Main Menu

Composition

Skip to main content
Collections Menu

Composition

Artist Gertrude Glass Greene (American, 1904-1956)
Date1940
DimensionsPainting: 48 × 32 × 1 3/4 in. (121.9 × 81.3 × 4.4 cm)
Mediumoil on wood panel
ClassificationPaintings
Credit LineGift of the Woodward Foundation, by exchange
Object number
2005.104
On View
External Site Address (External address), On Loan
Label TextAlways 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.Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 328, repr. (col.).Exhibition HistoryNew York, ACA Galleries, Gertrude Greene: Constructions, Collages, Paintings, 1981.
Untitled
Gertrude Glass Greene
1940
Mordecai Myers
John Wesley Jarvis
about 1810
Still Life with Oranges
Raphaelle Peale
about 1818
The Holy Family
Lorenzo di Ottavio Costa
about 1510
The Adoration of the Magi
Master of the Vision of St. John
about 1460
The Adoration of the Magi
Fernando Gallego
about 1480-1490
Courtyard, Delft
Pieter de Hooch
about 1657

Membership

Become a TMA member today

Support TMA

Help support the TMA mission