Old Houses on the Hudson

1933

American, born Bohemia (now Czech Republic), 1890 - 1972

Painted while the artist was working under the financial support of the federal government's Depression-era Public Works of Art Project. In it Matulka treated the kind of distinctly American subject that the program's administrators favored. Yet he did so in a style that clearly demonstrates his devotion to abstraction, his delight in reducing the visible world to arrangements of colors, shapes and textures. Having maintained a studio in Paris, Matulka knew the work of French cubists firsthand, and he in turn introduced young American artists to new art theories when he taught at New York's Art Students' League in the 1920s.

Oil with sand on canvas

24 1/4 x 28 1/2 in. (61.6 x 72.4 cm)

Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection

33.222

Provenance: U.S. Treasury Department, Civil Works Administration, Public Works of Art Project, New York Division, 1933; presented to Seattle Art Museum

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySpokane, Washington, Holy Names College, [Art Exhibition for Annual Cultural Series], 1958, no catalogue.

Seattle, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, New York Abstractions, October 13-November 27, 1983, no catalogue.

Published ReferencesAnnual Report of the Seattle Art Museum, 1934 (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1935), p. 9.

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