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.
Date
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Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah Goldowsky in memory of Esther Goldowsky
Reference Number
1955.816
Extended information about this artwork
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, 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–June 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, Sept. 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–July 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.
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