Dreaded Area
Object NamePainting
Artist / Maker
Marvin Cone
(American, 1891 - 1965)
Date1960
MediumOil on canvas.
DimensionsImage: 23 3/4 x 29 3/4 in. (60.3 x 75.6 cm)
Framed: 25 1/4 x 31 1/4 in. (64.1 x 79.4 cm)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineGift of Janelle and George McClain. In the permanent collection, Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Object numberUM2013.46
Status
Not on viewCollections
CultureAmerican
Label TextFrom the University Museums Collections Handbook, vol. 2, 2025:
Marvin Cone lived the entirety of his life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His paintings were a way to communicate his beliefs and the character of his surrounding environment. They were often introspective and not true to reality but succeeded in exploring and recording his experiences and sense of place. Befriending Grant Wood early in high school, the pair remained exceptionally close even as their personalities and careers in art were drastically different. Cone chose a career in education, beginning the art department and also teaching French and art for 40 years at his alma mater Coe College.
While his paintings from the 1920s through the 1940s included many representations of his personal interpretation of the Iowa landscape, sky, and vernacular architecture, he would come to turn his view inwards. He created highly personal interior scenes depicting geometrical representations of a space with multiple doors and/or stairs leading to unknown rooms or floors. The contemplative nature of his paintings continued to develop and naturally led to an exploration of abstraction. Abstraction allowed Cone to bring greater imagination and creativity into his art, no longer constrained by the need to adhere to realistic images of land or structures. Dreaded Area exhibits how the different stages of his painting styles were inherently connected as representations of his inner psyche as he matured. A work of abstraction, yet the shadow of a barn roof with faded clouds found among the geometrical planes of color, an almost dreamlike variation of a landscape, both recognizable yet mysterious, as many dreams are.
SignedSigned lower right, on verso “Dreaded Area”.
Locations
- (not entered) Iowa State University, Brunnier Main Storage
