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Posted on 9/24/2020 1:20:52 PM
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The challenge for historians is that "Precisionism" was never a formal school or movement, one supported, perhaps, by a published manifesto. It was, rather, a philosophical outlook shared by several American painters and photographers during the early decades of the twentieth century. The group shared an interest in celebrating the dynamism of the new emerging modern America's landscape by conveying its modernity through precise lines and pared back geometric forms.
"Precisionism" was the first indigenous modern art movement in the United States and an early American contribution to the rise of Modernism. The Precisionist style, which first emerged after World War I, was at the height of its popularity during the 1920s and early 1930s,. It focused on the new American landscape of skyscrapers, bridges, and factories in a form that has also been called "Cubist-Realism." The term "Precisionism" was perhaps coined in the mid-1920s by Museum of Modern Art director, Alfred H. Barr.... although according to some, the term "Precisionism" was first used by Charles Sheeler, one of the movement's foremost artist. Artists working in this style were also known as the "Immaculates", as they were commonly referred to at the time.
"Precisionism" has been described as a "cool art" in the sense that it established an objective unemotional distance between the work of art and the viewer. Precisionist artists, passed over scenes of individual human activity. People were absent from their works. Their art expressed a cool level of detachment simply depicting man-made structures through a combination of smooth brushwork and geometric precision. Artistically, their primary focus was on form and line, and the interplay between the two.
The key Precisionists were Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Charles Demuth (1883-1935), George Ault (1891-1948), Joseph Stella (1887 -1946), Georgia O'Keeffe (1987-1986), Edmund Lewandowski (1914-1998) and others. (see images below).
