Joseph Stella’s Visionary Nature arrives at Brandywine Museum of Art

From June 17, 2023 – September 24, 2023, the Brandywine Museum of Art presents “Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature”

Source: Brandywine Museum of Art / High Museum of Art · Image: Joseph Stella, “Flowers, Italy”, c.1930. Oil on canvas, Phoenix Art Museum

“Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature” is the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the nature-based works of pioneering American modernist painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946), and includes approximately 80 paintings and works on paper drawn from American museums and private collections.

The exhibition is on view at the Brandywine after its venue at the High Museum of Art, where it was on view from February 24 to May 21, 2023. Then, the High Museum of Art stated in a press release that “Though Stella is primarily recognized for his dynamic Futurist-inspired paintings of New York, particularly of the Brooklyn Bridge, he was also compelled to express the powerful connection he felt to the natural world, a subject he pursued persistently throughout his career. ‘Visionary Nature’ presents an overdue examination of the complexity and spirituality driving Stella’s nature-based works, illustrating the inspirations, sources and stylistic influences behind their creation.”

“Stella was considered a visionary, even among the most progressive artists of his day,” said Stephanie Heydt, curator of American art at the High Museum and then the lead exhibition curator. “Much of his emotional and spiritual life centered on his relationship with nature, and the exhibition offers the unique opportunity to revisit Stella through this lens. He was an incredible draughtsman, and his drawings rival those of the old masters, but he also delighted in experimentation. His style ranged from abstraction to realism to the archaic with such unexpected results.”