Composition #22, Sharpness
Maude Kerns, Composition #22, Sharpness, 1943, oil on canvas, Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund, © unknown, research required, 47.2
This work is not currently on view.
- Title
Composition #22, Sharpness
- Artist
- Date
1943
- Medium
oil on canvas
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
20 in x 28 in
- Inscriptions & Markings
signature: Maude I. Kerns 1943, backing
signature; date: Maude L Kerns 1943, brushed, bottom left
- Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary Art; Northwest Art
- Category
Paintings
- Object Type
painting
- Culture
American
- Credit Line
Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund
- Accession Number
47.2
- Copyright
© unknown, research required
- Terms
Kerns was born and raised in Portland by her pioneer parents. She attended the University of Oregon, the California School of Fine Arts and later Columbia University, where she received a second degree in fine arts under the guidance of Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922). Dow was the most influential teacher of the first generation of American modernists. The impact of his philosophies played a major role in shaping 20th century art and theory in this country. Following her studies, Kerns traveled to Asia and to Europe, where she saw the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, among others of the avant-garde movement, and studied with renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann. She returned to become head of the art department at the University of Oregon in Eugene, and the Maude Kerns Art Center in Eugene is named in her honor.
From the 1930s through the 1950s, Kerns was well known for her abstract paintings in what was then called the "non-objective" art movement. A spiritual woman, she embraced Kandinsky's philosophy of art-as-spiritual expression. His influence is clear in the geometric elements of Composition #22, Sharpness, especially in the half-circles, angles, straight lines, and curves.
