Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Stuart Davis’s mural Swing Landscape is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century American art. With its bold colors and forms, this abstracted portrayal of the Gloucester, Massachusetts, waterfront takes visual cues from Cubism, but also expresses Davis’s artistic theories of color and space, and reflects the influence of jazz and swing music. Commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the Williamsburg Housing Project in Brooklyn, New York (constructed 1936–38), Davis intended his mural to introduce modernism to a less privileged audience. However, the mural was ultimately not installed at this site, and in early 1942, was instead allocated by the WPA to Indiana University.