A Way Through: Abstract Art of the 1940s

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January 15 - May 15, 2022

Special Exhibitions Gallery, First Floor

A Way Through: Abstract Art of the 1940s explores the decisive leap from figuration to abstraction that characterized much of the advanced art produced in America in the 1940s. The exhibition, the third in a series sponsored by the Art Bridges Foundation, features eleven works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including major paintings by Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, Alice Trumbull Mason, and George L. K. Morris. Many of the artists in the exhibition—such as Suzy Frelinghuysen, Irene Rice Pereira, Charles Green Shaw, and Esphyr Slobodkina—were pivotal to the founding of the American Abstract Artists group in New York in 1936. Drawings and prints by Paul Keene, Hedda Sterne, Judith Rothschild, and John von Wicht from the Palmer Museum of Art’s collection are also on view, shedding light on the evolution of abstract art in America during these tumultuous years. 

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art. 

 

This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.