Stuart Davis

Bio and Portrait
Click on the images below to view a larger image.

	Swing Landscape 1938 Oil on canvas, 86 3/4 x 172 1/8 in
	New York Waterfront 1938; Oil on canvas, 56 x 77 cm (22 x 30 1/4 in);
	G & W 1944; Oil on canvas, 18 3/4 x 11 5/8 in;

 

 

 

 

Stuart Davis (1892-1964) Stuart Davis grew up in an artistic environment, for his father was art director of a Philadelphia newspaper. At the age of sixteen Davis began studying at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, leader of what became known as the Ash Can School. Davis developed left-wing views and in 1911 began contributing pictures to the radical journal, The Masses. Although Davis’s subjects concentrated on urban life in the United States, he was very much influenced by French avant-guard movements such as Cubism. This movement, in particular, fascinatedc him, and he took on board its rejection of traditional modeling and perspective, often using lettering to emphasize the flatness of the picture plane. From the 1940s onward, Davis became more and more withdrawn from society, producing introverted abstract and geometrical paintings.

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