Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Purple and Green Leaves, 1927
Object-Helen Torr, Purple and Green Leaves
During the 1920s, Helen Torr participated in the development of a distinctly American brand of modernism along with fellow artists and friends such as her husband, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Typical of Torr’s flattened still-life paintings, Purple and Green Leaves, a simplified arrangement of tall, layered fronds, verges on the abstract. The image is singularly modern, but because Torr depicted the leaves as if framed in an arched recess space, it also suggests a medieval stained glass window. The glowing yellow and deep purple tints of the foliage, animated by faceted rays of color, lend the picture a mystical resonance. Likely featured in an exhibition of women artists that O’Keeffe organized at the Opportunity Gallery in New York City in 1927, the work demonstrates Torr’s sensitivity to her natural environment and her efforts to reveal its invisible, transcendent essence.
Learn more about this painting on the Terra Foundation website.
Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Telegraph Poles with Buildings, 1917

Construction, 1915

Peinture, 1917–18

Painting No. 50, 1914–15

Nature Symbolized #3: Steeple and Trees, 1911–12

Sails, 1911–12

Welcome to Our City, 1921

Boy with Cow, 1921

Super Table, 1925

Purple and Green Leaves, 1927

Boat Going through Inlet, c. 1929

The Green Chair, 1928

Politics, 1931

Brooklyn Bridge, on the Bridge, 1930

Sailboat, Brooklyn Bridge, New York Skyline, 1934

Red Amaryllis, 1937

Room Space, 1937–38

Adolescence, 1947

Highway, 1953

Topcat Boy, 1970

Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948

Passing Show, 1951

Kalounna in Frogtown, 1986