About This Artwork
Stuart Davis
American, 1892-1964
Saw, 1923
Oil on canvas
94 x 55.9 cm (37 x 22 in.)
Signed l.r.: Stuart Davis 1923
Through prior gift of William Wrigley, 1988.144
Unlike most American modernists, Stuart Davis did not visit Paris until he was well established as an artist, in 1928. However, he incorporated the avant-garde styles he saw in New York into objects like Saw, one of a series of paintings of solitary objects he produced in the early 1920s. Here, the saw floats in a Cubist composition of flat, abstract planes. Elevating mundane objects to artistic subjects appealed to modernists like Davis because it signaled a new means of working that was free of art historical associations. In this painting, Davis presented the saw as a modern icon for the 20th century.
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
Santa Fe, Museum of New Mexico, "Fiesta Exhibition," September 3-17, 1923.
New York, Borgenicht Gallery, "Stuart Davis, Still Life paintings, 1922/24," September 27-October 23, 1980.
New York, Salander O'Reilly Galleries, "Stuart Davis: The Breakthrough Years," November 4-December 26, 1987, as "The Saw."
Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Stuart Davis, American Painter," November 23, 1991-February 16, 1992; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 26-June 7, 1992, as "The Saw."
Publication History
Judith A. Barter et al., "American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955," (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 42.