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Follow the white zigzags and the row of arrow shapes, then see how the big red circle and the black triangle hold the middle steady.
Hartley made this canvas in Berlin in 1913, on the eve of the First World War. German Expressionism pulled him harder than French modern art did, and like Kandinsky he wanted a painting to work like music, without a story. The Art Institute links its restless energy both to modern Berlin and to music.
Oil on canvas · 119.5 × 119 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Modernism · Cubism · American modernism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Movement
- Artist
- Marsden Hartley (American, 1877–1943)
- Date
- 1913
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 119.5 × 119 cm (47 × 46 7/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Alfred Stieglitz Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.