Composition

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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.