Charles Sheeler
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 7/16/1883 - 5/5/1965, New York, New York)
Title
Companions #2
Creation Date
1950
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
6 1/4 in. x 4 1/4 in. (15.88 cm x 10.8 cm)
Object Type
painting
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
Tempera on paper
Credit Line
Gift of Linda Horvitz Roth '76 and David Roth
Copyright
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Accession Number
2007.12
As a central figure of the New York avant-garde in the first half of the twentieth century, Charles Sheeler contributed to a specifically American modernist style—Precisionism. This view of a modern farm foregrounds two silos for livestock feed that tower over a large stable and adjacent outbuildings. Set against a dusky pink sky, their twin silhouettes are doubled by abstract pink and light green planes “behind” the architecture. The complexity and monumentality of this small-scale tempera are the result of a pictorial operation Sheeler explored in 1946–53, prompted by two artist residencies in New England that provided opportunities to record and experiment with photographic images as source material for painting. At the time, Sheeler began to superimpose photographic negatives, generating images that were simultaneously representational and abstract.
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