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Patrick Henry Bruce

Patrick Henry Bruce, born in 1881, was an abstract still life painter. He studied at the Art Club of Richmond, VA in his teenage years and later at the New York School of Art. Henri Matisse was Bruce's mentor from 1907-12, which inspired him to move to Paris for the next three decades. His work reflected an interest in color, design and geometric organization influenced by Cézanne. By 1913, Bruce was reading Charles Blanc's psychology of vision and began to include some qualities of orphism in his work. Bruce painted completely abstracted table top still lifes with flatted, bold, geometric shapes reconfigured in ambiguous spatial compositions. He experimented with contrasting and repeated planes of flat color, intersected by angling forms. Bruce truly wanted his work to be a seen as a special metaphor for life. Although his work was highly innovative, Bruce quite painting in 1930 after a general lack of recognition. He destroyed all but 21 of his canvases and committed suicide in 1936.

Biography courtesy of The Caldwell Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/caldwell

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