STUART DAVIS (1892-1964) Title: Untitled (TOWER), Medium: INk on Paper, Date: c. 1935-40, Size: 12 x 9 in. w / C. of Attribution. Was an American Modernist painter best known for his brilliantly colored geometric abstractions. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, he translated the contemporary socio-political American landscape through bold, graphic forms and aggregate compositions. Born on December 7, 1892 in Philadelphia, PA, Davis studied under the Aschan School leader Robert Henri beginning in 1909 and quickly rose to prominence. He exhibited alongside major figures such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in the notorious 1913 Armory Show in New York. By the 1920s, Davis work shifted from the realist, Ashcan School aesthetic of his youth into the mature abstracted compositions he is known for. He notably conflated formal language with his extreme Leftist political views, often making Marxist statements through seemingly banal representations of product advertisements. Considered among the most important American painters of the 20th century, Davis work can be found among such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, where Davis taught occasionally until his death on June 24, 1964 in New York, NY. The artist famously once declared, I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American scene.

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