Andrew Lambirth

The European influence on modern American art

New York’s Atelier 17 became a creative hub in the 1940s, where émigré Surrealists shared ideas with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell

‘Temptations of the Painter’, by Gordon Onslow Ford, 1941. [Collection and courtesy of the Lucid Art Foundation] 
issue 11 March 2023

Charles Darwent’s Surrealists in New York is somewhat misleadingly titled, though its true content and focus are revealed in the subtitle: ‘Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract Expressionism.’ Perhaps that sounds obscure and even academic. If so, it gives the wrong idea, for this is a very readable and accessible account of a hitherto unexplored area of mainstream art history.

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