JOSEPH STELLA

An Italian born American Futurist painter.

 

Giuseppe Michele Stella was born on June 13, 1877, in Muro Lucano, Potenza, Basilicata, Italy.  He was the fourth of five brothers. He was a chubby and introspective child and somewhat of a loner. His father and grandfather were lawyers and the family was affluent. Stella had no interest in pursuing the vocations dominant in the family. From a young age he demonstrated talent for drawing and a passion for art. Since his family was prosperous education was available to him that was not for the masses. He enjoyed school and learned both English and French.

When he was nineteen years old, he moved to New York City to study medicine and pharmacology. Upon leaving Ellis Island, he anglicized his name to Joseph. Many immigrant descendants believe the officials at Ellis Island changed their ancestor’s names. Such was not the case; the agents screening the persons arriving received manifests from the ships written by agents in the country of origin. Thus, many changed their names after leaving Ellis Island.

Soon after his arrival Stella ditched his pursuit in medicine and went into art. He enrolled at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. His mentor was William Merritt Chase, who at the time was a popular American painter and a champion of Impressionism and a teacher. Other students of his were Georgia O’Keefe, Edward Hopper and George Bellows—all American Art Masters.

Stella in his early days worked as an illustrator, publishing realist drawings in magazines. He was an expert draftsman and made drawings throughout his career. Stella started as an academic realist, which changed, as he matured, to a modernist. He was known for his sweeping and dynamic lines. He had a strong interest in immigrant and ethnic living. He would roam the streets with his sketch-pad drawing particular poses of city life. However, Stella was unhappy and tired of America, even though the industrial aspects of the New York City impressed him and at the same time weighed on his psyche. One can easily imagine the impact a bustling, dynamic, rapidly growing metropolis could have on a young mind coming from a small idyllic community. He returned to Italy in 1909. He felt, “an enforced stay among enemies, in a black funereal land over which weighted…the curse of a merciless climate” (industrialism).

His move back home was propitious; his return led to contact with Modernism, which casted his characteristic style. After two years he relocated to Paris where Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism flourished. His response, in his writings, was, “There was in the air the glamor of a battle.” He couldn’t have selected a better time to be there. After two years of associating with many notables in the field of art he ventured to give America another try.

On his return to New York he fused back into the local art social circles and as a results he painted the Battle of Lights and Coney Island, his earliest and greatest American Futurist works. In 1914-16 Armory show (The International Exhibition of Modern Art) Stella became a much talked about figure, both good and bad. Conservative critics found Modernism incomprehensible; therefore, threatening.

(See: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/17/172002686/armory-show-that-shocked-america-in-1913-celebrates-100.)

During the 1920s he painted his famous Brooklyn Bridge. Another well-known painting  of his is New York Interpreted (The Voice of the City) 1922, in this one he painted a twenty-three feet long and eight feet high depiction of bridges and skyscrapers. Many looked upon this work as an altar piece indicating that industrialism was displacing religion as the center of modern life. 

Stella did not maintain a strong position as a painter of a any particular style, since as his career continued, he continually changed, going from one to another and not staying with what was in vogue. He became a puzzling painter.  Below are a number of quotes, which clearly explain his wonderment of the world around him.

Quotes

“I was thrilled to find America so rich with so many new motives to be translated into a new art. Steel and electricity had created a new world.”

“I have seen the future and it is good. We will wipe away the religions of old and start anew.”

“At my arrival (in Paris), Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism were in full swing. There was in the air the glamour of a battle, the holy battle raging for the assertion of a new truth. My youth plunged full in it.”

“During the last years of the war I went to live in Brooklyn in the most forlorn region of the oceanic tragic city, in Williamsburg, near the bridge. Brooklyn gave me a sense of liberation. The vast view of her sky, in opposition to the narrow one of New York, was a relief and at night, in her solitude, I used to find, intact, the green freedom of my own self.”

“I had witnessed the growth and expansion of New York proceeding parallel to the development of my own life…and therefore I was feeling entitled to interpret the titanic efforts, the conquests already obtained by the imperial city in order to become what now She is, the center of the world.”

Stella died on November 5, 1946 in New York City.

Below in following order are, The Battle of Lights, Luna Park, The Virgin, Joseph Stella, and The Brooklyn Bridge.