Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—7th Avenue Style, 1940

An abstract painting that employs the colors red, orange, yellow, blue, black, white to depict both a landscape and still life forms

Oil on canvas. Gift of the William H. Lane Foundation and Museum purchase with funds by exchange from the M. and M. Karolik Collection. © Stuart Davis / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Jazz is a Black art form, but it has influenced Black and white artists alike. One of those white artists, Stuart Davis, immersed himself in jazz culture while living in New York’s Greenwich Village, where many other artists—like Davis’s friend Beauford Delaney—shared similar passions. In Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—7th Avenue Style, Davis uses abstract modernist styles and bold colors to capture the spontaneity and energy of jazz in paint. Expressive shapes emulate movement across the canvas, suggesting music, dancing, and wonder.