Among the notable works in the exhibition are several by artists who were members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA), including Byron Brown, Alexander Corazzo, Gertrude Greene, and George L. K. Morris. This group was organized in 1936 to bring respect to non-objective art in America at a time when realist modes of expression were dominant. An artist influenced by Surrealism and Cubism, Brown created works that are distinctive in their use of line and brilliant color, as is reflected in his engagingly whimsical Circus Figures (ca. 1946). Greene is represented by a crisply elegant collage, a medium in which she produced many of finest images. A president of AAA, Morris used a dynamic treatment of brush and ink in Santo Spirito (1963) to describe the fractured architectonic forms of this famous Florentine church.

Rolph Scarlett’s career and artistic philosophy were closely linked with the early history of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where he was a chief lecturer and a favorite of the museum’s curator Hilla Rebay, who arranged for the museum to acquire nearly sixty examples of his work. Scarlett’s distinctive geometric compositions, such as Abstract Landscape (ca. 1940s) are notable for their poetic delicacy and luminous palettes.

Known for their social realist imagery while employed by the WPA during the 1930s, Louis Schanker and James Daugherty worked in divergent styles as they turned to abstraction. Yet another founding member of AAA, Schanker joined Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb and several other artists in a protest in 1938 against the Whitney Museum for its reluctance to exhibit abstract art. Always basing his works in nature, Schanker created allusions to such subjects as sports, music, and the circus, which are suggested in his lively Abstract (Red) (1945), rendered in gouache and watercolor. An exponent of abstract painting in the 1910s, Daugherty abandoned it before suddenly returning to it in 1953 when, until his death in 1974, he created increasingly complex color abstractions that drew inspiration from the contemporary world, often expressing the new age of space travel and other groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

Three artists held critical roles in the dissemination of abstraction in America. The Russian-born John Graham was an influential conduit between advanced cultural currents in Europe and America in his role as a critic, dealer, patron, promoter, and educator. Closely associated with Arshile Gorky, David Smith and Willem De Kooning, Graham played a significant part in the development of Abstract Expression, while creating works such as Abstract (ca. 1930s), which conveys his use of principles of synthetic Cubism for his own distinctive introspective style. Betty Parsons’s illustrious career as an art dealer lasted more than forty years, during which she championed the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism, including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Less well known than her activity as an art dealer is that Parsons was a noted painter in her own right, who used abstraction in a freely creative way, infusing her works with her sense of excitement and energy toward the world. The show includes a number of works that bear the hallmarks of her 1950s abstractions: lozenge shapes and unusual juxtapositions of complementary hues. Blanche Lazzell, who studied with Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger in 1923-24, was among the earliest American artists to work in a purely abstract idiom, which she spread within the artists’ colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she was a leading figure.

Charlotte Park, whose work only drew attention after the death of her husband James Brooks, created an important group of works on paper, notable for their all-over style of compositions and rich repertory of abstract shapes. Her masterful paintings in gouache of the mid-1950s, a selection of which are included here, reveal a lively and commanding gestural hand as well as Park’s skill as a colorist. The explosive energy of action painting appears in pastels and gouaches by Jimmy Ernst. His powerful gouache, Icarus (1964), a study for one of his best-known oil paintings, invites speculation as to his relationship with his father, the noted Surrealist Max Ernst.

Whether represented as an idea in a sketch or produced as a fully realized treatment, the abstract works created on paper by American artists of the 1930s through the 1960s capture a uniquely dynamic and exciting period of exploration and novelty, as is demonstrated in the select group of works in this exhibition.