Stuart Davis (December 7, 1892–June 24, 1964) was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his Jazz influenced, proto pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful as well as his ashcan pictures in the early years of the 20th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Davis_%28painter%29

“Considered a forefather of the Pop Art movement, Stuart Davis translated the visual imagery of New York City and the jazz music of the mid-20th Century into iconographic abstract paintings of squiggly lines and flashy colors.”
http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/Stuart%20Davis.htm

Stuart Davis has always had an important place in my understanding of modern art and art history. His works were stunningly bold exciting and graphic so as a new art student I became immediately attracted to them. Davis use of complex shapes and words were something unexpected. He became the topic of many art conversations later, during my graduate art school days. I had (still have) a really close friend who was in also in graduate school, and was working on an advanced degree in Painting. His work depicted “realistic” street scenes, kind of in the style of Edward Hopper. As with most art programs, the art school faculty seems determined to push and stretch the students in new and sometimes odd directions, and so it was with my friend. Within the first year they had him painting large canvases of a front view of a local grocery store. He made many large and colorful paintings of that store. Now, as to why I’m relating this story here. His paintings were wonderful, but the viewer ended up reading the grocery store signage instead of seeing the color and form and pattern, the paintings were read because of all the signs in the front window. The paintings were literary instead of visual. His professors gave him an unusually difficult time. Now comes the influence of Stuart Davis. If you look at Davis’s painting he uses words or letters quite frequently in his paintings, but he uses them, as “pure shapes” not words. This had a great impact on my painter friend and for me it was an important art lesson. My friend finally solved the problem of turning his paintings from literature to a purely visual experience by painting the front of the assigned grocery store, from the inside looking out. What that new approach did was reverse all the signs in the windows, to being viewed backwards, and then they instantly became pure shapes and hardly words at all, to be read anymore. Anyway, Stuart Davis was a most impressive and influential artist. My friend and I still have the “Davis” conversation every once in a while, now 35 years later.


“In the 1950s, Davis simplified his earlier semi-abstract style. In looking at ordinary objects, he saw their lines, planes, and shapes crossing in an endless succession of geometric patterns. These he painted with bold, splashing colors, striking a balance between recognizable images and complete abstraction. Davis gave Modernism a distinctively American feeling through his rendering of urban landscape, commercial signs and jazz music which he interpreted with bold color in abstract design.”
http://www.areaofdesign.com/americanicons/davis.htm (Area of Design)

“In the late forties and fifties, Davis began using calligraphic shapes and words in his paintings. In his last paintings of 1963-64 words and abstract symbols dominate the canvas.”
http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/Stuart%20Davis.htm

He always claimed that every image he used had its source in observed reality: “I paint what I see in America, in other words I paint the American Scene.”
http://www.dl.ket.org/webmuseum/wm/paint/auth/davis/index.htm

I like how Davis in the painting “Visa” strikes lines through the word Champion, as if to say the word is not important. (See link below for “Visa”)
“Visa” 1951 (100 Kb); Oil on canvas, 40 x 52 in; The Museum of Modern Art, New York
http://www.dl.ket.org/webmuseum/wm/paint/auth/davis/davis.visa.jpg

http://www.areaofdesign.com/americanicons/davis/001blips.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4102/4886002611_93a833cbfa.jpg

http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/davis.report-rockport.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jNfLasUQDFg/RrjLkHe-opI/AAAAAAAAAD8/aS8niQRG8Zs/s400/Davis_ParisRework_1959.jpg

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_6P2gAP8RNaY/TOGqNuACQSI/AAAAAAAAAe0/G-PDpZawXO0/2948-021.jpg