.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Mural Detail #2 is a study for the largest of Stuart Davis' murals, Composition Concrete, which was completed on August 19, 1957. The final mural measured seventeen by eight feet and was designed to enhance the lobby of the new Heinz Research Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The present work details elements from the lower half of the composition. Davis continued work on Mural Detail #2, even after the mural was completed, finishing it on December 23, 1958.
Excited by the challenge of working in a larger scale, Davis agreed to produce his first monumental wall decoration for a friend's candy store in Ohio in 1921. Having deemed it a successful endeavor, he continued to accept mural commissions and under the umbrella of the federally supported arts programs initiated by President Roosevelt, Davis worked on five additional murals, four of which were realized, in the 1930s. In the 1950s, Davis undertook three more mural projects, including a final mural commission from the H.J. Heinz Company.
Davis employs a characteristically reduced palette in Mural Detail #2, using only four pigments: red, black, blue and white. He carefully balances and overlays these bold contrasting colors to establish a variety of spatial relationships, creating a sense of recession, mass and depth in the work. An enormous tension emerges out of the interlocking planes pushing and pulling against one another. The resulting composition seems alternately complex and quite simple; it is a "color-space event" that supersedes any anecdotal or literal references. The only surface ornamentation is the artist's signature, which is integrated into the composition.
Mural Detail #2 embodies the style and energy of Davis' mature works and is a visual representation of his belief that, "Modern art differs from art of the past not in its abstractness, but in its new and contemporary concept of color-space, or form. Modern art has not changed the social function of art, but has kept it alive by using as its subject matter the new and interesting relations of form and color which are everywhere apparent in our environment." (quoted in Walker Art Center, Stuart Davis, exhibition catalogue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1957, p. 34)
CAPTION
Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Composition Concrete, 1957, oil on canvas, 16ft. 10 3/4 in. x 8 ft. 1/4 in (515 x 244.3 cm.) /e Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Excited by the challenge of working in a larger scale, Davis agreed to produce his first monumental wall decoration for a friend's candy store in Ohio in 1921. Having deemed it a successful endeavor, he continued to accept mural commissions and under the umbrella of the federally supported arts programs initiated by President Roosevelt, Davis worked on five additional murals, four of which were realized, in the 1930s. In the 1950s, Davis undertook three more mural projects, including a final mural commission from the H.J. Heinz Company.
Davis employs a characteristically reduced palette in Mural Detail #2, using only four pigments: red, black, blue and white. He carefully balances and overlays these bold contrasting colors to establish a variety of spatial relationships, creating a sense of recession, mass and depth in the work. An enormous tension emerges out of the interlocking planes pushing and pulling against one another. The resulting composition seems alternately complex and quite simple; it is a "color-space event" that supersedes any anecdotal or literal references. The only surface ornamentation is the artist's signature, which is integrated into the composition.
Mural Detail #2 embodies the style and energy of Davis' mature works and is a visual representation of his belief that, "Modern art differs from art of the past not in its abstractness, but in its new and contemporary concept of color-space, or form. Modern art has not changed the social function of art, but has kept it alive by using as its subject matter the new and interesting relations of form and color which are everywhere apparent in our environment." (quoted in Walker Art Center, Stuart Davis, exhibition catalogue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1957, p. 34)
CAPTION
Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Composition Concrete, 1957, oil on canvas, 16ft. 10 3/4 in. x 8 ft. 1/4 in (515 x 244.3 cm.) /e Estate of Stuart Davis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY