Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

Davis enjoyed a close relationship with the Whitney Museum throughout his life. He was a founding member of the Whitney Studio Club and had his first one-person exhibition there in 1926. The following year, he was given funding by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, which allowed him to focus on his art without interruption for a year. Working in a small, cramped room, he began to paint everyday household products­—matches, a percolator, a rubber glove, an electric fan, and an egg beater. In the process, Davis gradually shifted his focus from their identity as objects to their formal properties as flat geometric planes set at angles to one another. This perception led him to conclude that the physical impact of all objects lay in their planar geometries and spatial relationships, an insight that became the basis of Davis's subsequent work. Stripping subjects down to their basic forms and arranging them to suggest only minimal spatial recession was a radical approach in American art. Although precedents for this modernist visual vocabulary did exist, especially in Europe, its rarity in the United States thrust Davis into a leadership position within the American avant-garde.

Below is a selection of works from Egg Beaters, 1927-28.