Joseph Stella’s artistic career defies easy categorization. He was simultaneously a modernist and traditionalist, a dual citizen of the Old and New World, a bold experimenter and masterful practitioner of time-honored artistic techniques. His iconic paintings of New York City, such as the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island, celebrate modernity and the Machine Age, while his exuberant paintings of the natural world speak to the spiritual revelation that guided and grounded him throughout his life. Until recently, the divergent aspects of Stella’s career “confounded his legacy.” But in Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature, the multi-venue museum exhibition that focuses on the artist’s lifelong engagement with nature, a more complete and nuanced understanding of his career has emerged.

Stella’s work of flora and fauna demonstrate his deep connection to and close observational study of nature to invigorate his creativity and sustain his human spirit. Indeed, nature was a salve to his woes about life and the modern age. He made countless drawings and paintings of flowers, many of which were done at the New York Botanical Garden – a favorite place for the artist. In these works, Stella explored new styles and pressed the limits of his imagination. Like nature itself, he was always changing, always growing.

Plants and animals became a staple of Stella’s visual vocabulary. The many drawings he executed vary in their level of finish. Some are simple line drawings of pencil or silverpoint, others are complex, colorful compositions in crayon and colored pencil. Some are exquisite in their delicacy; others are bold and strikingly modern. His superb draftsmanship and close attention to detail unifies the best of these works, as does his use of radiant color when he employed it.

Fellow artist Charmion von Wiegand observed of Stella’s studio: “flower studies of all kinds litter the floor and turn it into a growing garden.”