Joseph Stella | America's first Futurist painter

Joseph Stella (born Giuseppe Michele 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.

Early life and education

Battle of Lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras, a 1914 portrait of Coney Island by Stella now on display at Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut Stella was born to a middle-class family in Italy, in Muro Lucano, a village in the province of Potenza.

His grandfather Antonio and his father Michele were attorneys, but he came to New York City in 1896 to study medicine, following in the footsteps of his older brother Doctor Antonio Stella.

At that time, Giuseppe changed his name to Joseph.

However, he quickly abandoned his medical studies and turned instead to art, studying at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase.

Career

United States

Stella's first paintings were Rembrandtesque 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.

Man Ray | Three Heads, 1920 - Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Stella | MoMA

From 1905 to 1909, he worked as an illustrator, publishing his realist drawings in magazines.

"He prowled the streets, sketchpad and pencil in hand, alert to catch the pose of the moment, the detail of costume or manner that told the story of a life".

In 1908, he was commissioned for a series on industrial Pittsburgh, later published in The Pittsburgh Survey.

Europe

Stella returned to Italy in 1909.

He was unhappy in the United States, writing that he longed to be back in his native land after "an enforced stay among enemies, in a black funereal land over which weighed ... the curse of a merciless climate".

His return to Europe led 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 had departed Italy, where the omnipresence of the Renaissance presented its own kind of obstacle for contemporary painters, and relocated to Paris.

When he arrived, "Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism were in full swing", he wrote, and "[there] was in the air the glamor of a battle".

It was the right place to be, at just the right time, for a man of Stella's curiosity, openness to new trends, and ambition.

In Paris, Stella attended the salon of Gertrude Stein, where he met many other painters.

"[Stein] found the big and boisterous painter rather like [her friend, the poet] Apollinaire; they both had a fund of sarcastic wit that was frequently turned on their hosts".

Stella's view of his hostess was indeed sarcastic: she sat, he wrote, "enthroned on a sofa in the middle of the room", surrounded by her Cézannes and Picassos, "with the forceful solemnity of a pythoness or a sibyl ... in a high and distant pose".

Having met Umberto Boccioni and befriended Gino Severini in Europe, he became associated with the Italian Futurists and began to incorporate Futurist principles into his art, though he was also interested in the structural experiments of the Cubists and the dynamic color of the Fauves.

Returning to New York City in 1913, Stella wanted to give the United States a second try.

It was a decision he did not regret, although, as art historian Wanda Corn noted, "his culture shock never abated".

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 leader of the New York Dada movement Marcel Duchamp (Stella and Arensberg accompanied Duchamp to the plumbing supply store in 1917 to purchase the infamous urinal).

As a result of these associations, he had almost as many opportunities as he had known in Europe to be among kindred spirits and to see advanced new art.

In 1913-14, he painted Battle of Lights, Coney Island, one of the earliest and greatest American Futurist works.

The legendary Armory Show of 1913, in which he participated, provided him with greater impetus to experiment with modernist styles.

Der Rosenkavalier (1914) and Spring (The Procession - A Chromatic Sensation) (1914-16) are vigorous color abstractions.

Stella's works from his post-Armory Show period, however, were problematic for the cultivation of a sustained career.

Once he had ceased painting in a Futurist or quasi-Cubist mode and had finished with his period of Precisionist factory images (circa 1920), he was not aligned with any particular movement.

His concerns, as well as his approach to painting, became less timely, more personal and idiosyncratic. Tree of My Life (1919), like many later Stella works, is "baroque and operatic", a garden scene out of Bosch, and his figure studies (usually female, often Madonna-like) are decoratively, extravagantly embellished.

His numerous floral works border on the surreal but, in their lushness and excess, could not accurately be characterized as a part of the Surrealist movement.

Critic Lewis Mumford called him a "puzzling painter" at that point, commenting, "I have seen the fissure between his realism and his fantasy widen into an abyss".

Stella was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease in the early 1940s and became subject to increasing periods of morbid anxiety.

On November 5, 1946, he died of heart failure at age 69. He is interred in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

On 13 November 2018 a painting by Stella titled Tree of My Life (1919) sold at Christie's New York for US$5,937,500; a world record for a work by Stella at public auction. | Source: © Wikipedia

Joseph Stella | Self-portrait, 1900 | Christie's

Joseph Stella (Muro Lucano, 1877 - New York, 1946) è stato un pittore Italiano naturalizzato Statunitense.

Si trasferì in America, dove le sue doti non tardarono ad emergere. Si interessò ai movimenti dadaismo e simbolismo.

Fu definito "il primo futurista d'America" e divenne noto per le sue descrizioni dell'America industriale.

Venne associato al Precisionismo, un movimento artistico statunitense attivo fra gli anni dieci e gli anni quaranta del XX secolo.

Formazione

Terminati gli studi al Liceo classico Umberto I di Napoli, a 19 anni si trasferì a New York, iniziando a studiare Medicina sulle orme del fratello maggiore, Antonio Stella divenuto negli Stati Uniti un apprezzato medico.

Dopo essersi trasferito per un anno presso la facoltà di Farmacia, iniziò a scoprire la sua vocazione per l'arte, iscrivendosi nel 1897 alla Art Students League of New York, dove ebbe modo di studiare con il famoso pittore impressionista William Merritt Chase.

Durante questi anni studiò anche con Robert Henri, uno degli otto fondatori della Ashcan School, una corrente realista incentrata sulle scene di vita quotidiana dei quartieri più poveri di New York.

Carriera artistica

Le sue prime opere sulle deplorevoli condizioni di vita nella città tradivano un'evidente influenza rembrandtiana.

Nel 1908 fu incaricato di realizzare una serie di disegni e incisioni circa i quartieri industriali di Pittsburgh, destinati ad illustrare uno studio sociologico pubblicato col titolo di "The Pittsburgh Survey".

Nel 1909, durante un viaggio di quattro anni in Europa, conobbe il modernismo, dal quale ricevette una particolare influenza stilistica.

Oltre a recarsi in Italia, visitò la prima esibizione futurista nella galleria parigina di Bernheim-Jeune, dove rimase impressionato dalle opere di artisti come Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo e Gino Severini.

Nella capitale francese conobbe, frequentando il salotto di Gertrude Stein a Rue de Fleurus, 27, artisti come Matisse, Picasso e Modigliani.

Joseph Stella | Portrait of Clara Fasano (Italian born American sculptor, 1900-1990), 1943

Rientrato a New York, nel 1913, dopo aver partecipato con una natura morta postimpressionista all'Armory Show, la prima importante mostra a New York di pittori europei, dove vide il famoso e scandaloso quadro Nudo che scende le scale di Marcel Duchamp, completò una delle sue prime opere futuriste, "Battle of Lights, Mardi Gras, Coney Island", evidenziando un uso caleidoscopico del colore e «linee di forza» che frammentano gli oggetti, enfatizzando in tal modo le idee del manifesto futurista.

In seguito partecipò al movimento artistico New York Dada con Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, nato nel salotto artistico dei coniugi Louise ed Walter Arensberg e fu il materiale acquirente dell'orinatoio, firmato da Marcel Duchamp con lo pseudonimo di "R. Mutt" ribattezzato Fountain, e presentato alla mostra della Society of Independent Artists del 1917, uno degli episodi più noti e rivoluzionari della poetica dadaista.

Joseph Stella | Brooklyn Bridge / Ponte di Brooklyn, 1919-20, (215.3 x 194.6 cm) | Yale University Art Gallery.

Uno dei suoi quadri più importanti, realizzato fra il 1917-1918, fu il "Ponte di Brooklyn", a proposito del quale Stella dichiarò:

(EN) - «Steel and electricity had created a new world.

A new Drama had surged from the unmerciful violations of darkness at night, by the violent blaze of electricity and a new polyphony was ringing all around with the scintillating highly-colored lights.

The steel has leaped to hyperbolic altitudes and expanded to vast latitudes with the skyscrapers and with bridges made for the conjunction of worlds».

(IT) - «L'acciaio e l'elettricità hanno creato un nuovo mondo.

Un nuovo dramma è sorto dalle impietose violazioni all'oscurità della notte, la violenta luminosità dell'elettricità ha provocato una nuova polifonia che risuona tutto intorno con le scintillanti e coloratissime luci.

L'acciaio è salito fino ad altezze iperboliche e si è espanso a vaste latitudini con i grattacieli ed i ponti che sono stati creati per l'unione dei mondi».

Durante la sua vita Stella ritrasse numerose volte il ponte di Brooklyn, facendone uno dei temi ricorrenti ed emblematici della sua opera pittorica.

Altrettanto famoso è "Voice of the City of New York Interpreted" (1920-22), un polittico a cinque pannelli simile ad una pala d'altare, in cui le figure religiose sono sostituite dai grattacieli e dai ponti di Manhattan.

Idea centrale dell'opera è la descrizione dell'industria come perno centrale della vita moderna, come elemento pervasivo che stava progressivamente rimpiazzando la religione.

L'opera è attualmente custodita presso il Newark Museum.

Fu tra i fondatori e tra i primi direttori della Society of Independent Artists negli Stati Uniti, paese di cui prese la cittadinanza nel 1923.

Nel corso della vita sperimentò numerose correnti artistiche differenti dal Futurismo, come ad esempio il Cubismo, il Simbolismo, il Surrealismo, il Dadaismo e l'Astrattismo.

Nel 1942 iniziò a soffrire di problemi cardiaci, mentre poco più tardi ebbe una caduta accidentale nella fossa di un ascensore, dalla quale non riuscì mai a riprendersi.

Morì il 5 novembre 1946, venendo seppellito nel Woodlawn Cemetery, situato nel borough del Bronx, New York.

Il 13 novembre 2018 un dipinto di Stella intitolato Tree of My Life (1919) è stato venduto da Christie's a New York per 5.937.500 dollari; un record mondiale per un'opera di Stella in un'asta pubblica. | Source: © Wikipedia

Joseph Stella | Tree of My Life, 1919 | Christie's