Manierre Dawson, Differential Complex, 1910

Was Chicago artist Manierre Dawson the father of abstract painting?

By Dan Tranberg

1910 was a pivotal year in the history of art.

It was the year that Wassily Kandinsky, working in Munich, Germany and Arthur Dove, working in Westport, Connecticut, independently made the world's first abstract paintings.

At least that's what the history books say.

But history is written in curious ways.

Considering the enormous artistic and technological advances that took place during the first decade of the 20th century, isn't it possible that other artists of the time also stumbled upon the idea of painting something besides the visible world?

Enter Manierre Dawson, a little-known Chicago-born artist who may just be the undiscovered originator of abstract painting.

Last fall, the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired an unassuming 12-by-16-inch painting by Dawson titled "Differential Complex." Made up entirely of parabolas, straight lines, and circles, it is completely abstract. It's also dated 1910.

According to Henry Adams, CMA's Curator of American Painting, the painting is likely to have been executed several months before Kandinsky's and Dove's earliest abstract canvases.

Perhaps as importantly, Adams asserts that "the Dawson painting is far more conceptually radical than those of either Kandinsky or Dove."

While Kandinsky's and Dove's earliest abstract works clearly possess visual elements derived from nature, Dawson, who worked by day as an architectural engineer in Chicago, based his paintings from this period on mathematical ideas.

Adams points out that "between 1890 and 1910, Chicago architects, particularly Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, established the hallmarks of modern architecture: the skyscraper, and the free-flowing house with an open plan."

In the midst of these creative innovations, Adams believes that Dawson applied similar architectural ideas to painting.

"Engineers think of physical matter not in terms of its shape or surface but rather in terms of the internal lines of force that run through it," says Adams.

With its web of darting and arching lines, Dawson's "Differential Complex" seems to trace unseen energies across a loose grid that vaguely resembles graph paper.

But proving that Dawson actually did the painting when he said he did is another story.

In unraveling the details of Dawson's life, Adams and others have learned all kinds of interesting details about the artist's life. Shortly after painting "Differential Complex," Dawson traveled to Europe where he met some of key players in the bourgeoning modern art scene. Among them were Gertrude Stein (to whom he later sold his first painting), John Singer Sargent, and Edouard Vuillard.

Upon his return, following a period of intense artistic activity, Dawson married in 1914 and had a strange idea: to move to Michigan and become a fruit farmer. According to Adams, Dawson initially thought that the plan would allow him to paint in the winter while tending to the orchards in the summer.

It didn't work. Short after establishing his business, Dawson disappeared from the art world entirely. It wasn't until the 1960's that he re-emerged as a millionaire farmer in the possession of some 250 paintings and sculptures, which he had accumulated over the course of 50 years.

While Adams is among Dawson's champions, he's not the only one who believes in Dawson's significance as a pioneer of Modernism.

Paintings by Dawson can be found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Still, convincing the world of Dawson's place in the history of art may take some time. "My guess," Adams says, "is that 20 to 50 years from now, this will be an extremely important painting."

In the meantime, the new Dawson remains an enigma within CMA's modest but increasingly interesting collection of works tracing the still-unfolding advent of Modernism.

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This article appeared in The Plain Dealer, July 26, 2002