Construction Zone Ahead

Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens tomorrow at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Modernism and Abstraction includes more than sixty artworks that reflect the inner spirit and the dynamic rhythms of modern life in the twentieth century. Like many of the artworks in this show, Construction 1946, painted by Gertrude Greene, assimilated new ideas from Europe.

Gertrude Greene developed her interest in art when she started an outdoor kindergarten. "We made little things with our hands, from clay, paper, and raffia." In Construction 1946, Greene integrated wood elements with brightly painted areas of fluid form. Reducing the palette to two primaries and shades of black and white, and banishing all figuration in favor of complete abstraction, she embraced avant-garde ideas developed first in Russia and Europe.

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

Pictured: Gertrude Greene, 1904–56, Construction 1946, 1946, oil on wood and fiberboard, 40 1/8 x 30 1/8 x 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost.