WILL HENRY STEVENS (American, 1881-1949). Composition #5, 1938. Mixed media on paper. Signed and dated lower right: St...

Description

WILL HENRY STEVENS (American, 1881-1949)
Composition #5, 1938
Mixed media on paper
Signed and dated lower right: Stevens '38
11 x 10 inches (27.9 x 25.4 cm)

PROVENANCE:
Judy Farnsworth Lund and Theodore Milton Wassmer Collection (label verso).

More Information:

Born in Vevay, Indiana, Will Henry Stevens was to become a pioneer of Modernism in the American South.  Stevens studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and with the Art Students League in New York.

He was particularly inspired to paint from nature due to his interests in transcendentalism, Oriental art, especially Sung Dynasty painting, and Taoist philosophy.  Stevens often experimented with various media . His father's background in chemistry provided him a base knowledge with which to create his own media.  While teaching art in Louisiana, he made several trips to New York, where he found himself influenced by works he saw at the Guggenheim by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. At this time he began to paint abstractly.  In 1940, he was exhibiting at two different galleries with two distinct styles of painting - traditional landscapes and non-objective abstraction.  His work is represented in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, among others.

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