Selected Images

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  American Landscape, 1929
  American Landscape, 1929

  Stella captures the pulsing, nocturnal energy of New York in this 1929 rendering of the Brooklyn Bridge. He made at least six major works featuring this subject—the first, in 1919, a massive composition that dazzled audiences with its fractured nocturnal cityscape and pulsing web of cables centered on a road leading to the distant metropolis. Equally commanding in its scale, this later version features an oblique view, with the city virtually walled off by the cables and structure of the bridge. He painted this picture from memory while in Paris to include in his first exhibition there.

  American Landscape, 1929
  Oil on canvas
  Collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, 1957, 1957.15

• 
  Spring (The Procession), ca. 1914–1916
  Spring (The Procession), ca. 1914–1916

  This painting’s arabesques and kaleidoscopic composition announced Stella’s embrace of the new modes of abstraction he encountered in Paris. Although the glamor of the modern American city became a natural muse for his new style, with Spring, he turned unexpectedly to nostalgic themes of pastoral Italy. The painting evoked his childhood memories of the festive religious processions that wound through the village streets, flowers everywhere, and is among his earliest efforts to synthesize themes of Italy and nature, a recipe he would follow throughout the next twenty years of his career.

  Spring (The Procession), ca. 1914–1916
  Oil on canvas
  Yale University Art Gallery, gift of Collection Société Anonyme, 1941.692

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  Untitled (Tree Trunk), ca. 1909–1911
  Untitled (Tree Trunk), ca. 1909–1911

  Stella’s fascination with trees began early in his career and lasted through his final compositions. This etching shows one of his earliest attempts to represent the large and knobby features of a trunk while leaving out the rest of the tree, a vantage point he would adopt time and again in his tree paintings.

  Untitled (Tree Trunk), ca. 1909–1911
  Etching on paper
  High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Carl and Marian Mullis, 1995.158

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  Tropical Sonata, 1920–1921
  Tropical Sonata, 1920–1921

  Rising from a gnarled trunk to a swirl of pointy leaves radiating from a central core, the viewer’s eye moves through dramatic passages like the progression of movements in a musical score. The title of this work reflects Stella’s desire to translate the experience of music into a visual language—an interest that persisted throughout his career. Yet the fiery sky and angular forms in this picture recall the colors and shapes of his industrial pictures. Though Stella often kept the worlds of nature and industry distinct, in works such as Tropical Sonata, visual overlaps appear.

  Tropical Sonata, 1920–1921
  Oil on canvas
  Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, purchase, 63.63

• 
  Tree of My Life, 1919
  Tree of My Life, 1919

  Flora and fauna fill every inch of this massive canvas, alongside symbols of personal significance to Stella. Vignettes from his hometown in Italy, references to Old Master paintings, and architectural structures reminiscent of a garden conservatory emerge as details amid plants, fruits, flowers, and birds. The clear blue sky—a recurring feature of Stella’s later nature-based works—filters through a glorious orb cradled within the tree’s uppermost branches. In the gnarled tree itself, thought to be an ancient olive native to Stella’s region of Italy, he inserts himself: a heavyset, larger-than-life man who spans both worlds, the old and the new, emboldened and embraced by nature.

  Tree of My Life, 1919
  Oil on canvas
  Art Bridges, purchase, AB.2018.21

• 
  The Water Lily, ca. 1924
  The Water Lily, ca. 1924

  Stella created about a dozen reverse glass paintings, applying paint to one side of a sheet of glass to be viewed from the other side. He may have been inspired to experiment in this medium by his friend Marcel Duchamp, who was also using glass in his work at this time. Stella depicts a water lily viewed from above, a flower he likely saw on his frequent trips to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, with outdoor gardens and a conservatory. In the 1920s, the Botanical Garden was renowned for its experiments with the cross-hybridization of water lilies, which produced exceptionally colorful plants.

  The Water Lily, ca. 1924
  Oil on glass
  Collection of Samuel G. Rose

• 
  Lyre Bird, ca. 1925
  Lyre Bird, ca. 1925

  Although the subject appears to be a mythical specimen, the exquisite lyrebird depicted in this painting is a songbird native to Australia. Under threat of extinction, the exotic bird aroused great interest in the early 1900s and was widely visible in scientific publications and newspaper articles alike. Stella may have encountered it through illustrations and taxidermized specimens in natural history museums. Although his attraction to this unusual creature may have been its fascinating plume, the bird is also capable of remarkable vocal mimicry, a characteristic that—as an artist inspired by all the senses—must also have intrigued Stella.

  Lyre Bird, ca. 1925
  Oil on canvas
  Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, gift of Stephen C. Clark, 1954.21

• 
  Swans (Night), ca. 1917
  Swans (Night), ca. 1917

  Swans (Night), ca. 1917
  Pastel on paper
  Courtesy of Adelson Galleries

• 
  Purissima, 1927
  Purissima, 1927

  Purissima is among Stella’s most striking religious paintings. Standing nearly life size, like an altarpiece, the figure recalls spiritual paintings found in churches across Italy as well as sculptural effigies of the Madonna, often adorned with flowers and fruit and paraded through the streets in religious processions. Here the Madonna is part Christian icon and part goddess of nature—the soaring stems of the pink lilies delineate a celestial throne, a common feature in traditional imagery, while the stamen of the central flower suggests the Virgin’s crown. Flanking her on either side are Mount Vesuvius and the outline of Capri, landmarks of the Bay of Naples.

  Purissima, 1927
  Oil on canvas
  High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Harriet and Elliott Goldstein and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2000.206

• 
  The Amazon, 1925
  The Amazon, 1925

  “I was struck by the conquests obtained in every domain by the American woman. My admiration for her became keener, and I painted, in her homage a canvas entitled Amazon (the amazon of our time).” Thus Stella recalled his inspiration for his portrait of Kathleen Millay, an early twentieth-century writer elevated to a heroic status through the title’s evocation of the warrior women of Greco-Roman myth. Although Millay was American, Stella painted her against the silhouetted backdrop of the Italian island of Capri “to uplift her PRESENCE in a legendary realm,” inscribing the modern American woman within a timeless, Homeric landscape.

  The Amazon, 1925
  Oil on canvas
  The Baltimore Museum of Art, purchase with exchange funds from the Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Collection, BMA 1991.13

• 
  Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds), 1924
  Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds), 1924

  Here Stella assembles a classical temple of flora and fauna—in his own words, culled “from the elysian lyricism of the Italian spring.” Flowers rise from a pink lotus at the base of a central column, culminating in the curious combination of a lupine and a longhorn steer’s head flower, a floral form that resembles a bull’s skull. Below perch three sparrows, the national bird of Italy and a favorite of Stella’s.

  Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds), 1924
  Oil on canvas
  Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, 2003.03.01

• 
  Study for Song of Birds, ca. 1924
  Study for Song of Birds, ca. 1924

  Study for Song of Birds, ca. 1924
  Silverpoint and crayon
  Private collection, courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery, New York

• 
  Red Flower, 1929
  Red Flower, 1929

  Red Flower is one of a group of works Stella made in Paris in 1929 that take on an overall darker tone. New York Times critic Edward Alden Jewell characterized the picture as “eerie,” noting, “the artist mixes his paint with mysterious ingredients known only to alchemists. He has learned how to make color glow through dark, opaque forms.” The amaryllis in Red Flower materializes out of the blackness as if by magic, with leaves and petals splayed and two birds framing the central form, evoking religious paintings of apostles flanking Christ on the cross.

  Red Flower, 1929
  Oil on canvas
  Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2006.102

• 
  Swan (with Rainbow), ca. 1924
  Swan (with Rainbow), ca. 1924

  The swan—often associated with the Greek god Zeus and the form he took in his passionate pursuit of Leda in classical mythology—conjures notions of sensuality, beauty, purity, and power. The animal appears as detail in several of Stella’s works inspired by Italy. Yet in this monumental presentation, the bird takes center stage, filling the composition. With its round format, common among religious paintings of the Renaissance, Swan assumes near spiritual status.

  Swan (with Rainbow), ca. 1924
  Oil on canvas
  Collection of C. K. Williams II

• 
  Untitled, ca. 1918
  Untitled, ca. 1918

  Stella made some sixty-five collages over the course of three decades, a collection of largely untitled compositions he referred to in Italian as macchine naturali—or “natural machines.” The term itself combines the two concepts, the humanmade and the natural, into a single composition. Assembled of found objects, many include botanical elements such as branches or leaves. Though Stella never exhibited his collages publicly, the whimsy and freedom he expresses in these compositions may have informed his work in other media.

  Untitled, ca. 1918
  Collage (leaf and paper) on paper
  Courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries, New York

• 
  Gardenia, ca. 1940
  Gardenia, ca. 1940

  Gardenia, ca. 1940
  Colored pencil and graphite on paper
  High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Highland Vineyard Foundation in memory of Harriet and Elliott Goldstein, 2010.214