NOTES
Brightly colored birds alight on a table against a busy background of interlocking shapes. This still life belongs to a series of visual experiments undertaken by the Edwardsville, Illinois, artist Miriam McKinnie, who began her career as a member of the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony. During the 1940s, she taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Mary Institute, and the People’s Art Center. At that time, her paintings became more abstract, with simplified three-dimensional objects—birds, fruit, and tables—fragmented into planes, as seen here.
From 1941 until 1964, the Saint Louis Art Museum held a series of annual Missouri Exhibitions, devoted to exhibiting the year’s best work by regional artists. It purchased Birds and Fruit shortly after the painting won an honorable mention at the 1949 show.
