Masts
1919
Tempera on composition board
50.5 × 41.4 cm (19.9 × 16.3 in)
SEE IT IN PERSON
● On view now — Collection Gallery, Room 18, East Wall
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia · verified July 2026
Discussion
FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG
Demuth painted Masts in the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he spent the summer of 1919. Demuth worked in a cubist-inspired style that came to be called precisionism. Here, he presents geometric shapes that could be read as an erect mast, its radiating sails, and the roof of a warehouse. Yet Demuth was not overly concerned with the specificity of the content or the location depicted; he exhibited this painting in 1920 with the vague title Chimnies, Ventilators, or Whatever .
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