{"data":{"id":"378","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":378,"topgoose_id":2443,"tms_id":378,"display_name":"Elsie Driggs","sort_name":"Driggs Elsie","display_date":"1898–1992","begin_date":"1898","end_date":"1992","biography":"\u003cp\u003eOne of few female artists to achieve\ncritical and commercial success in the 1920s,\nElsie Driggs was associated with the\nPrecisionists, an influential group of artists,\nincluding \u003ca href=\"/artists/344\"\u003eCharles Demuth\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/artists/1209\"\u003eCharles\nSheeler\u003c/a\u003e, whose paintings used strong\ngeometric forms and precise lines to depict\nthe nation’s burgeoning industrial landscape.\nDriggs studied at the progressive Art\nStudents League in New York and in the\nearly 1920s traveled through Italy to study\nthe masters of the Italian Renaissance.\nAlthough she exhibited regularly and in 1932\nwas included in the \u003ca href=\"/exhibitions/the-biennial\"\u003eWhitney’s first Biennial\nexhibition\u003c/a\u003e, she turned to making murals for\nthe WPA and to watercolors after moving\nto rural New Jersey in 1936. A new generation\nof artists and scholars rediscovered her\nwork after she began showing mixed-media\nconstructions in the late 1960s.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/125\"\u003e\u003cem\u003ePittsburgh\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e grew out of the memory of an evening train ride Driggs had taken as a child past the city’s steel mills. Years later, recalling the sulfurous hues emitted from the spewing smokestacks, she returned to make studies for a painting. Since the Bessemer process that created the smoky discharge was no longer being used and her requests to visit inside the factories were denied, she instead sketched the buildings of the Jones and Laughlin mill from a height, lured by what she described as their “great velvet forms.” Driggs called the painting her “Piero della Francesca,” an atmospheric, devotional image for the twentieth century. It was followed in 1927 by a succession of canvases, such as \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/109\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlast\nFurnaces\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003eand \u003cem\u003eThe Queensborough Bridge\u003c/em\u003e,\nthat similarly sought to capture America’s\nnewfound faith in technology and progress.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500012280","wikidata_id":"Q3051756","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:22:33.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T07:02:29.876-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/378/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/378/exhibitions"}}}}