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Landscape with Clay Pipe
Accession # 1992.11.4
Artist Stuart Davis
Title Landscape with Clay Pipe
Date 1941
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm) Frame: 15 3/4 x 21 3/4 x 1 3/4 in. (40 x 55.2 x 4.4 cm)
Signed Signed lower right: "Stuart Davis"
Credit Line Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal
Location Visible Storage: Case 23, Screen E (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks:

Vivid color and the lively interaction of abstracted forms convey a raucous mood in this small landscape. The work was created during a transitional period in Stuart Davis's art when he turned from a relatively restrained Cubist aesthetic to one more closely aligned with decorative impulses. The clay pipe, gas station, and barber pole reprise the principal elements of his 1932 mural for the Radio City Music Hall Men's Lounge at Rockefeller Center, originally entitled Men without Women. Here, however, the symbols of masculine activity register with a colorful vitality that fulfills Davis's aims for an art that was truly American in its outlook.