Power Plant II

1949

Power Plant II, 1949. Charmion von Wiegand (American, 1896–1983). Oil on canvas; framed: 63.5 x 79 x 4 cm (25 x 31 1/8 x 1 9/16 in.); unframed: 50.9 x 61 cm (20 1/16 x 24 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dorothea Wright Hamilton Fund 1982.178 A lively composition of rectangles and squares arranged like conduits in a grid, Power Plant II pulses with energy befitting its title. Von Wiegand, a forceful woman with great flair, served a term as president of Abstract American Artists, an organization established to promote abstraction at a time when it generated strong critical and popular resistance. A journalist before she turned painter, von Wiegand once worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow.