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 focused 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, exploring new styles and pressing the limits of his imagination. Like nature itself, he was always changing, always growing.

Stella spent a short time on the island of Barbados in the winter and spring of 1938. His stay there reinvigorated his creativity after a few challenging years in New York, which were largely due to the Great Depression. In 1935 he reconnected with his wife, Mary French, who was dying from complications due to diabetes. Together they went to her native Barbados in December of 1937. Despite his wife's worsening health, Stella was revived by the warm sunshine of the island paradise. The paintings he completed while in Barbados reflect a period of personal optimism and creative uplift. Stella wrote upon his arrival: "It was wintertime when I arrived in the tropics, and your flaming greeting filled my soul with a start of sudden elation."