In this fascinating, detailed account of what was happening within Surrealism during the crucial years 1938-1947, Martica Sawin documents the cultural transfer that took place when the greater part of the prewar Surrealist group was transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. Sawin's year-by-year narrative pieces together when and how the refugees arrived and their various points of contact with the future abstract expressionists. It documents conclusively the roots of the New York School - a hybrid of startling vigor that brought world attention to the new American art for the first time - the evolution of the artworks involved, and the last brilliant flowering of Surrealist art. Interwoven with the text are 250 photographs of people, places, and artworks.

Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School

Arts & Photography

SAWIN, MARTICA

History & Criticism

Mit Pr

The French/European story of Surrealism has been written; the story of abstract expressionism has been told. But the connection between them, how one acted as a catalyst for the other, has been a long-missing chapter in the history of art. Martica Sawin finally provides it. In this fascinating account of what was happening within Surrealism during the crucial years 1938-1947, Martica Sawin documents the cultural transfer that took place when the greater part of the prewar Surrealist group was transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. Eminently readable, clearly told, and biographically rich, Sawin's year-by-year narrative pieces together when and how the refugees arrived and their various points of contact with the future abstract expressionists.

Revered as the father of historic preservation in the United States, architect James Marston Fitch was hailed by the New York Times at the time of his death in 2000 as "an architect whose writings and teachings helped transform historic preservation from a dilettante's pastime into a vigorous, broadly based cultural movement." In this anthology of his writings, spanning over sixty years of his professional career, Fitch's incisive ideas and observations on a range of subjects are brought to light in a single, readable volume. Whether a lament of the loss of functionalism in the wake of modernism, a celebration of the architectural perfection embodied in the University of Virginia campus, or an appeal to architects to heed factors of climate and environment in their designs, Fitch's essays are both provocative and pragmatic and always deeply rooted in the human element. In the face of contemporary concerns such as suburban sprawl, energy expenditure, and environmental degradation, Fitch's writings resonate today more than ever. 30 black & white

James Marston Fitch: Selected Writings 1933 - 1997

Literature & Fiction

Fitch, James Marston

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Critically examines the work of the German-born American painter whose landscapes feature a unique blend of realism and abstraction

Wolf Kahn: Landscape Painter

Taplinger Pub. Co

Wolf Kahn

Taplinger Pub.

Leon Kelly (1901-1982) belongs to that unique strain of American Surrealism that produced Arshile Gorky, Pavel Tchelitchew and Joseph Cornell. Wildlife and biomorphic forms fill his brightly-hued canvases, increasingly (from the 50s onwards) rendered with an almost Bellmer-esque exactitude. Like many before him, Kelly made the pilgrimage to Paris in 1925, where he befriended the great art critic Félix Fénéon and members of the Surrealist circle; upon his return to the U.S. he benefited from the presence of the expat Surrealists around Julien Levy, who was an important early advocate of his work. But Kelly was reclusive ("I believe I have a strong shot of the chemical that makes hermits and monks," he confessed), and later receded from public view. Now retrieved by the Surrealist and Dada scholars Martica Sawin and Francis Naumann, Leon Kelly is well served by this first major monograph, which includes excellent reproductions of both paintings and drawings.

Leon Kelly: An American Surrealist

Individual Artists

Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York

Nell Blaine (1922-1996) was an important member of the second generation of the New York School. Her work represents a dialogue between abstract principles and her sensory-response to the visible world.

Nell Blaine

Hudson Hills

The artist's dazzling landscapes, still lifes, and self-portraits are a defining achievement of postwar American art, uniting bold colour, spare geometric composition, and naturalistic observation. Matthiasdottir returned regularly to her native Iceland, the subject of much of her work.

Louisa Matthiasdottir

Perl, Jed

Esplund, Lance

Finnbagottir, Vigdis

Ashbery, John.

Alan Gussow (1931-1997) was at the forefront of a generation of American artists who extended the reach of abstract expressionism through an inventive blend of abstraction and realism. The youngest American to win the Prix de Rome, his career spanned nearly 50 years. Gussow's work is consistently provocative, poetic, and profound; an art of international consequence ripe with cultural and environmental insights rooted in a beautifully refined aesthetic vision. This volume, with detailed text by Martica Sawin and more than 250 color plates, surveys Gussow's career, considers his most important works, and includes many oils, pastels, and watercolors published for the first time. Martica Sawin, a noted art historian and close friend of Gussow's, is uniquely positioned to illuminate his life not only as an artist, but also as an environmentalist, curator, essayist, teacher and political activist.

Alan Gussow: A Painter's Nature

Wolfgang Paalen was a central figure in internationalist surrealist circles in the late 1930s. Artist and intellectual, he was a European whose fascination with archaic cultures led him finally to Mexico, where he founded the influential magazine DYN in 1941. In the bold texts from DYN that make up Form and Sense, we encounter a unique artistic mind and an oracular voice. Paalen’s book is an intellectual delight with essays on cubism, surrealism, the universality of forms in architecture, and the relationships that exist between art and science. He weaves together the new ideas and archaic inspirations in twentieth-century painting and sculpture. His nuanced and original considerations of some key figures—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Picasso—marked Paalen in turn as a significant thinker in the world of modern art. This painter’s book, illustrated with carefully chosen examples of the art he examines, makes us not only understand but also experience the rich interplay between idea and image that informs the art of our own time. A new introduction by the scholar Martica Sawin examines Paalen’s career, particularly his influential writing on surrealism and abstraction.

Form and Sense (Artists & Art)

Paalen, Wolfgang

Arcade Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SAWIN, MARTICA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SAWIN, MARTICA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SAWIN, MARTICA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School

Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School

James Marston Fitch: Selected Writings 1933 - 1997

Wolf Kahn: Landscape Painter

Wolf Kahn

Leon Kelly: An American Surrealist

Nell Blaine

Louisa Matthiasdottir

Alan Gussow: A Painter's Nature

Form and Sense (Artists & Art)