About this artist: Charles Demuth

Narrator: Charles Demuth’s paintings emphasize crisp lines and flattened, planar forms. This style, which later became known as Precisionism, was influenced by the fragmented forms of Cubism and Futurism. Its focus, though, was the modern, industrial landscape of the United States.

In 1927 Demuth moved from New York to his hometown, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He’d developed severe diabetes, and needed his family’s help in managing day-to-day life. He began a series of canvases based on nearby grain elevators, water towers, and other industrial structures that had been constructed in the years following World War I. His masterpiece My Egypt was among these.