Precisionism

An American style of the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated the new industrial landscape with clean lines and smooth, simplified forms. Charles Sheeler painted the Ford plant at River Rouge as if it were a cathedral; Charles Demuth painted grain elevators and the poster-like I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold; Georgia O'Keeffe painted New York skyscrapers before turning to flowers and New Mexico; George Ault, Niles Spencer and Ralston Crawford painted factories, bridges and water towers. They borrowed Cubism's geometry but kept recognisable subjects, emptied of people, under clear, still light.

How to tell it apart: crisp geometric factories, bridges and city buildings with no people and hard edges; Regionalism, at the same time, paints the rural Midwest in rounded forms.

166 works in the quiz. Play a round on Precisionism.

Artists

Georgia O'Keeffe · Charles Demuth · Charles Sheeler · Joseph Stella · George Ault · Ralston Crawford

Best-known works

“Black Iris” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold” — Charles Demuth, 1928
“Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1931
“Oriental Poppies” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1928
“Jawbone and Fungus” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1931
“My Egypt” — Charles Demuth, 1927
“Mountain with Red House” — Charles Demuth, 1913
“Bermuda No. 2, The Schooner” — Charles Demuth, 1917
“Red Chimneys” — Charles Demuth, 1918
“Machinery” — Charles Demuth, 1920
“Calla Lily on Grey” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1928
“Abstraction White Rose” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1927
“City Night” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Horse’s Skull with Pink Rose” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1931
“Jack-in-the-Pulpit III” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1930
“...And the Home of the Brave” — Charles Demuth, 1931
“Incense of a New Church” — Charles Demuth, 1921
“Radiator Building—Night, New York” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1927
“Pansy” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Street of New York II” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Canna Leaves” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925
“East River No 1” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1927
“Purple Petunias” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925
“Morning Glory with Black” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Abstraction No. 77 (Tulip)” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925
“New York with Moon” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925
“Petunia” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925
“Shelton Hotel New York No. 1” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Slightly Open Clam Shell” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1926
“Dark Iris №3” — Georgia O'Keeffe, 1927