Joseph Stella
1877-1946

Born in Muro Lucano, Italy, a mountain village not far from Naples, Stella immigrated to America in 1896 at the age of eighteen. Arriving in New York, he enrolled at the Art Students League in 1897. He also studied under William Merritt Chase in the New York School of Art and at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, in 1901-1902, displaying the bravura brushwork and dark Impressionist influence of Chase.

Stella went abroad in 1909 at the age of thirty-two, longing for his native land. He returned to Italy, traveling to Venice, Florence and Rome. He took up the glazing technique of the old Venetian masters to achieve warmth, transparency, and depth of color in his paintings. One of Stella’s paintings was shown in the International Exhibition in Rome in 1910 and was acquired by the city of Rome.

The influence of the French modernists awakened his dormant individuality. His friendship with the Futurist Antonio Mancini also played a role in his new style. At the urging of the artist and critic Walter Pach, Stella made a trip to Paris, where he met Gertrude and Leo Stein and saw the work of Henri Matisse and the other leading Fauves, spurring him to paint with alluring, vivid colors.

Stella effected a quick transition from the traditional to the abstract idiom. At the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1912, he saw the works of his countrymen Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini. Primed with these influences, Stella returned to New York in late 1912, in time to enter three still lifes in the Armory Show held in February of 1913: Battle of Lights, Coney Island, and Mardi Gras. These works were met with critical acclaim, propelling the artist into the vanguard of modernism.