Untitled (1945)

“I’m not painting out of pleasure. I’m painting out of my need to be a human being,” said Nelson, who made this work shortly after his honorable discharge from the US Army. He described his process thus: “I don’t take my easel and go out and paint the scene . . . The scene gets inside of me.” The composition demonstrates his mastery of abstraction through a network of geometric forms that surge upward with kinetic energy. Bold red linear elements weave through a scaffold of blues, greens, and grays, creating rhythmic movement that suggests both architectural structure and organic growth within a balanced vertical composition. 

Nelson was a prominent member of the Philadelphia Abstract Artists. Born in Camden, New Jersey, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the Barnes Foundation. During his military service, he designed hospital murals, and later exhibited alongside other New York School abstract expressionists at the prestigious galleries of Peggy Guggenheim and Betty Parsons in New York. Nelson’s work was regularly shown in Philadelphia, and is represented in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Woodmere.

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