Early Abstract and Modernist Painting

Charles Demuth (1883–1935)
Welcome to Our City, 1921
Charles Demuth was in the vanguard of a new painting style that came to be called precisionism and is best remembered for his abstract poster-portraits. In the 1920s he produced a series of geometric depictions of his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania, including Welcome to Our City. Here, flattened interlocking red planes evoke the brick of recent industrial buildings, while the tall, slightly tilted courthouse dome in the background alludes to Lancaster’s history. Inspired by cubism and its reduction of forms to geometric components, Demuth also maintained close ties to New York City’s Dada movement. A group of letters rendered in the stark style of commercial graphics may hint at a subversive message—an ironic comment on the painting’s title and ambiguities inherent in modern American life. Welcome to Our City also demonstrates the artist’s desire to establish the regional setting as a source of inspiration for a truly national art.
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