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Dimensions: measurements 22 by 27 in. alternate measurements (55.9 by 68.6 cm)
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Provenance: The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1932
Dr. H. A. Blutman, New York, 1945
Edith Gregor Halpert, New York, by 1952 (sold: Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, March 14-15, 1973, lot 50, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owners at the above sale
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Literature: Howard Devree, "By Contemporaries: Davis and Kuniyoshi as Seen in Venice", New York Times, December 14, 1952, sec. 2, pt. 2, p. 9
H.H. Arnason, Stuart Davis Memorial Exhibition, 1894-1964, Washington, D.C., 1965, p. 27
Ellen Lawrence, Graham, Gorky, Smith & Davis in the Thirties, Providence, Rhode Island, 1977, p. 31
Philip Rylands, ed., Stuart Davis, New York, 1997, p. 5
Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. III, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, no. 1591, p. 268, illustrated in color
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Notes: Painted circa 1932.
PROPERTY FROM THE RAYMOND AND PATSY NASHER COLLECTION
During the early 1930s, Stuart Davis' keen eye turned to Gloucester's crowded working harbor. Ships' ropes, riggings and other nautical subject matter provided a dynamic improvisational source of ever-changing horizontal and vertical lines and a perfect visual vocabulary for Davis' developing geometric theories. Between 1930 and 1933, Davis purposefully and meticulously worked out what he termed in a 1932 letter to Edith Halpert, his "new style". 1932 was also the year Davis painted Composition with Winch. He wrote in his sketchbook journal, "One must see the 'shapes' of the space not the shapes of the objects that occur in it." Here, Davis paints a complex maze of strong black lines which weave through and around solid colorful forms against a pure white background. Davis allows the "negative" space behind the grid of lines to function as physical aspects of the composition - shapes made of pure space. The lines are intermittently attached or "rigged" to abstract forms loosely resembling winches or pulleys, the powerful machines used to coil ropes and cables used for hoisting. "In his subsequent fusion of line with color and pattern, Davis provides recognizable elements as entry points for the viewer, while simultaneously focusing attention on factors such as the organization of color, shape and line. This device would serve to elicit a purely emotional, intuitive response from the spectator, which he considered to be of a higher order than the work's reflected or self-evident meanings" (Lowery Stokes Sims, Stuart Davis American Painter, 1991, p. 58).
