Smithsonian Magazine – June Issue

Artist Joseph Stella Painted Nature in Vibrant Color

Cities weren’t the only subject that fascinated this acclaimed Futurist

By Amy Crawford

He famously captured industrial America—the Brooklyn Bridge, Pittsburgh’s steel mills—with his monumental canvases. But the painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946) looked to nature for respite, escaping his Manhattan studio to visit the New York Botanical Garden and to paint in southern Italy, where he grew up. “My devout wish,” the artist wrote, “[is] that my every working day might begin and end—as a good omen—with the light, gay painting of a flower.”

Anne Frank’s Childhood Friend Recalls Their Years Before the Holocaust

After fleeing her native Germany, a young Jew found companionship and community as the Nazis approached