Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1880–1953)
Boy with Cow, 1921
The Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi was an acclaimed modernist painter, printmaker, and photographer. Inspired by the landscape and vernacular architecture of Maine, where Kuniyoshi summered at the Ogunquit artists’ colony, Boy with Cow is one of several images he painted of the subject during the 1920s. It depicts a young boy about to lead a cow to shelter in the face of an impending storm. Although cows were rare in his native country, the artist attributed his fascination with them to having been born in a “cow year,” according to the Japanese lunar calendar. With its simplified geometric forms, stylized rendering of anatomy, and high horizon, the painting fuses Kuniyoshi’s interest in European modernism, American folk art, and Japanese prints. Exemplary of his first major period, Boy with Cow was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1948 Kuniyoshi retrospective, the institution’s first-ever retrospective given to a living artist.
Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.
Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Joseph Stella (1877–1946)
Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917

Max Weber (1881–1961)
Construction, 1915

Patrick Henry Bruce (1881–1936)
Peinture, 1917–18

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943)
Painting No. 50, 1914–15

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)
Nature Symbolized #3: Steeple and Trees, 1911–12

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)
Sails, 1911–12

Charles Demuth (1883–1935)
Welcome to Our City, 1921

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1880–1953)
Boy with Cow, 1921

Stuart Davis (1892–1964)
Super Table, 1925

Helen Torr (1886–1967)
Purple and Green Leaves, 1927

Arthur Dove (1880–1946)
Boat Going through Inlet, c. 1929

John Graham (1881–1961)
The Green Chair, 1928

John Storrs (1885–1956)
Politics, 1931

Ernest Lawson (1873–1939)
Brooklyn Bridge, 1917–20

John Marin (1870–1953)
Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986)
Red Amaryllis, 1937

Albert Eugene Gallatin (1881–1952)
Room Space, 1937–38

Milton Avery (1885–1965)
Adolescence, 1947

George Tooker (1920–2011)
Highway, 1953

Ed Paschke (1939–2004)
Topcat Boy, 1970

Beauford Delaney (1901–1979)
Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

Philip Evergood (1901–1973)
Passing Show, 1951

Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)
Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986