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Stella, Joseph |
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Joseph Stella (1877-1946)
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| Birth Place |
Muro Lucano, Italy |
| Death Place |
New York, New York |
| Born |
1877 |
| Died |
1946 |
| General Notes |
Joseph Stella claimed that beyond his classical education as a youth in his hometown of Muro Lucano, Italy, his real artistic study took place on the streets of New York City, where he lived after 1896. He drew relentlessly, sketching people in parks, on elevated trains, and in the public library. He dismissed as irrelevant his three years of study with William Merritt Chase, though Chase reinforced Stella's strongest inclinations: his respect for the Old Masters and his love of drawing. In drawing fellow immigrants, Stella produced vivid images of their suffering; his first work appeared in social-reform weeklies. The studies he made in 1908 with the photographer Lewis Hine of men in Pittsburgh's steel mills are timeless comments on human endurance and exploitation. Revisiting Europe in 1909, Stella was introduced to Italian futurism, and today he is known as the movement's first great exponent in America. He found New York's kaleidoscopic scene perfectly suited to his new interest in color and dynamic composition. Yet by 1920 his modernist impulse gave way to a mystical absorption in nature. Silverpoint became his favorite medium as he focused on the delicate beauty of plants and birds. Throughout his career he explored themes from the symbolic to the commonplace. He died a year after falling down an open elevator shaft in a warehouse while serving as a judge for the 1945 exhibition Portrait of America. |
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