Figures in Action (Struggle) (Primary Title)
Manierre Dawson, American, 1887 - 1969 (Artist)
This dynamic, nearly nonobjective painting by the Chicagoan Manierre Dawson aptly crystallizes the struggle of many young American artists to reconcile traditional and revolutionary perspectives in the early 20th century. Despite his status as one of the country’s pioneers of abstraction, Dawson is less known than his New York–based modernist contemporaries—particularly those associated with photographer, gallery owner, and tastemaker Alfred Stieglitz (for example, Marsden Hartley, whose work hangs nearby).
Dawson worked in an architectural firm until 1914, when he turned exclusively to painting. Like many young artists, he was inspired by the 1913 Armory Show, recording in his journal, “These are without question the most exciting days of my life.” There he would have encountered Marcel Duchamp’s controversial Nude Descending Staircase, No. 2, also dated 1912. Dawson’s introduction to the work of European and American modernists encouraged him to develop an abstract pictorial language. This striking figural abstraction belongs to a series the artist termed “museum” paintings. Echoing Cézanne’s famous wish to make pictures “like those found in the museums,” Dawson sought to update traditional Old Master subjects (drawn from antiquity and the Renaissance) with avant-garde compositional strategies.
"Special Loan Exhibit," Thalhimer Brothers, Inc (30 April - 8 May 1953).
Valentine Museum (14 Nov 1949 - 5 Feb 1950)
"Ninth Exhibition of the Work of Virginia Artists" Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ( 4- 27 April 1943).
"Exhibitions of Painting and Sculpture in 'the Modern Spirit,'" Milwaukee Art Society (16 April - 12 May 1914) as Two Figures in Action.
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