Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut
Patrick Henry Bruce was an American modernist painter who was a cubist. He was highly influenced by Orphism and is compared to synchromist works and influence, but he never himself verified any claims as such. He never stuck to any one school and kept experimenting and evolving. Some of his works are also still-life impressionistic paintings.
The painting composition 1 is one of his most popular paintings and seminal works. Bruce attended dance and music when in college and became highly fascinated with jazz music. The painting is a fusion of his love for dance and music in a way. There is no analytical cubism present, but a kind of pulsating energy in the painting. It's like the various shapes are moving in a kind of unison and also against each other at the same time. The colours used are not very vibrant and not mundane either. It presents a kind of ubiquitous harmony that is present in the steps of a dance and in music notes.
The title "Composition I" most famously refers to seminal early abstract masterpieces by two pioneer modern artists: Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. Because both artists used sequential numbering for their major abstract series, the specific context depends heavily on the creation year
