Head

Beginning in 1919, Alfred H. Maurer started painting young women around Shady Brook, in up-state New York. During the 1920s, his images of these women became increasingly stylized, moving away from naturalism into abstraction. In this 1926 Head, Maurer eradicates reference to the model's identity in favor of decorative qualities. The work also resembles depictions of women by Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, whose work Maurer studied in Italy in 1906. Like Botticelli's, Maurer's simplified women are long-necked with high-domed foreheads; they are rendered with thin washes of paint.
Maurer's mannered Head is part of his continual exploration of the language of painting. From his earliest work, including Woman in Interior (located in room 2 of this gallery) to the still lifes of his Cubist period, such as Red Table Top Still Life (hanging to the left), Maurer concentrated on arranging the formal properties of his subjects into aesthetically pleasing compositions.