Roof and Steeple (Primary Title)
Charles Demuth, American, 1883 - 1935 (Artist)
One of the leading figures in Precisionism, Charles Demuth here depicts St. Sulpice in Paris, as seen from his upper-story window of the Latin Quarter’s Hotel Letitia. The extending lines cropped laterally and below form the window frame. Futurist ray lines span the center of the sheet, suggesting a sense of containment within the picture plane, while rendering abstract the urban tableau. Localizing the passages of translucent, blotted watercolor within carefully parceled zones, Demuth emphasizes the hardness of the surfaces. So expressively tinted are the gray, brown, and red forms that they suggest an almost metallic sensibility. The Precisionists were sometimes called the Neo-Cubists, and here Demuth manipulates and flattens the perspective in a manner recalling contemporary and slightly earlier French Cubist paintings.
"Modern Times: Aspects of American Art 1907-1956", Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NY, 1 Nov - 6 Dec 1986; cat. no. 22, p. 29 (color illus.)
"American Masterworks on paper", Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NY, 1985-86; cat. no. 49, pp. 7, 48 color illus. and detail in color cover
"Buildings: Architecture in American Modernism," Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NY, 29 Oct - 29 Nov 1980; cat. no. 21, p. 26 (illus)
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