Swing Landscape
Stuart Davis
(December 7, 1894-June 24, 1964)
Stuart Davis was born in Philadelphia in 1894. At the age of sixteen DavisNew York,
he painted realistic urban scenes. In 1923 Davis
moved to New Mexico
where he painted landscapes and still life compositions. He also began experimenting with Cubism, but
it was only after spending a year in Paris
that he developed his own style of abstract expressionism. His abstract
paintings were inspired by advertisement posters and included lettering. He
filled his canvases with urban images such as gasoline pumps, signboards,
trains, cars and other objects that were symbols of the American new Jazz
Age. During the 1930s DavisDavis
translated the sights and sounds of American life. He appreciated jazz as a distinctly American
idiom. For the next twenty years he began using calligraphic shapes and words
in his paintings. Stuart Davis changed
his style with the times and was respected and admired by all modern artists.
He died in 1964. began studying at the New York School
of Art under Robert Henri, leader of what became known as the Ashcan School of
Realists. While living in became art editor of the Artists’
Congress magazine and painted several public murals including Swing Landscape
that balanced elements of color, shape and line with nautical images of masts,
buoys, spirals of rope, ladders and small buildings to capture the rhythm of a
busy seaport. By the 1940s
