Showing posts with label 1930s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1930s. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Mixed Thirties

Stuart Davis
Study for Swing Landscape
1937-38
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC


El Lissitzky
Oil Industry of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaidjan
1937
photomontage
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Childe Hassam
New York Spring
1931
etching
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

George Biddle
Zum Brauhaus
(speakeasy in New York with artist customers)
1933
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Cecil Beaton
Self Portrait in the Studio
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Georges Braque
Seated Woman
1934
etching
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

James Daugherty
Nick deVia
1934
drawing
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Robert Caby
Standing Figure
1930
oil-pastel and crayon on paper
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Pavel Tchelitchew
Still Life, Clown
1930
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Weston
Igor Stravinsky
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Arnold Wiltz
Interior
1930
wood-engraving
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Joseph Pollia
Maquette for Sculpture (Family Group)
ca. 1930
plaster
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Oscar Bluemner
A Situation in Yellow
1933
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Alejandro Mario Yllanes
Self Portrait
ca. 1930
gouache and ink on paper
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

George McNeil
Figural Composition #2
1932
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Rosalind Bengelsdorf
Abstraction
1938
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Walter Hege
Base of Ionic Column, North Porch of the Erechtheion, Athens
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Again, Nature is so far from leaving any one part without its proper action, that she oft times imposeth two or three labours upon one, so the pizell in animals is both official unto urine and generation, but the first and primary use is generation; for many creatures enjoy that part which urine not, as fishes, birds, and quadrupeds oviparous.  But not on the contrary, for the secondary action subsisteth not alone, but in concomitancy with the other; so the nostrils are useful both for respiration and smelling, but the principal use is smelling; for many have nostrils which have no lungs, as fishes, but none have lungs or respiration which have not some shew or some analogy of nostrils.  Thus we perceive the providence of nature, that is, the wisdom of God, which disposeth of no part in vain, and some parts unto two or three uses, will not provide any without the execution of its proper office, nor where there is no digestion to be made, make any parts inservient to that intention.  

– Sir Thomas Browne, from Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1650)

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Mixed Thirties

Burgoyne Diller
Untitled
1934
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York


Gisèle Freund
James Joyce
1938
dye transfer print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Edith Tudor-Hart
Untitled
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Thomas Whalen
The Deposition
1935
limewood
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Isabel Bishop
Artist's Table
1931
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Josef Albers
El Lissitzky visiting the Bauhaus in 1930
assembled ca. 1932
photomontage
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Milton Bellin
Study of Figure (from above and behind)
1937
drawing
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Thomas Duncan Benrimo
The Urn
ca. 1935
oil on panel
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Pierre Bonnard
Nude in an Interior
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Rudy Burckhardt
Paris
1934
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Seville
1933
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

James Daugherty
Study of Back
ca. 1930-35
drawing
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Christopher Wood
Market Cross, Tréboul
1930
oil on panel
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

William Roberts
Group on a Bench
1933
drawing (study for painting)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Raoul Hausmann
Untitled (Vera's Shoulders)
1931
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Margaret Michaelis
Rudolf Michaelis
ca. 1932
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Man Ray
Histoire Naturelle
1930
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    I believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that our separated dust after so many pilgrimages and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall at the voice of God return into their primitive shapes and join again to make up their primary and predestinate forms.  As at the Creation there was a separation of that confused mass into its species, so at the destruction thereof there shall be a separation into its distinct individuals.  As at the Creation of the world, all the distinct species that we behold lay involved in one mass till the fruitful voice of God separated this united multitude into its several species, so at the last day, when these corrupted reliques shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God by a powerful voice shall command them back into their proper shapes and call them out by their single individuals.  Then shall appear the fertility of Adam and the magic of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions. 

– Sir Thomas Browne, from Religio Medici (1642)

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Mixed Thirties

Russell Lynes
Eye and Brain
1937
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York


Edward Weston
Bedpan
1930
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edward Wadsworth
Composition: Crank and Chain
1932
tempera on board
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Georges Vantongerloo
Composition 13478/15
1937
oil on panel
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Edouard Vuillard
The Visit
1931
mixed media on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Wolfgang Suschitzky
Wyndham's Theatre, Charing Cross Road
1936
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Weegee
Summer on the Lower East Side
1937
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pavel Tchelitchew
Final Sketch for Phenomena
1938
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

August Sander
Zwei Unterhaltungs Zünstler
ca. 1931
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mariano Fortuny
Delphos Dress
1936
pleated silk
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Edith Tudor-Hart
Demonstration, South Wales
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Brassaï
Looking through Pont Marie
to Pont Louis-Philippe, Paris

ca. 1930-32
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Theodore Roszak
Musicians
1932
gouache, watercolor and felt pen on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Pablo Picasso
Lee Miller
1937
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Joseph Vogel
Escape
1933
screenprint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Andalusia, Spain
1933
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Rudy Burckhardt
Paris
1934
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    The whole Creation is a mystery and particularly that of man.  At the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at his bare word they started out of nothing.  But in the frame of man (as the text describes it) he was driven to a second and harder creation of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul.  . . .  In our study of Anatomy there is a mass of mysterious Philosophy, and such as reduced the very Heathens to Divinity; yet amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabric of man, I do not so much content my self as in that I find not, that is, no Organ or proper instrument for the rational soul.  For in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the cranie of a beast: and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually so receive it.  Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something in us, that can be without us, and will be after us; though it is strange that it hath no history, what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us. 

– Sir Thomas Browne, from Religio Medici (1642)