By Hannah E. Jones

Stepping into the High Museum of Art’s second floor, visitors are transported into a world of vibrant colors and lush blooming flowers — more so resembling a botanical garden than a traditional art museum.

Welcome to the High’s latest exhibit — “Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature” — unveiled on Feb. 24. The collection includes about 120 nature-based paintings and drawings from the American modernist painter.

Stella was born in Italy in 1877 and moved to New York when he was 19. Throughout his decades-long career, the artist dabbled with various styles, ranging from futurism to classically ideal, and various mediums like painting, drawing and collages. He is well known for his industrial works, which often follow a complex geometric structure, with dark colors dominating the canvas. One of his most famous works is of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he painted several iterations of throughout his career.

Stella’s collection has another side, though. Throughout his artistic life, he showed a fascination with the natural world, particularly trees and flowers. These depictions range from simple, like “Peonies,” which shows understated colored pencil drawing, to the incredibly complex and intricate “Flowers, Italy,” an explosion of colors and blooms.

“I’m hoping that this exhibition feels, for many, like a discovery,” said Stephanie Heydt, the High Museum’s American Art curator. “[Stella is well known] for his works about American modernity and the Brooklyn Bridge, but the most significant amount of work that he did was on the theme of nature.”

The top of “Tree of My Life” resembles a greenhouse roof, inspiration drawn from Stella’s visits to the New York Botanical Garden. (Photo © 2018 Christie’s Images Limited.)

One show-stopper is “Tree of My Life,” an absolute cacophony of color, with vibrant flora and fauna packed into the massive piece with an olive tree acting as the anchor.

While his works…

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