About the Artist
Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella (1877 – 1946) was an Italian-born American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is also associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s. He came to New York City in 1896 to study medicine, but he quickly abandoned his medical studies and turned instead to art, studying at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. His first paintings were Rembrandt-esque depictions of city slum life. A remarkable draftsman, he made drawings throughout the various phases of his career, beginning as an academic realist with a particular interest in immigrant and ethnic life. From 1905 to 1909, he worked as an illustrator, publishing his realist drawings in magazines. Stella returned to Italy in 1909, unhappy with America, leading to his first extensive contact with Modernism which would ultimately mold his distinctive personal style, notable for its strong color and sweeping and dynamic lines. By 1911, he left had Italy for Paris, where he attended Gertrude Stein's salon and found "Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism in full swing." He returned to New York in 1913. He became a part of the Alfred Stieglitz and the Walter Arensberg circles in Manhattan and enjoyed close relationships with fellow expatriates Albert Gleizes and New York Dada movement leader Marcel Duchamp. The legendary Armory Show of 1913, in which he participated, provided him with greater impetus to experiment with modernist styles.
