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Festival 41

Oil on masonite
48 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches
1955
Now on view: One Morgan Square, Spartanburg, South Carolina

When he was in his early forties, Howard Thomas made his first visit to the South. He commented in his diary on the rich red earth. This is significant, as he often used soil samples when making his own pigments. Another habit of his was to listen to music while painting. One of his favorite musicians was Vivaldi and one is tempted to wonder what kind of music may have been the background accompaniment for Festival 41.

This particular piece by Thomas is a lively abstraction consisting of overlapping patches of confetti-like paint, frequently intersected with thin lines of blue. It exemplifies one of the Thomas’s most enduring contributions to modernism; namely, his innovations with Pointillism, a style of abstraction by reduction to geometric points.

Other works by this artist