Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)
Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986
The son and grandson of important artists, Jamie Wyeth started to paint at a very young age. He continued their tradition of realist painting and often found inspiration in rural Pennsylvania and Maine. He is known for his immersive approach to portraiture, trying to “become” the person he depicts. A young boy, seeming at once fragile and defiant, dominates this large composition,. One hand is clenched in a fist while the other is tense and open. His name is Kalounna, and his parents, refugees from Laos, worked as caretakers on the Wyeth farm. His red T-shirt echoes the red trailer truck to the right and red shutters in the background. The shirt features the logo of the popular television series Dallas and may suggest the boy’s desire to assimilate to his newly adopted country. Painted in Frogtown, Pennsylvania, this highly detailed canvas evokes the tensions between nature and machine, childhood and adolescence, and native and foreign.
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