Aesthetic Function in Space

Knud MerrildWW-1928-143283

1928·Oil on Masonite and cardboard with mirror, in artist-painted frame·78.7 × 57.8 cm (31 × 22 3/4 in.)

<p>A pioneering modernist working in Los Angeles from the 1920s until the early 1950s, Knud Merrild believed that avant-garde artists should challenge the boundaries of the picture plane by expanding outward. He assembled <em>Aesthetic Function in Space</em> out of shaped pieces of Masonite, corrugated cardboard, wood, and a small mirror, layering the forms to create a three-dimensional construction that unites elements of painting, collage, and sculpture. Described as being a “space composition” or “space painting,” this work is an early American example of a wall construction. It is also the first to be made by any California artist, noteworthy given Merrild’s distance from avant-garde art centers. When exhibited in San Francisco, local critics noted the work’s highly radical form, referring to it as “one of the most ultra of the modern paintings.”</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1928
Medium: Oil on Masonite and cardboard with mirror, in artist-painted frame
Dimensions: 78.7 × 57.8 cm (31 × 22 3/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Knud Merrild

Artist

Knud Merrild

Painting

Knud Merrild was an American painter and printmaker born in Denmark who worked across abstraction and figuration during the mid-twentieth century. Active from the 1920s onward, he engaged with modernist formal vocabularies while maintaining a commitment to representational subjects drawn from landscape and still life. His practice spanned oil painting, watercolor, and printmaking techniques. Merrild's work remains understudied in English-language art historical discourse.

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