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Art of the 20th Century
Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella
(b Muro Lucano, Italy, 13 June 1877; d New York, 5 Nov 1946).
American painter and collagist of Italian birth. He arrived in New York in 1896. The following year he enrolled briefly in the Art Students League and then in the New York School of Art (1898), where his ability was recognized by William Merritt Chase. The Lower East Side subject-matter of Stella’s early work was similar to that of his contemporaries of the New York Ashcan school. In place of their dark-toned Impressionism, however, Stella’s early style was academic in the manner of late 19th-century Italian painting. His first important commission was to depict the industrial workers in Pittsburgh for Survey, a social reform journal.
