Scale can be an important tool for communicating significance in an abstract composition.
Joseph Stella [b. 1880: Mura Lucano, Italy – d. 1946: New York, New York]
oil on canvas
37¼ x 35¼ inches
Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project Allocation
Collection of the Illinois State Museum
Joseph Stella was a pioneering modernist painter in the U.S. In the huge, looming forms of Smoke Stack, we see a marriage of shape and color that communicates a dark and forbidding side of the industrial might that America was trying resuscitate during the 1930s’ Great Depression. Painted while Stella was employed by the W.P.A., this work is a far cry from his iconic, optimistic work Brooklyn Bridge of 1920. Stella did not work in Illinois but this important work came to the Illinois State Museum when the Works Progress Administration offices were closed down in Chicago in 1943.