Charles Demuth

Charles Demuth (born November 8, 1883, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 23, 1935, Lancaster) was a painter who helped channel modern European movements into American art and who was also a leading exponent of Precisionism.

Demuth’s early training was under Thomas Anshutz and William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Between 1907 and 1913 Demuth made several trips to Europe to study, and while in Paris he was attracted to the work of Marcel Duchamp and the Cubists, influences that lasted throughout his career. After returning to the United States, he illustrated works by several of his favourite authors. Moving gradually away from illustrative art, he executed a series of watercolours of flowers, circuses, and café scenes that placed him in the first rank of watercolourists of his period.

Late in his career, Demuth began to paint advertisements and billboards into such cityscapes as his Buildings, Lancaster (1930), in which bold commercial lettering is complemented by the severely hard-edged abstraction of buildings. Among Demuth’s best-known works are his poster portraits, such as the tribute to the poet William Carlos Williams: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928).