c. 1915

Dynamic Velocity of Interborough Rapid Transit Power Station

American, 1894 - 1976

This work has the distinction of being the only known painting still in existence by the American artist Frances Simpson Stevens. In 1913 Stevens met several Italian Futurist artists and writers during a two-year stay in Florence that determined her artistic path. She quickly adopted the Futurist visual vocabulary, which extolled modern technology through fragmented forms and dynamic movement. This painting, which depicts the grinding turbines of a subway power station, was made upon her return to the United States and reveals her continued infatuation with modern machinery, which she shared with many of her colleagues in the New York Dada group.