Composition
Artist: Gertrude Glass Greene (American, 1904-1956)
Date: 1940
Dimensions:
Panel: 48 × 32 × 1 3/4 in. (121.9 × 81.3 × 4.4 cm)
Medium: oil on wood panel
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of the Woodward Foundation, by exchange
Object number: 2005.104
Label Text:Always intellectually energetic, Gertrude Greene, one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA), began painting abstract relief constructions in 1935. Expounding upon (and distinct from) European avant-garde movements, the AAA promoted abstraction at a time when it faced strong resistance in the United States. Their efforts influenced the then burgeoning style of Abstract Expressionism.
Before painting Composition, Greene first created a study, reproduced here. The hard lines and geometric forms of the finished painting are offset and softened by the addition of the single curving shape that anchors the composition. While the painting is strictly abstract and does not represent any real object or figure, Greene does provide one easily readable element: the arrow, which points the way for the eye to move around the composition. Though from some angles the work appears to have the flatness of a painting, from others it reads as a layered sculpture enhanced by the red edges on the gray segments jutting out from the flat surface, drawing dramatic attention to its three-dimensionality.
Before painting Composition, Greene first created a study, reproduced here. The hard lines and geometric forms of the finished painting are offset and softened by the addition of the single curving shape that anchors the composition. While the painting is strictly abstract and does not represent any real object or figure, Greene does provide one easily readable element: the arrow, which points the way for the eye to move around the composition. Though from some angles the work appears to have the flatness of a painting, from others it reads as a layered sculpture enhanced by the red edges on the gray segments jutting out from the flat surface, drawing dramatic attention to its three-dimensionality.
On view
In Collection(s)