 – Closing on January 15, 2023, “Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature” is an exhibition about a pioneering American modernist, Joseph Stella (1877-1946) is best known for…){kind=link}
WEST PALM BEACH, FL (PNAN) – Closing on January 15, 2023, “Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature” is an exhibition about a pioneering American modernist, Joseph Stella (1877-1946) is best known for his dynamic Futurist-inspired paintings of New York at the Norton Museum of Art is the first major museum exhibition to focus exclusively on his nature subjects, featuring nearly 90 paintings and works on paper drawn from museums and private collections.
Artist Stella expressed his connection to the natural world through his lyrical and exuberant depictions of flowers, plants, and birds. He saw a purity and beautiful mystery in nature and explored it with passion, combining realism and fantasy in a modernist idiom.
Stella wrote that his wish was “…that my every working day might begin and end, as a good omen, with the light, gay painting of a flower.” This was not just a sentimental musing, but a small reflection of how profoundly he believed in the need for nature as spiritual sustenance.
The exhibition is arranged into groupings that reveal the myriad directions that Stella’s engagement with nature took him, beginning with his delicate renderings in silverpoint and crayon, including the Norton’s Lilies with Forms of circa 1920.
Following, Stella’s fantasy-packed floral, plant, and bird canvases reveals the artist’s distinct vision and his intent to evoke a sense of wonder and revelation.
Next are his complex allegorical works that incorporate the Madonna amidst elaborate floral motifs that demonstrate his devotion to 15th-century Italian painting, as well as his familiarity with the aesthetics of Catholic rituals.
The culmination are works emerging from Stella’s trip to Barbados in the late 1930s as well as the drawings he continued to execute when he was in poor health at the end of his life.
For more details on this Stella showing and Norton’s upcoming programming see: www.norton.org or stop by at 1450 S. Dixie Highway highly recommended by our FL PNAN content editor.