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Arthur Beecher Carles

American, 1882-1952

Still Life with Flowers, ca. 1933-1935

oil on canvas

support: 49 x 36 inches (124.46 x 91.44 cm); framed: 55 7/8 x 42 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches (141.92 x 108.59 x 6.99 cm)

Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Edmund Hayes and Elisabeth H. Gates Funds, 1969

1969:6

More Details

Provenance

from the artist to S. Beryl Lush, Chestnut Hill, PA;
The Graham Gallery, New York, by 1967;
purchased from Graham Gallery by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1969

Class

Paintings (visual works)

Work Type

Oil painting (visual work)

This information may change due to ongoing research. Glossary of Terms

During the 1930s, Arthur Beecher Carles began to experiment with an uninhibited abstract style. First he explored a colorful palette, reminiscent of the work of the Fauves, and then he moved on to completely nonfigurative imagery that vacillates between geometric and biomorphic forms. Still Life with Flowers takes as its subject a very traditional motif: a tabletop on which sits a vase holding a floral bouquet. Carles's version, however, is nearly prismatic in presentation. It comprises twisting silhouettes and colorful imaginings that come into perspective only when you have identified the more familiar components, such as the jutting corner of the table in the lower right or the small, round vessel in the center. Tableaux such as this signify Carles's advancement of modernist ideals and identify him as a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists.

Label from For the Love of Things: Still Life, February 27–May 29, 2016