Joseph Stella

Joseph Stella

Date: 1917

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

Object number: 1999.139

Text Entries: Joseph Stella was born in a mountain village near Naples, Italy and though as a child he displayed a precocious talent for drawing, he was steered toward a classical education by his father. At the age of nineteen, Stella emigrated to the United States and after studying medicine for one year decided to instead pursue his dream of becoming an artist. He enrolled at the Art Students League of New York, studying with William Merritt Chase, and after worked on various drawing assignments. In 1909, Stella returned home to Italy to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance. He then made his way to Paris, where he met figures of the avant-garde such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, attended art exhibitions and familiarized himself with the developments of modern art-particularly the tenets of the Italian Futurists. Stella returned to the states in 1912 and his experiences from abroad were synthesized with his earlier predilection for local subject matter. This new work, his depictions of urban scenes executed with bold, bright colors in dynamic, kaleidoscopic compositions, earned him the title of "American Futurist." Telegraph Poles with Buildings can be understood within this context, however its more subdued color and geometric ordering of composition reveal a second, slightly later phase. In the painting, Stella stills the dynamism and sense of movement often found in his earlier work and offers the viewer a modern landscape complete with the by-products of industry and technology.