When renowned modern art collector Gertrude Stein visited Marsden Hartley’s studio in Paris, she exclaimed, “At last…an original American!” Painted in Berlin on the eve of World War I, Abstraction reflects the energy, dynamism, and promise of the era. Broad planes of flat, unmixed, yet vibrant color—a palette of primary and secondary colors— dominate the canvas and create vitality in this work of art.
The bold, clearly defined geometric shapes appear to push and pull against each other. This interaction makes it unclear whether elements are coming towards the viewer or receding back, and provide the work with a sense of coordinated movement. The dense, overlapping concentric circles, rectangles, curves, and zigzags build upon one another into a pyramid-like arrangement. This organization balances the composition and references classical painting structures, but the boldness of the shapes and colors make Abstraction strikingly modern.
Although his paintings were abstract, Hartley maintained that they were merely reconstructions of observed patterns and images from real life. The blue and white zigzag at the apex of the painting is suggestive of a snowcapped mountain, a motif prevalent in Hartley’s work throughout his career. Additionally, the stripes and disks that dominate the composition are reminiscent of military pageantry and German military regalia—objects that would have been a part of Hartley’s everyday visual vocabulary at the time he painted this work. While vague renderings of bright flags, uniform insignia, and military emblems can be made out, the main subject remains the relationship between color and form.
When Hartley arrived in Europe in 1912, he quickly found himself surrounded and inspired by a thriving, innovative art community. Although he had been exposed to Modernist works prior to his visit, his tenure in Europe provided him with a visual and theoretical awakening that influenced the development of his own style. This painting illustrates the artist’s evolving personal method, which combined the tightly structured arrangement of Cubism’s flat planes, Orphism’s eye-catching geometric figures, and Expressionism’s dramatic color and loose brushwork. This synchronized style allowed Hartley to create a work that was both structured and expressive, and highlights the relationships of line to motion and color to emotion.
