Graham, Davis, Gorky, De Kooning and their circle, 1927–1942.
Sometimes the best shows are not on Manhattan, but not too far away. Like this show in the
Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase NY that’s on now. There are more than sixty works of art from America’s most inventive artists between late 1920s and early 1940s American Vanguards, a group including Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Adolph Gottlieb, combined their identities and shared aspirations by friendship. They had a new idea about what a painting or sculpture could be.
In the 1920s through 1940s, the enigmatic and charismatic John Graham (1886–1961) and his circle of New York artists, which included Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, helped redefine ideas of what painting and sculpture could be. They, along with others in Graham’s orbit, such as Jackson Pollock and David Smith, played a critical role in developing and defining American modernism.
American Vanguards showcases more than sixty works of art from this vital period that demonstrate the inter-connections, common sources, and shared stimuli among the members of Graham’s circle.
This exhibition, curated by notable scholars William C. Agee, Irving Sandler, and Karen Wilkin, will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the Addison and Yale University Press. This critical reconsideration sheds new light on the New York School, Abstract Expressionism, and the vitality of American modernism between the two world wars.
The exhibit will be open from January 29–April 29, 2012. Neuberger Museum of Art is located just 45 min. from Manhattan (or 10 min from White Plains) on Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY.
Be sure to check out the museum’s associated programs. This is a great museum with lots of going-ons.
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