Title
The Little Lake

Joseph Stella (1877-1946) was born in Italy and moved to New York City at the age of nineteen. He was a pioneering modernist; his dynamic, kaleidoscopic paintings of the new urban-industrial landscape are among the earliest Futurist works completed by an American artist. Stella traveled to Paris in 1911 and came into contact with Picasso, Matisse, and the Italian Futurists, all of whom were experimenting with a new visual vocabulary to express the complexities of the modern age. He also returned to his native Italy many times to seek artistic and spiritual rejuvenation.

The Little Lake was most likely created during one of these sojourns in Italy, from July 1926 to July 1927. The dark, sensual colors and flat, simplified forms are typical of Stella’s work from this period, which postdates his Futurist work. Like other landscapes executed in Italy, the limpid sky was drawn, in Stella’s words, “from the serenity of my youth in Italy, displaying a cloudless purity of blue.” A mystical, symbolic quality emanates from the symmetry and stillness of this verdant landscape, which Stella described in characteristically passionate terms: “mystic silver of the Full moon, with…the foliated plant that burst from the torn trunk of the life-giving tree.”

Text Written by Gail Stavitsky (Chief Curator)

This work is not on view.

Image
Image
Joseph Stella (1877-1946), "The Little Lake," 1926, oil on canvas, 40 x 34 in. (101.6 x 86.4 cm).
Artwork Details

Title: The Little Lake

Artist: Joseph Stella (1877-1946)

Date: 1927

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: frame: 43 3/4 x 37 3/4 in. (111.1 x 95.9 cm) painting: 40 x 34 in. (101.6 x 86.4 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Bernard Rabin

Accession Number: 1966.85