Skyscrapers

Tall buildings rise in a stack of beige, brown, and black shapes, their forms simplified into sharp angles and crisp planes. Shadows cut across the structures at hard diagonals, giving the whole scene a tightly ordered, almost architectural rhythm. The composition is arranged vertically, so the eye is pulled upward through the stacked forms as if climbing the city itself. Charles Sheeler painted this oil work in 1922, and it is held at The Phillips Collection. Sheeler, who lived from 1883 to 1965, was an American artist associated with Precisionism, a movement that treated industrial and urban subjects with clean lines and geometric clarity. One detail worth noticing is how the angular shadows slice through the beige and brown surfaces, flattening the buildings into interlocking geometric blocks rather than realistic structures standing in deep space.