1938. Since the 1920s he had been increasingly isolated from the contemporary art world, partly the result of his fierce independence, his volatile personality, and the violent swings of what he described as his artistic “pendulum.” Always experimenting in new media and directions, Stella created a body of work that defied classification. Until recently, his posthumous reputation rested largely on the urban and industrial scenes he created relatively early in his career.