Gladiolus

Demuth has been called "fundamentally a watercolor painter" and 'Gladiolus' is a strong example of his exquisite sense of color and the precision and elegance of his style. 'Gladiolus' expresses his fascination with and remarkable talent for the cubist idiom. In these works, Demuth's admiration of Cézanne is especially apparent in the blotting of wet colors and the layering of hues to create multiple geometric facets. The unfinished quality of 'Galdiolus', with its unpainted soft pencil outlines and wide margins of white paper, combines with the artist's delicate brushwork to suggest the fragility and ephemerality of the flowers.