Knowra Charles Demuth Charles Demuth Charles Demuth (1883–1935) was an American painter known for delicate watercolors and sharply geometric Precisionist paintings of architecture, industry, and machinery.
Precisionism : An American art movement that depicted modern architecture and industry through precise forms, simplified geometry, and smooth surfaces. Demuth became one of Precisionism’s defining painters, giving factories and grain elevators a distinctive visual order.
My Egypt : A 1927 painting by Charles Demuth depicting a grain elevator as a monumental, geometric form. The grain elevator becomes an emblem of industrial America rather than a merely functional building.
William Carlos Williams : An American poet and physician whose writing often focused on ordinary American life and objects. His poem “The Great Figure” directly inspired Demuth’s painting of the number five.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania : A city in southeastern Pennsylvania that was Charles Demuth’s birthplace and lifelong home base. Its grain elevators, factories, and streets supplied recurring subjects for his paintings.
Regionalism (American art) : An American art movement that portrayed rural life and regional identity, especially during the 1930s. Regionalists emphasized people and local narratives where Demuth often made architecture the central subject.
Watercolor painting : A painting method using water-soluble pigments, usually on paper, that lets the paper’s surface contribute to the image. Demuth developed an unusually controlled watercolor practice alongside his industrial paintings.
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold : A 1928 painting by Charles Demuth inspired by William Carlos Williams’s poem “The Great Figure.” Its repeated number and urban motion exemplify Demuth’s translation of poetry into visual form.
Alfred Stieglitz : An American photographer and art dealer who promoted modern art through galleries and the journal Camera Work. Stieglitz exhibited and supported Demuth within a network of American modernists.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts : An art museum and school in Philadelphia, founded in 1805. Demuth studied there, receiving formal training before developing his modernist style.
Ashcan School : A group of American artists who depicted everyday urban life with energetic, often gritty realism. The Ashcan School’s crowded human scenes differ from Demuth’s simplified, often unpopulated city structures.
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