Untitled Landscape, from the New York State Series

Painting these unpeopled forests from his studio on the Bowery in Manhattan, Joseph DiGiorgio celebrated nature, delving into the heart of the forest through his work. As far back as the Hudson river School, the interplay between nature and culture has been central to artistic and philosophical debates within American society. While many of the 19th-century paintings on display reflect this debate through traditional views of an expansive landscape peopled by surrogates for the viewer, DiGiorgio’s Untitled Landscape places us in the mind’s-eye of the artist: immersed completely in the wooded landscape. Our visual experience is enhanced by bands of gestural, abstract brushstrokes in radiant fall colors overlaid by a veil of pointillist dots and a strong vertical rhythm of tree trunks.