Neapolitan Song

Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum is on view at the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York through March 25, 2001.

Neapolitan Song is one of more than sixty paintings that can be seen in this exhibition of artworks that parallel developments in modern life during the twentieth century, when American artists absorbed European avant-garde styles and emerged as international leaders.

Italy—Joseph Stella's birthplace and spiritual home—inspired this lush scene, ripe in its associations. This ode to creative forces takes its cues as much from the smoking volcano Vesuvius as from the exotic flora and fauna, whose shapes provide a provocative interplay of male and female forms.

Source: Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Joseph Stella, 1877–1946, Neapolitan Song, 1929, oil, 38 3/8 x 28 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Francoise and Harvey Rambach.