Arshile Gorky
Composition (Still Life)
1936-1937
In the Modern period (roughly 1900 to 1960) American art continued in the pluralistic mode of the previous century, with some artists experimenting with the fractured forms of Cubism and abstraction. Other artists explored the lives of Americans in cities and country in a realist style, continuing what they believed was a national artistic tradition that stretched back to the colonial era. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a number of artists used their work to criticize social and economic conditions that they believed led to poverty and discrimination.
After World War II, a group of American artists synthesized European-derived Cubism and Surrealism with an interest in psychology and existential philosophy to produce a style known as Abstract Expressionism, which placed America on the leading edge of modern art. From the 1950s and into the 1960s artists responded to the challenges of Abstract Expressionism in various ways, some by using large areas of unmodulated color to create transcendental experience, others by making people and life the focus of their work.
Charles Sheeler
Amoskeag Mills #2
1948