Business

Charles DemuthWW-1921-049951

1921·Oil and graphite on canvas·51 × 61.5 cm (20 × 24 1/4 in.)

<p>Charles Demuth was fascinated by the industrial landscape of his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and depicted here a factory building head-on in a starkly linear composition. In choosing a flat subject that mimics the surface of the canvas, Demuth embraced the modernist ideal of unifying form and content. But the artist then irreverently painted a calendar onto the building’s windows—the days of the week surrounded by looming shadows. At a time when many Americans exalted industrialization in the name of progress, <em>Business</em> can instead be read as a critique of the dreary routines that already shaped 20th-century work. At his death, Demuth bequeathed this painting to his longtime friend and supporter Georgia O’Keeffe who later gave it to the Art Institute.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1921
Medium: Oil and graphite on canvas
Dimensions: 51 × 61.5 cm (20 × 24 1/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Charles Demuth

Artist

Charles Demuth

Painting

Charles Demuth was an American painter who developed a distinctive approach to modernism through sharply angled, semi-abstract compositions of industrial structures, flowers, and architectural forms. Working primarily in watercolor and oil, he synthesized Cubist fragmentation with precise linear geometry and a restrained palette of grays and warm ochres. His paintings of grain elevators and factory buildings transformed utilitarian American landscapes into formal studies of intersecting planes and light. Demuth's work bridged European modernist abstraction and American precisionist aesthetics during the early twentieth century.

Lancaster, PA, USA

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