Strange Worlds

1928

Todros Geller (American, born Vinnytsia, Russian Empire, now Ukraine, 1889–1949)

Todros Geller reflected on the complex blending of immigrant traditions and modern culture that characterized early 20th-century Chicago—what he termed the collision of many “strange worlds.” Focusing on Jewish themes and subject matter in his work, here Geller depicted a man in somber garb staring guardedly out at the viewer from beneath the diagonal steel stairway of a Chicago “L” station. Behind him, pedestrians and vehicles stream past, rendered by the artist in a swirling, modernist array of circles and fractured planes. The figure’s immobile posture and his isolation from the frenetic activity suggest his resistance to—and perseverance amid—a changing world.

Status: On View, Gallery 263
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Todros Geller
Title: Strange Worlds
Place: Chicago (Object made in)
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.: 1928
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed lower left: TODROS / GELLER.
Dimensions: 71.8 × 66.4 cm (28 1/4 × 26 1/8 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Leon Garland Foundation
Reference Number: 1949.27

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), 141–42, cat. 57 (ill.).
Sarah Kelly Oehler, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 27, 31–34, cat. 21 (ill.).
Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, exh. cat. (Shanghai: Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 69.

Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Exhibition, 1930, cat. 65.
New York, World Alliance for Yiddish Culture, First Exhibition, Feb. 26–Mar. 27, 1938, cat. 28.
Chicago, Board of Jewish Education and the American Jewish Arts Club, Todros Geller: Memorial Program and Exhibition, Apr. 2–June 14, 1949, cat. 3.
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Sesquicentennial, June 15–Sept. 8, 1968.
Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago Modern, 1893–1945: Pursuit of the New, July 17–Oct. 31, 2004, cat. 36.
Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950, Mar. 3–Jun. 2, 2013, cat. 21.
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sept. 28, 2018–Jan. 6, 2019, cat. 69.

Todros Geller (1889–1949), Chicago, until 1949; to the Leon Garland Foundation, Chicago, 1949; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.

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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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