Movements

Movements — Marsden Hartley. 1913.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 119.5 × 119 cm (47 × 46 7/8 in.).

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

Unlike many other American artists, Marsden Hartley was more drawn to German Expressionism than to French modernism, and executed this painting in Berlin. Made on the eve of World War I, Movements possesses a turbulent energy that sparks associations with both the vibrancy of modern Berlin and movements of music. Like the Russian Expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky, Hartley sought to make his work more like music, which he admired for its nonnarrative nature and its potential to be purely spiritual or separate from material reality.

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.