Variations in Red
Artist: Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965)
Date: about 1938
Dimensions:
H: 15 1/16 in. (38.3 cm); W: 23 in. (58.5 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Museum Purchase
Object number: 1949.107
Label Text:For about 20 years, beginning in 1912, Charles Sheeler worked as a commercial photographer specializing in architecture. In the1920s he was commissioned by the Ford Motor Company to take a series of photographs of Ford’s River Rouge plant outside Detroit, Michigan. The photographs captured oddly beautiful views of pristine industrial structures, a subject that was to define his work as a painter as well. Sheeler became a leading proponent of Precisionism, an American style characterized by hard-edged, flattened views of machine-age subjects like factories, skyscrapers, and locomotives.
Variations in Red is one of many views of an abandoned flannel mill in Ballardvale near Andover, Massachusetts, that Sheeler painted from 1946 to 1949. During this period, his work became more abstract, with simplified geometric forms and bright colors.
Variations in Red is one of many views of an abandoned flannel mill in Ballardvale near Andover, Massachusetts, that Sheeler painted from 1946 to 1949. During this period, his work became more abstract, with simplified geometric forms and bright colors.
Not on view
In Collection(s)