Conversation Piece, 1952
Oil on canvas, 18 x 25 1/4"
Museum Purchase, 1977.2.4

A native of Pennsylvania, Charles Sheeler was drawn throughout his life to the farm scenes typical of his home state.  He was committed, however, to presenting them in a fresh vision, one that revealed in modern visual language the structural harmony just under the surface.  Sheeler was a member of a group of artists called the Precisionists who were fascinated by the new shapes of the industrialized world.  In Conversation Piece, the artist reduces the architectural forms of the silos and barns to a series of planes, transforming the scene from a country farm to a kind of rural cityscape.  Remarkable in this farm setting is the absence of almost any hint of nature.  Instead, man-made structures dominate the picture plane, and intersecting horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines lend the painting a sense of dynamism and power.