Old Houses on the Hudson
1933
Jan Matulka
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