Joseph Stella

1877-1946

European/American Artist

Born and educated in southern Italy, 19-year-old Joseph Stella immigrated to New York City. He planned to become a medical doctor, but was sidetracked by his art talents, which led to his enrollment at the New York School of Art. There he was who introduced to Impressionism. Stella spent intermittent periods in Europe where he studied the Old Masters. In 1911, Stella saw a Paris exhibition of futurists whose painting style expressed modern technological phenomena of motion, speed and light through fractured images, shapes and patterns. Saying years later that "my youth plunged full into it," Stella excitedly pioneered Futurism in America. Between 1912 and 1923, he made several paintings of Coney Island, the riotous amusement park, and created his most famous work, Brooklyn Bridge.