Buildings

Charles Demuth

1930–1931

Tempera and plumbago on composition board

Dallas Museum of Art

Charles Demuth dynamically combines two ways of seeing: the shifting planes of cubism, represented by the diagonal lines incising the surface of the canvas, and the recognizable world of the silos, water towers, and smokestacks of his hometown, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.The painting’s tactile, worked surface also contrasts vividly with Demuth’s precise draftsmanship. It is one of the later examples in a series of tempera paintings of buildings in Lancaster that the artist began in 1919. on-view