Serbian Old Woman (War Refugee)

Joseph Stellas Serbian Old Woman (War Refugee) from 1915 is a black chalk and pastel drawing with stumping on tan wove paper that depicts an elderly woman displaced by the Balkan Wars or the early years of World War I, a subject that represents a dimension of Stellas work rarely seen in his more celebrated images of modern American life. Stella, born in Italy and raised in the ethnic neighborhoods of New York, had a personal connection to the European displaced persons whose lives were disrupted by the wars that reshaped the continent between 1912 and 1918, and this drawing suggests a level of empathetic engagement with the victims of war that is absent from his more famous celebrations of American modernity. The black chalk and pastel with stumping, a technique in which the drawing medium is rubbed with a stump to create smooth tonal gradations, allows Stella to model the old womans weathered face with a sculptural specificity that gives the drawing the presence of a portrait rather than a generic type. The tan wove paper provides a warm middle tone that unifies the composition and gives the drawing an intimacy appropriate to its subject: a specific individual whose suffering is rendered with the same attention to detail that Stella brought to his depictions of Brooklyn Bridge cables and Coney Island lights. The year 1915 places this drawing in the period when World War I was devastating Europe and displacing millions of civilians, and the title Serbian Old Woman identifies the sitter as a victim of the Serbian campaign that had begun the previous year.

Stellas drawings of war refugees are significant documents of the human cost of the conflicts that reshaped Europe in the early 20th century, and they demonstrate that the artist whose name is synonymous with the celebration of American modernity was also capable of empathetic engagement with the victims of that modernity. The Serbian Old Woman is an important work in the history of American humanitarian art.

A 1915 black chalk and pastel drawing by Stella of a Serbian war refugee, modeling the old womans weathered face with stumped tonal gradations on tan paper that give the drawing the presence and empathetic engagement of a portrait rather than a generic type.