American art

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when modernism was developing in Europe, American Art remained provincial. Every trend of European nineteenth-century painting continued to flow in the United States. The most popular American movement of the early twentieth century, the "Ash Can", was a group of neorealists indebted largely to Courbet and the early Manet. But in these same years, several American artists were absorbing European modernism during trips to France and Germany. They returned to develop their newly acquired ideas in the United States. In 1908 in New York two photographers began to show at the Gallery "291" works by Matisse, Picasso, new American paintings and sculptures, including works by John Marin, Marsden Hartly, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was an original American painter, unconnected with any European movement. Throughout her long creative life, O'Keffe's imagery was derived from a variety of objects surrounding her, from the magnified forms of flowers to driftwood and animals' skulls. Her "Blue and Green Music", of 1919, is a complete invention. The free flow of rhythmic shapes against the massive diagonals moves with the quality of visual music.

A number of gifted American artists turned after World War I to new forms of realism, focusing on the banality of American urban and rural life. One of the best of the American scene painters was Edward Hopper (1882-1967). He painted a bleak world made up of dirty streets, gloomy houses, comfortless rooms such as in the "Automate", of 1927.

A representative of the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement was Jackson Pollock (1912-56). The "Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle" is an early work, but it shows the power with which Pollock pursued his idea. Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which abandons the traditional idea of composition. During the 1950s Pollock continued to produce figurative or quasi-figuratjve black and white works. He was strongly supported by advanced critics. By the 1960s Pollock was generally recognised as the most important figure in the most significant movement of this century in American painting.