ABSTRACT
In the early months of 1936, approaching the tenth anniversary of his public collection, the Gallery of Living Art, Albert Eugene Gallatin took up his own palette. Cloaked in practical studio maxims, the creative fervor of this American master doubtless appealed to Gallatin, whose own outwardly staid yet febrile aesthetic had previously been fired by Art Nouveau prints and by the work of James McNeill Whistler. Gallatin's reduction of visual phenomena to abstract designs reflects his admiration for the work of Juan Gris, whom Gallatin revered as "the noble and profound master of Cubism," Perhaps most indicative of this appreciation for Gris is Gallatin's shuttling, throughout the 1940s, between nonobjective, or wholly invented compositions, and more representational, or "found" modes of pictorial conception. Despite Kenilworth Castle's sharply angular, accordion-like contours, this picture's indeterminate syntax also reflects that of Gallatin's colleague Jean Helion. By the mid-1940s, Gallatin had become a hearty enthusiast of international Constructivism.
