Curation: Groundings—dialogues between contemporary and historic members of AAA

Location:
(Online) American Abstract Artists

Groundings—dialogues between contemporary and historic members of American Abstract Artists
Curated by Jason Andrew

Featuring works by:
Alice Adams, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Iona Kleinhaut, Katinka Mann, Nancy Manter, Betty Parsons, Judith Rothschild, Edith Schloss, Esphyr Slobodkina, & Karen Schifano

Groundings examines the continuing legacy of American Abstract Artists by juxtaposing the works of historic and contemporary members of the organization. Having little abstract tradition of their own, American artists, many of them immigrants to this country, formed this group in New York in 1936 at a time when abstract art was met with strong, even critical resistance. Through this group, one of the earliest to be particularly inclusive of women artists, a new advocacy emerged providing opportunities to exhibit and a much-needed refuge for discussion related to new ideas and artistic theories.

Originators of this group channeled a Cubist-based tradition of cool structural abstraction in the face of prevailing Social Realism and later held strong to this aesthetic during the dawn of the emotive and brutish school of Abstract Expressionism. Today, the group continues to expand in numbers and varying aesthetics.

This online exhibition, the first of its kind for the organization, brings together the work of ten women artists, five of whom are historic members and five of whom are contemporary members. Through the pairing of these artists, it is my intention to find aesthetic commonalities and compositional similarities that bridge decades of thinking and making. Throughout history, whether it be ancient, modern, or contemporary, art circulates a rhythm of evolution—one generation building upon the groundings of the former.