Founding and early activities with a painting, 1938. I. Rice Pereira was an early member of American Abstract Artists.|alt=Irene Rice Pereira smoking a cigarette while looking at a painting|left In the 1930s a group of American painters founded The American Abstract Artists (AAA) with the aim of developing a new approach to painting characterized by shapes and primary colors. Within the initial circle of the AAA was also a small cohort of wealthy abstract artists from New York, known as the
Park Avenue Cubists, who combined Constructivist and Cubist principles into their paintings. During the 1930s, abstract art was viewed with critical opposition and there was little support from
art galleries and
museums. The American Abstract Artists group was established as a forum for discussion and debate of abstract art and to provide exhibition opportunities when few other possibilities existed. In late 1935 and early 1936 a small group of artists, who would become founding members of AAA, had sporadic informal meetings in their studios about exhibiting abstract art. This culminated in November 1936 at a larger meeting in
Harry Holtzman's loft where he was seeking support for an abstract artist cooperative and workshop but the idea was not accepted among the attendees. However Holtzman's organization of the November meeting was crucial in bringing together many of the painters and sculptors who would establish AAA the following year. On January 15, 1937 the artists met and decided they would create a group named American Abstract Artists. The
American Abstract Artists General Prospectus was issued in January 29, 1937 founding the organization. It outlined the purpose of AAA and the importance of exhibitions in promoting the growth and acceptance of abstract art in the United States. , 1937. The sculptor was an early American Abstract Artists member.|278x278px Under the heading
General Purpose, the
American Abstract Artists General Prospectus (1937) says "Our purpose is to unite American 'abstract' artists, (1) to bring before the public their individual works, (2) to foster public appreciation of this direction and painting and sculpture, (3) to afford each artist the opportunity of developing his own work by becoming familiar with the efforts of others, by recognizing differences as well as those elements he may have in common with them." The prospectus also proposes "that the most direct approach to our objective is the exhibition of our work." The American artists that embraced abstraction in the face of prevailing styles of realism and who banded together in New York to form AAA in 1937, sought to educate the American public about abstract art, promote solidarity among abstract artists, and explore new exhibition possibilities.
American Abstract Artists General Prospectus grouped members into two tiers: Membership and Associate Membership. Associate Members did not exhibit but were sympathetic to the organizations goals. The prospectus did not place limitations upon its members showing with other groups.),
The Ten also known as The Ten Whitney Dissenters (
Ilya Bolotowsky, Louis Schanker,
Karl Knaths,
Ralph Rosenberg Balcomb Greene,
Gertrude Greene, Ibram Lassaw,
Michael Loew) and
American Artists' Congress (Ilya Bolotowsky, Byron Browne,
Werner Drewes,
Carl Holty,
Irene Rice Pereira). AAA held its inaugural exhibition in 1937 at the Squibb Gallery in New York City. This was the most extensive and widely attended exhibition of American
abstract painting outside of a museum during the 1930s. The majority of AAA worked in either a Cubist inspired idiom, a geometric style with biomorphic forms or
Neoplasticism, and the group officially rejected Expressionism and
Surrealism. Ibram Lassaw was the only sculptor to be represented in the first AAA exhibit. For the 1937 exhibition AAA produced its first print portfolio of original
zinc plate
lithographs, instead of documenting the exhibit with a catalog. Morris had established the Gallery of Living Art in 1927, a public collection of modern art in New York City. Future exhibitions and publications would establish AAA as a major forum for the discussion and presentation of new abstract and
non-objective art. Over the next few years Morris and his wife
Suzy Frelinghuysen, who joined AAA, collected artwork by 25 members of the American Abstract Artists group. and fascism. Radicalization of the unemployed American artist became a major factor in the life of
New Deal artists, especially in New York City. Radical artists had been joining the Communist Party for years and forming their own organizations. In the 1930s American Abstract Artists was divided on political grounds with disagreements among Communist Party members who demanded AAA advocate political positions. Some artists who joined AAA were interested in Trotskyism, and there was turbulence between the group's
Trotskyist and
Stalinist members. Lee Krasner's beliefs as a Trotskyite landed her in jail where she met AAA founding member
Mercedes Carles Matter, through her
Lee Krasner joined the AAA. AAA founders Balcomb and Gertrude Greene were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art within the anti-Stalinist left. Communists opposed fascism, believed in the idea that art was a weapon in the war against it American Abstract Artists declared for its annual in March 1942 that it is a "privilege and necessity" to make and exhibit abstract art as an affront to fascism. The
National Socialists forced
Bauhaus teachers, including Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, to expatriate from Germany and immigrate to the United States where they continued teaching and influenced a group of artists in New York City who formed the American Abstract Artists, which Albers and Moholy-Nagy joined.
Art Front was a magazine published by the Artists Union in New York. The first two Artists Union presidents would become American Abstract Artists founders and future AAA founding and early members were Editors-in-Chief and on the Business Staff of
Art Front. "National Organization" was permanent feature of the magazine for "organizing artists groups on an economic basis" as a labor movement. The argument of class struggle was that the government should eliminate the dependence of American artists (the worker or
proletariat) from the caprice of private patronage (the
bourgeoisie). In an
Art Front review of AAA's first exhibit Jacob Kainen wrote that dictates of the market conspired against abstract artists in the United States and it is natural they band together in mutual defense. Artists organized as cultural workers used militant trade union tactics like picketing and confrontations with the police which contributed to their solidarity. American Abstract Artists would do the same issuing its own publications in protest and demonstrate as well. (American, 1877–1943). Painting No. 48, 1913.
Brooklyn Museum Critical reception and institutional opposition American abstract art was struggling to win acceptance and AAA personified this. The 1938 Yearbook addressed criticisms levied against abstract art by the press and public. It also featured essays related to principles behind and the practice of making abstract art. In 1940, AAA printed a
broadside titled "How Modern is the
Museum of Modern Art?" which was handed out at their protest of the
Italian Masters exhibit in front of MoMA. AAA questioned MoMA's stated commitment to modern and contemporary art when it was actually exhibiting Italian Renaissance artwork. Esphyr Slobodkina, a founding member and future president of the American Abstract Artists Group, described the Museum of Modern Art as a shameful display of "snobbish discrimination" that preferred to exhibit "gilt-edged, 100% secure, thoroughly documented and world renowned exponents of foreign abstract art." However, out of the fifty-two AAA members listed on the broadside distributed at the MoMA protest, eighteen had exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art including George L.K. Morris who had been a member of the museum's board of advisors. In 1940 AAA also produced a 12-page pamphlet: "The Art Critics – ! How Do They Serve the Public? What Do They Say? How Much Do They Know? Let's Look at the Record." The AAA publication quoted critics, highlighting misstatements and contradictions in the press. The pamphlet excoriated notable
New York Herald Tribune critic
Royal Cortissoz for his rigid loyalty to traditionalism, his patent distaste for abstract and modern art, and generally for what the pamphlet regarded as his "resistance to knowledge". It also characterized the aesthetic vacillations of
Thomas Craven, critic of the
New York American, as opportunistic. In 1936, Craven labeled
Picasso's work "
Bohemian infantilism". The ensuing years would see a growing public appreciation for abstract art until, in 1939, the critic made an about-face and lauded Picasso for his "unrivaled inventiveness". The pamphlet applauded
Henry McBride of the
New York Sun and
Robert Coates of
The New Yorker for their critical efforts regarding abstract art. "The Art Critics" showed the lack of knowledge the critics from New York City newspapers and art publications had about developments in 20th-century art. Controversy persisted and in a 1979
New York Times exhibition review
Hilton Kramer asserted that "The truth is, a group like the American Abstract Artists no longer has any serious function to perform, and its continued existence is little more than an act of nostalgia... Surely it is time to disband." painting, 1942. Jean Xceron was an early member of American Abstract Artists.|alt=Jean Xceron wearing a beret, painting with a brush while holding a palette|left|271x271pxThe picketing, broadside and brochure in 1940 were a game of positioning the organization in opposition to an art institution and established critics as part of a self-conscious process to legitimizing an avant-garde. AAA combated prevailing hostile attitudes toward abstraction and prepared the way for its acceptance after
World War II. However American Abstract Artists included many but did not represent all early American artists working abstractly such as those in
Stieglitz Group like
Arthur Dove,
Marsden Hartley and
John Marin.
San Francisco Bay Area Abstract Expressionists were also not in AAA like
Clyfford Still,
Jay DeFeo and
Frank Lobdell. During the 1920s and 1930s many European artist immigrants settled in New York and joined AAA:
Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky,
Giorgio Cavallon,
Fritz Glarner, Ibram Lassaw,
Fernand Léger,
László Moholy-Nagy, and
Piet Mondrian and
Hans Richter. Jean Xceron was in the inner circle of
Abstraction-Création, moved to New York City in 1937 and joined American Abstract Artists who welcomed him as a leading Parisian artist. This created a paradox for the group, AAA secured prestige by increasing the group's international character with its European expatriate modern masters but was then seen as not "American" enough to represent the United States. The exhibitions, organization and its strict geometrical style no longer functioned as an avant-garde influence in New York City. During the early 1940s the
New York School gained momentum and throughout the mid-1940s and 1950s Abstract Expressionism dominated the American avant-garde. The AAA was influential for a few years, from 1937 to 1940, setting the trend at the moment before the center of the art world shifted from Paris to New York after World War II. Though some members of American Abstract Artists rose to fame and international recognition in the following decades, the membership represented the
interwar generation with all the doubts and inner turmoil of that time. As an egalitarian artist run organization, AAA was serious about its professional goal of gaining acceptance of abstraction but applied minimal standards in selecting applicants based on the quality of their work for membership. Founding member
Alice Trumbull Mason wrote in a letter to the AAA membership dated May 23, 1944: "it has become apparent that, as public interest in abstract art has increased the members have shown less and less interest in furthering the aims for which the group was founded. This year indeed many, as far as the group is concerned, have ceased to function entirely." In the fall of 1949
The Club became the major forum for discussion of the avant-garde and abstraction in New York City, which included some of the AAA members. American Abstract Artists continued its mandate as an advocate for abstract art. By working in abstraction, female AAA members rejected the dominant realism of the time, which often reinforced subject matter identified as feminine or appropriate for women painters like scenes of mothers and children. The organization was notably inclusive of women, treating them as equals at a time when women were rarely afforded such status elsewhere. Female members served as officers and on committees, wrote for publications, and organized programs. Founding member Gertrude Greene organized the group's first exhibition at Squibb Gallery in 1937. Esphyr Slobodkina, also a founder, was the organization's first secretary, later president and treasurer. Of AAA's 15 presidents, 6 have been women. The group's membership has been a nearly equal divide between men and women. Both male and female members shared a common goal, advocating for abstract art. American Abstract Artists was one of a number of Great Depression Era artist run organizations in the United States, others included
Artists Union,
American Artists' Congress,
American Artists School,
John Reed Club,
The Ten,
Harlem Artists Guild,
Sculptors Guild, Artists' Committee of Action and Unemployed Artists Group.
John Ferren,
I. Rice Pereira,
Ad Reinhardt and
Clement Greenberg. Ferren, a California native, was one of the few AAA members to reach artistic maturity in Paris. ==American Abstract Artists today==