Business

Business — Charles Demuth. 1921.

Medium: Oil and graphite on canvas. Dimensions: 51 × 61.5 cm (20 × 24 1/4 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Charles Demuth was fascinated by the industrial landscape of his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and depicted here a factory building head-on in a starkly linear composition. In choosing a flat subject that mimics the surface of the canvas, Demuth embraced the modernist ideal of unifying form and content. But the artist then irreverently painted a calendar onto the building’s windows—the days of the week surrounded by looming shadows. At a time when many Americans exalted industrialization in the name of progress, Business can instead be read as a critique of the dreary routines that already shaped 20th-century work. At his death, Demuth bequeathed this painting to his longtime friend and supporter Georgia O’Keeffe who later gave it to the Art Institute.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.