Notes

• "From the 1920s until the end of World War II, a distinctly American form of Expressionism evolved in the United States. This was an art distinct from Regionalism, the now better known style of the period. Unlike the Regionalists, Expressionist artists were often outsiders to what was then the American mainstream. Many were the children of turn-of-the-century immigrants from Eastern Europe (William Gropper, Ben Shahn, Harry Sternberg, Jack Levine, Philip Guston), Southern Europe (Louis Guglielmi, Theodore Hios, Rico Lebrun), or Asia (Yasuo Kuniyoshi); many were African-American (Jacob Lawrence, Hale Woodruff, Charles White). But whatever their background, all of these men and women brought a new spirit of idealism to American art." "During the Great Depression and up until the beginning of World War II, the American Expressionists received considerable support from the fine arts programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the historic government agency founded by the Roosevelt administration. After the war, however, a new - and apolitical - movement, Abstract Expressionism, quickly displaced the topical expressionism that had preceded it. In this book, author Bram Dijkstra argues that the new movement was deliberately fostered by conservative government and corporate interests as a way of suppressing the socially active idealism that had flourished during the Depression. In this new climate of opinion, the representational work of the Expressionists was ridiculed by powerful critics, savagely denigrated, and wrongly linked to Regionalism, Socialist Realism, and even the art of Hitler’s Third Reich. Ultimately, it was dropped from serious discussions of American art." "American Expressionism brings to light the work of a group of men and women whose art has for too long remained in obscurity. Dijkstra’s analysis will give every reader a new perspective on the remarkable achievement of American artists of the 1920s and 30s, and it will change our understanding of the history and development of twentieth-century American art."–BOOK JACKET