Marsden Hartley painted Movements while living in Berlin, where he met Vasily Kandinsky, whose abstract and highly spiritual art influenced the American painter deeply. Hartley was a central figure of the American avant-garde that exhibited at 291, the New York gallery of Alfred Steiglitz. The title of this intense, vividly colored canvas suggests a musical analogy for its nearly abstract forms, which are rhythmically orchestrated around the central red circle and black triangle. Yet Hartley also drew on his experience of Berlin in Movements; the vigorous forms in the composition, bursting and overlapping in a riotous array, suggest the fast pace of life in the German capital. Although Hartley’s art underwent frequent changes in style and subject, the charged, romantic energy seen here remained a constant presence.
“An American Collection,” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin, 40, 206 (May 1945), 66–80 (ill.).
Milton W. Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (Princeton University Press, 1955), 146 (ill.).
Instituto de Arte de Chicago (Madrid, El Mundo de los Museos, 1967), 82 (ill.).
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 211.
Daniel C. Rich, “The Stieglitz Collection,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago (1961), 211.
Richard Whelan, “Marsden Hartley, A ‘Sense of Truth and a Real Naivete of Spirit,” Artnews 79 (Summer 1980), 118–20 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996),36 (ill.).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 8.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017) p. 98.
New York City, Anderson Galleries, The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, Mar 13–25, 1916.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, History of an American, Alfred Stieglitz: ‘291’ and After, Summer 1944, cat. 244.
New York City, Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Stieglitz: His Collection, Jun 10–Aug 31, 1947, cat. 36.
Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and His Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, Feb 7–Mar 1948.
New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, Marsden Hartley, Mar 4–May 1980, cat. 17; traveled to Art Institute of Chicago, Jun 10–Aug 3, 1980, Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Sep 5–Oct 26, 1980, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Nov 12, 1980–Jan 4, 1981.
Paris, Musee d'Orsay, Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle: Modernity in New York (1905 – 1930), Oct 18, 2004–Jan 16, 2005; traveled to Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro d'Arte reina Sofia, Feb 10–May 17, 2005 (Paris only).
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, New York City; bequeathed through Georgia O'Keeffe to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.
