Calla Lilies

In 1922, Arthur B. Carles began a series of calla lily paintings, using the flowers’ stark shapes as the basis for formal experiments into color and surface. Calla lilies were of particular interest to Carles’s fellow modernists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, and Marsden Hartley because of their sexual connotations, which these artists frequently exaggerated or exploited. Carles’s Calla Lilies does not appear to carry any erotic overtones but instead is restrained in color and almost classically composed. Carles played with the effects of light and shadow on the curving shapes of the blossoms, contrasting the firmly modeled white flowers with the more loosely painted background. These juxtapositions expressed his fascination with the play of space in his compositions, and he likened the deliberate intervals between the flowers to the rhythmic qualities of music.