Stuart Davis Art

Stuart Davis is the artist who developed an American variation of European Cubism. He did this at a time when modernization was just beginning to infiltrate America. Through imagery and slang words that were distinctly American, his paintings established America’s presence in the growing modern art world. He was also one of the first artists to consider swing and jazz music in conjunction with painting. Davis was the son of Helen Stuart Foulke, who was a sculptor, and Edward Wyatt Davis, who was an art editor. He seemed destined for a career in the fine arts and put much effort towards this. His interest in art, particularly drawing, was apparent by age of 16, when he began writing adventure stories for his younger brother Wyatt. His use of pulsating ad bright colors, coupled with repetitious shapes and expressive lines, creates a visual tempo in his paintings similar to the improvisation and syncopation of jazz music. By balancing bold colors in a manner that denies a central focal point and dispersing shapes throughout the canvas, he introduced to abstraction a new approach. The artist transformed common advertisements and consumer products into singular works of art that prefigured Pop Art of the 1960s and evoked the American populist spirit. Davis seemed to have inherited his talent from his father who worked for Newark Evening News as the cartoonist and art editor. Davis studied under the competent care of a family friend called Henri, who was leading figure in the Ashcan School - the American Realist movement. Even today, framed Stuart Davis art sell in large numbers.