A Vision

Joseph Stellas A Vision from 1925-26 is an oil painting that represents the artists mature synthesis of the machine-age precisionism of his earlier work and the mystical Baroque vision that he developed after his encounter with European modernism and his return to the Italian cultural traditions of his childhood. Stella, the Italian-born American painter who had stunned the New York art world with his radical Battle of Lights, Coney Island in 1913-14, spent the 1920s exploring a more visionary and decorative style that combined elements of Renaissance altarpieces, Art Deco design, and the Brooklyn Bridge in compositions of extraordinary ornamental complexity. A Vision, with its title suggesting a supernatural or ecstatic experience, depicts a fantastical landscape or architectural vision in which organic and geometric forms are interwoven in a pattern that recalls the mandorlas and radiating halos of medieval and Renaissance religious art. The years 1925-26 place this painting in the period when Stella was producing his most accomplished visionary works, including the Brooklyn Bridge series and the floral and botanical paintings that represent the decorative dimension of his art. The oil on canvas medium, applied with the enamel-like surface quality that Stella developed in his precisionist works, gives the painting a visual density and chromatic intensity that distinguishes it from the more atmospheric painting of his American contemporaries.

Stellas visionary paintings of the 1920s represent a unique synthesis of American modernism and Italian Baroque tradition that has no parallel in American art. A Vision exemplifies the mystical dimension of his work that connects American precisionism to the broader tradition of Western religious art.

A 1925-26 oil painting by Stella combining machine-age precisionism with mystical Baroque vision in an ornamental composition of extraordinary complexity, synthesizing Renaissance altarpiece structure with modernist abstraction.