Composition #45
Paul Kelpe
1933
- Medium
- Watercolor, with pen and black ink, over graphite on cream wove paper
- Dimensions
- 22.9 × 16.2 cm (9 1/16 × 6 7/16 in.)
- Genre
- watercolor
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)paintgraphiteinkprints and drawingwatercolorpaper (fiber product)water-base paint
About
Paul Kelpe studied art in Hanover, Germany, before moving to the United States in 1925. By then he had already established a personal style of geometric abstraction, distinguished by smooth surfaces and areas of glowing color. He was a founding member of American Abstract Artists in New York. In the 1930s, Kelpe worked in a social realist style for the Federal Art Project, but he remained committed to abstraction, which he practiced in three-dimensional constructions as well as in watercolors such as this one. The artist settled in Chicago for a time, earning a doctoral degree in art history.