BEFORE he died in 1925, George Bellows summed up his artistic faith in a passionate letter to a critic. "What this world needs," he pleaded, "is Art, Art, and more Art. Art in social, civic, economical relations, in religion, in government. We have a vast deal of science, of flying machines . . . but a great emptiness of imagination, a great barrenness of beauty." Bellows wanted to bring art to ordinary people and he did it by painting things everybody could understand.
A big (6 ft. 2 in., 185 lbs.), athletic man, Bellows chose the U.S. as his subject and never...
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