Portrait of a Man

Maurer ranks among the early American modernist painters and his approach to the figure blends the expressionistic, Fauve influence of Henri Matisse with the experimentation, fragmentation, and restrained coloration of Cubism. 

Maurer absorbed these influences during time spent in Europe before World War I. This portrait comes from the moment when the artist embarked on a series of nudes and live figure studies. The work is filled with the suggestion of angst and unrest, painted several years before the artist took his own life in 1932.