By-Products Plants

1923/26

Joseph Stella
American, born Italy, 1877–1946

While studying art in Italy and France from 1909 to 1913, Joseph Stella was captivated by Italian Futurism, a movement that employed Cubism’s fragmented forms to express the mechanization and speed of modern life. After he returned to the United States, Stella used Futurism to convey the dynamism of American industry in paintings such as By-Products Plants, which depicts the factories that extract ammonia, tar, and light oils when coal is burned. Such mechanical processes fascinated Stella, and he later recalled, “opposite my studio was a huge factory … towering with the gloom of a prison. At night fires gave to innumerable windows menacing blazing looks of demons.” Stella invested his factory paintings with this sense of eerie mystery.

On View: Arts of the Americas, Gallery 271

Artist: Joseph Stella
Title: By-Products Plants
Origin: United States
Date: c. 1923–1926
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed lower right: Joseph Stella
Dimensions: 61 × 61 cm (24 × 24 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah Goldowsky in memory of Esther Goldowsky
Reference Number: 1955.816

Irma B. Jaffe, Joseph Stella, rev. ed., (Fordham University Press, 1988), 59–60, fig. 72, as Factories.
Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella, exh. cat. (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), ill. fig. 119, 95, as By–Products Plants.
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. 43.

New York, F. Valentine Dudensing, Joseph Stella, Apr 10–30, 1926, cat. 7, as By–Product Plants. [probably AIC painting]
Des Moines, Iowa, City Library Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings by Joseph Stella, May 9–Jun 1, 1926, as By Products Plants. [probably AIC painting]
Associated American Artists, Joseph Stella, Jan 6–25, 1941, cat. 29, as Factories. [might not be AIC painting]
Arts Club of Chicago, Twentieth Century Art Loaned by Members of the Arts Club of Chicago, Oct 1–30, 1954, cat. 41, as Factories.
Newark, N.J., Newark Museum, The Works of Joseph Stella, Nov 1, 1978–Mar 30, 1979, unnumbered checklist, as Factories.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Images of America: Precisionist Painting and Modern Photography, Sep 9–Nov 7, 1982, cat. 127, pl. 25, as Factories, St. Louis, Mo., St. Louis Art Museum, Dec 6, 1982–Jan 30, 1983, Baltimore, Md., Baltimore Museum of Art, Feb 28–Apr 25, 1983, Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines Art Center, May 23–Jul 17, 1983, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Aug 15–Oct 9, 1983.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Joseph Stella, Apr 22–Oct 9, 1994, unnumbered checklist, fig. 119.

Noah Goldowsky, Chicago, by 1954; given to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.