Stuart Davis [1892-1964]
American
Portrait of the artist Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita [1886-1968], ca.1928.
Oil on wood panel
22-1/2 x 16-1/4 inches
Signed at lower left : ‘DAVIS’.

Marking type: Yellowed horizontal rectangular label.
Location: Top middle board verso.
Text: ‘THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM / 1071 Fifth Avenue — New York 28, N. Y. — ENright 9-5110′.

Stuart David June 7 – October 5, 1997

Moved to Paris from 1928-1929, 1930

Exhibits at the XXVIII Biennale, Venice.

Foujita had his first exhibition in Paris in 1917 and by 1924 he was one of the most important exhibitors at the Salon d’ Automne. In the same year he was elect

Both showed at the Valentine Gallery
Anderson Gallery

1921: “I conceive of pictures which while having all the Rembrandt-Cezanne structure will a the same time be more socieable.”

1928-1929

“…as regimes in Europe grew more repressive, Davis believed it was precisely America’s democratic stucture that allowed artists to choose whether they wanted to be, as he had earlier said, a Rembrandt-American, a Renoir-American, or a Picasso-American.

– 11 March 1923. “What Are The Possibilities of Painting?” Seurat’s importance for modern art; logical conclusions from his propositions REMBRANDT, CHINESE, GIOTTO, RUBENS, COMICS, MONET, SEURAT, PICASSO [2 pages]

– November 1941 (h). “No Work of Art was ever a Replica?” Rembrandt, Renaissance, New York Under Gaslight. [11 pages]

– March 1942 (d). “Why, I Paint Pictures” Cezanne, Cezanne Letters, Rembrandt, Picasso, Guernica [13 pages]

– 12 July 1942 (b). “Formulation of Opinions on the Role of the Artist in War” Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Eakins [8 pages]

– 11 February 1943. “Picture?moves the spectator thru dimensional Excitement” Rembrandt [4 pages]

– 27 April 1943 (b). “Drawing is an Autonomous Art” George Morris, Rembrandt, Bach, Mendelsohn [9 pages]

– 21 December 1948 (c). “Current concept of the role of subject logic?” Answer to critics of modern; Rembrandt, Taylor (Metropolitan Museum) [7 pages]

Although Davis was associated with abstract painting in the United States from the twenties (he had painted abstractions as early as 1917), he continually described himself as a realist.

Henri, reacting against the contrived idealism of academic training, sent his students out into the streets to observe and to sketch the casual views and incidents of New York life-the lower the better; and from this experience Davis developed his incredible sensitivity to those minutiae of the modern American scene which add up to a total impression of the United States itself.

1958 won the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum International Award
1960 wont he Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum International Award
1952 won the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for Fine Arts

1998 Washington’s National Museum of American Art
1954 Downtown Gallery, New York, NY, “Stuart Davis: Exhibition of Recent Paintings,” March 2–27, 1954, brochure no. 7.
1954 Fort Worth Art Center, Fort Worth, TX, “Inaugural Exhibition,” October 8–31, 1954, no. 19.
1964 Peale House Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, “A Retrospective Exhibition of the Paintings of Stuart Davis,” October 3–November 8, 1964, checklist no. 17.
1991-1992 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, “Stuart Davis: American Painter,” November 23, 1991–February 16, 1992, no. 148.
1992 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, “Stuart Davis: American Painter,” March 26–June 7, 1992, no. 148.
1997 Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, “Stuart Davis,” June 7–October 5, 1997, no. 46.
2002 Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, LLC, New York, NY, “Stuart Davis: Major Late Paintings,” April 9–May 11, 2002, no. 6.

Hale A. Woodruff. “Stuart Davis, American Modern.” School Arts 57 (September 1957), ill. p. 36.
E. C. Goossen. Stuart Davis. New York, 1959, pl. 60.
Rudi Blesh. Stuart Davis. New York, 1960, colorpl. G.
Darío Suro. “Homenaje a Stuart Davis 1894-1964.” Ahora 3 (August 10, 1964), ill. p. 31, calls it “Sene”.
H. H. Arnason in Stuart Davis Memorial Exhibition. Exh. cat., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C., 1965, p. 36.
Diane Kelder, ed. Stuart Davis. New York, 1971, pl. 40.
Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski, ed. Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. 3, Catalogue Entries 1324–1749. New Haven, 2007, pp. 378–80, no. 1672, ill. (color).
William C. Agee in Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné. Ed. Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski. Vol. 1, Essays and References. New Haven, Conn., 2007, pp. 101-2.

Houghton Library, Harvard University (*69M-153).

Cirque d’Hiver and went dancing together, Noguchi, friends with Fougita

Foufou

Purliuk’s informal salon
May have met through Leger

1948

1911-1927

It is interesting that the abstract experiments of 1927-28 should be followed immediately by the relatively representational architectural landscapes done in Paris in 1928-29. Davis’ own explanation is quite simple. “The year before, in New York, I had looked at my eggbeater so long that I finally had no interest in it. I stared at it until it became just a combination of planes. But over there, in Paris, the actuality was so interesting I found a desire to paint it just as it was.”