Abstract Expressionism
Then and Now
May 1- August 2, 2001
Emily Lowe Gallery
Abstract expressionism was the first major new artistic style developed in the United States after the influx of refugee artists from Europe in the years just before World War II. The movement was centered in New York City, but rapidly spread throughout America and the Western world. In part as a response to the chaos of the time in which they lived, abstract expressionist artists turned, as had the Dadaists before them, against the use of reason. They tried to broaden their artistic processes to express what Carl Jung called the "collective unconscious" by adopting the methods of surrealist improvisation and using their creative minds as open channels through which the forces of the unconscious could make themselves visible. The abstract expressionists saw themselves as leaders in the quest to find the path to the future. Artists viewed their art as a weapon in the struggle to maintain their humanity in the midst of the world's increasing insanity. To create, they turned inward. Their works had a look of rough spontaneity and exhibited a refreshing energy; their content was intended to be grasped intuitively by each viewer, in a state free of structured thinking. Abstract artists believed their work could help to counter the forces of dislocation by reawakening in people a sense of interconnectedness with all living things. Several of the artists in this exhibition began as expressionists, but became geometrically inspired over time. Through the years creation has been like a never-ending stream that constantly changes course, and it is evident in the works of these artists in the exhibition Then and Now. For the viewer today, it is informative and refreshing to see the pattern of change from the '50s to the present time.
Grace Renzi-Kantuser, Artist
Anita Shapolsky, Director
Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
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