The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 25, 2023

Power Plant II

1949

Charmion von Wiegand

(American, 1896–1983)

America, 20th century

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.)

Dorothea Wright Hamilton Fund 1982.178

Location

226B American Modern

Fun Fact

A journalist before she turned painter, von Wiegand once worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow.

Description

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.

Provenance
Private Collection, Lincoln, NE, commission to Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, NY
1982
(Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)
1982–
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Pincus-Witten, Robert. "Mondrian and Modrianists." In Post-Mondrian Abstraction in America March 31 to May 13, 1973. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1973. Reproduction: unpaginated
Burnham, Jack. "Mondrian's American Circle." Arts Magazine 48 (Sept./Oct 1973). Metioned: p. 38
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Year in Review: 1983." Cleveland Museum of Art Bulletin 71, no. 116 (Feb. 1984). Reproduced: p. 72
Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned: p. 121, n. 88; Reproduced: p. 67
Exhibition history

The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1982.178