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Morton Livingston Schamberg
1881-1918.
Composition
1916
Pastel and graphite.
16 1/16 x 10 3/16 inches (40.8 x 25.9 cm)
Gift of the Modern and Contemporary Collectors Committee and the Brown Foundation, 2019.
2019.87
Notes:
Philadelphia artist Morton Schamberg studied architecture before enrolling at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1903. After traveling extensively in Europe he adopted a modernist idiom influenced by Fauvism and Cubism. A member of collector Walter Arensberg's circle, Schamberg met Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp in 1915 in New York and embraced their enthusiasm for mechanical imagery as a symbol of the modern age. This pastel belongs to a small group of works he created in 1916 based on machinery, here a book-stitching machine. It is closely related to Schamberg's most famous oil painting, a work of the same subject now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Arensberg Collection).
Inscription:
Signed and dated at upper right: Schamberg / 1916.
Provenance:
Estate of Natalie Morris, Philadelphia; [Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York, 1986]; [Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York]; to private collection, New York; [Linda Hyman Fine Arts, New York]; to private collection; [Meredith Ward Fine Art, New York].
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