New Forms: The Avant-Garde Meets the American Scene, 19341949, Selections from the University of Iowa Museum of Art
English
By (author): Erika Doss Joni L. Kinsey Joni Louise Kinsey
Hardly a provincial regional outpost, the University of Iowa was uniquely positioned as a nexus of the modern art world, with prominent individuals and events that helped define the era and set aesthetic and ideological standards for the decades that followed. During this remarkable period, the University was simultaneously the centre of the Regionalist art movement, with Grant Wood as its most prominent and exemplary spokesman, and an emerging hub of the most progressive forms of modern art. In the early- to mid-1940s, new professors and students (Lester Longman, Horst W. Janson, Philip Guston, and Mauricio Lasansky), set different standards, positioning Iowas art collection as the repository of some of the most significant images of the twentieth century.
Seminal paintings by Pollock, Guston and Mark Rothko are discussed in detail, as are the influences of New Deal art projects, surrealism and the print workshop Atelier 17. An exhibition list of more than ninety objects is included. See more