An absorbing group biography revealing how exiles from war-torn France brought Surrealism to America, helping to shift the centre of the art world from Paris to New York and spark the movement that became Abstract Expressionism.
In 1957 the American artist Robert Motherwell made an unexpected claim: ‘I have only known two painting milieus well … the Parisian Surrealists, with whom I began painting seriously in New York in 1940, and the native movement that has come to be known as “abstract expressionism”, but which genetically would have been more properly called “abstract surrealism”.’
Motherwell’s bold assertion that Abstract Expressionism was neither new nor local, but born of a brief liaison between America and France, verged on the controversy. Surrealists in New York tells the story of this ‘liaison’ and the European exiles who bought Surrealism with them – an artistic exchange between the Old World and the New – centring on taciturn printmaker Stanley William Hayter and the legendary Atelier 17 print studio he founded. Here artists’ experiments pushed the boundaries of modern art. In Hayter’s studio, Jackson Pollock found the balance of freedom and control that would culminate in his distinctive drip paintings.
The impact of Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Louise Bourgeois, and other noted emigres on the work of Motherwell, Pollock, Mark Rothko and the American avant-garde has for too long been quietly written out of art history. Drawing on first-hand documents, interviews and archive materials, Charles Darwent brings the events and personalities from this crucial encounter to life. In so doing, he reveals a fascinating new perspective on the history of twentieth-century art.
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd ISBN: 9780500094266
Number of pages: 264