Relief

Arts of the Americas

1937

Charles Green Shaw
American, 1892–1974

Relief exemplifies Charles Green Shaw’s conviction that a work of art did not require a subject to evoke an aesthetic response. Composed of a cascading arrangement of biomorphic forms, this striking wood construction conveys the compositional balance and rhythm that Shaw, an early member of the American Abstract Artists group, sought in his nonobjective works. Equally important, Relief is neither a painting nor a sculpture, but rather a hybrid of the two. The wood pieces enter the viewer’s space even as the work remains attached to the wall, the traditional realm of painting. Relief can therefore be seen as part of the ongoing modernist endeavor to challenge the two-dimensionality of the picture plane.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Charles Green Shaw
Title: Relief
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1937
Medium: Painted wood relief
Inscriptions: Signed and dated on verso: Charles G. Shaw 1937
Dimensions: 121.9 × 152.4 cm (48 × 60 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection
Reference Number: 2006.81

Annual Report (Art Institute of Chicago, 2005–2006), 22.
Eric Gibson, “New York Letter: Charles G. Shaw,” Art International 23, 1 (April 1979), 48, ill.
Buck Pennington, “The ‘Floating World’ in the Twenties: The Jazz Age and Charles Green Shaw” Archives of American Art Journal 20, 4 (1980), 17–24, ill. p. 23.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 114.

New York, Washburn Gallery, Reliefs by Charles G. Shaw, Jan. 5–Feb. 3, 1979, n.p., ill.
Trenton, New Jersey State Museum, Beyond the Plane: Constructions in America, 1930–65, Oct. 8, 1983–Jan. 2, 1984, cat. 43, fig. 46; University of Maryland Art Gallery, Jan. 26–Mar. 18, 1984, and Detroit Institute of the Arts, Apr. 16–June 11, 1984.
New York, Washburn Gallery, Charles G. Shaw: Biomorphic Dimensions, Nov. 1–26, 1988, n.p., ill.

Collection of the artist; bequeathed to Charles H. Carpenter, New Canaan, CT, 1974; [Washburn Gallery, New York, c. 1974–2006]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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