Woman and Birds

Nelson synthesizes methods of cubism and futurism within his distinctive idiom of abstract expressionism. Amid a looping mass of lines that evoke the leaded armatures of stained-glass windows as much as the swirling action of futurist paintings, a monumental female figure emerges from the layered planes, holding a bird in each hand. The repeated avian forms create rhythmic movement across the 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 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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