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Introduction

Modernism in the Americas

June 20 - August 31, 2003

From the 1910s through the mid-20th century, artists in the United States and Latin America strove to define themselves in the face of prevailing European modernism. The 1913 Armory Show brought international avant-garde art to New York, highlighting a new visual language of abstraction: the fragmented and reassembled forms of Cubism and other contemporary movements. In the years that followed, artists throughout the Americas evaluated these shockingly new styles and fashioned their own responses to modernism.

A new generation of artists confronted European influence head-on, applying their own vision to subjects that resonated with meaning for North American and Latin American audiences. As urbanization increased, views of cities and their inhabitants proliferated. New York's skyline rose rapidly, punctuated by a completely contemporary building type, the skyscraper. Smokestacks and railroads invaded the rural landscape, signaling changes in life and work. Artists responded by reassessing the relationship of humans to their increasingly industrialized environment. Fresh styles and subjects reflected life on this side of the Atlantic, bringing into focus the richly textured and multiple meanings of modernism in the Americas.

Selected Objects

Oscar Bluemner

Rosy Light, 1927

Berenice Abbott

Automat, 977 8th Avenue Manhattan, February 10, 1936, 1936

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Optic Parable (Parábola Optica), 1931

Charles Demuth

Bicyclists, ca. 1916 - 1917

Charles Sheeler

House with Trees, 1915

Edward Weston

No. 6 Cypress-Point Lobos, 1930

Charles Sheeler

Yankee Clipper, 1939

Margaret Bourke-White

Untitled (Abstraction), 1933

Grant Wood

Plowing on Sunday, 1934

Juan O'Gorman

Pulque Drinkers, 1929

Louis Lozowick

Luna Park, ca. 1929

Sibley Smith

Rural Nocturne, 1938

Niles Spencer

Steel Country, 1937

Charles Demuth

Gloucester, 1919

Georgia O'Keeffe

Pink Spirea, ca. 1922
No Image Available

Arthur Rothstein

Girl at Gee's Bend, Alabama, 1937

Joaquín Torres-García

1943 America, 1943

Thomas Hart Benton

Mural study for "History of New York: Colonial Era", 1900s

Diego Rivera

Study for The Conquest of Air, 1932

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Negro Head, before 1927

George Wesley Bellows

Rain on the River, 1908

George Copeland Ault

Aqueduct, Morlaix, 1924

James Van Der Zee

Couple, Harlem, 1932

Aaron Douglas

Dance Magic, 1930

Arthur Garfield Dove

Hillside, 1932

Reginald Marsh

Penn Station, 1929

Edward Hopper

Night Shadows, 1921

Thomas Hart Benton

Mural Study for "History of New York: Indians", 1900s

Imogen Cunningham

Agave 1, 1920

Jacob Lawrence

There is an Average of Four Bars to Every Block, 1943

Joseph Stella

Underpass, Allegheny, 1908

Berenice Abbott

New York at Night, 1932
No Image Available

Dorothea Lange

She's a Jim Dandy, 1938

Diego Rivera

Woman Nursing Child, 1929

John Marin

Lake George:On Andrew's Island, 1923
No Image Available

John Marin, designer

Brooklyn Bridge (Mosaic), 1913

William Zorach

Birch Forest, late 1800s-mid 1900s

Helen Torr

Abstract Landscape #9, late 1800s-mid1900s

Georgia O'Keeffe

Fall Maple Leaves, 1925

Charles Ephraim Burchfield

Violets, 1917

Abraham Walkowitz

City Abstraction, ca. 1915

Elizabeth Catlett

The Lesson, ca. 1948
No Image Available

Howard Norton Cook

George Washington Bridge with B, 1931

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Modernism in the Americas

June 20 - August 31, 2003
View Checklist PDF

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