New York Elevated, c.1931 (gouache on paper)

Stuart Davis left high school in Philadelphia to study with Robert Henri in New York. However, he credited the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art as the single most significant event of his professional life. Known popularly as the Armory Show, the exhibition introduced modern art to the United States. After seeing the exhibition, Davis began experimenting with various modernist idioms in search of his own mode of expression. In New York Elevated Davis has reduced the cityscape to a group of flattened, hard-edge symbols. The elevated train, or “el,” ran above street level through parts of Manhattan and was a frequent subject of Davis's work. Throughout his career Davis made use of the symbols that gave shape and character to modern American life, incorporating references to jazz, advertising trademarks, and slogans, as well as such industrial icons as the elevated train.