The modern movement in America was about fifty years old. Arthur G. Dove had painted what may be the first truly abstract work in the world in 1910. (Kadinsky in Europe began paintingabstractly at about the same time.) Dove’s paintings were based on the natural landscape, but he did not remain unique in the abstract style for very long. Within a decade such painters a Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella, Morgan Russell, Stanton Macdonald Wright and others were painting in the abstract vein. While not fully abstract, the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, John Marin, Abraham Walkowitz and Charles Burchfield distorted nature to coincide with their own sensitivities and vision. To this mix was added the surrealist movement brought fjjrom Europe by artists fleeding from the Nazis.

Abstract expressionism burst upon the American scene in the 1950’s. But the movement did not spring full blown in an instant nor did it occupy every artist painting at that time. Throughout the ages an expressionist and geometric appporach to the act of creating art have run on parallel tracks, one being in the ascendency for a time and then the other. Abstract and expressionistic qualities have been found much earlier.

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