American Abstract Artists

American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded in 1937 in New York City, to promote and foster public understanding of abstract art. American Abstract Artists exhibitions, publications, and lectures helped to establish the organization as a major forum for the exchange and discussion of ideas, and for presenting abstract art to a broader public. The American Abstract Artists group contributed to the development and acceptance of abstract art in the United States and has a historic role in its avant-garde. It is one of the few artists' organizations to survive from the Great Depression and continue into the 21st century.

During the 1930s, abstract art was viewed with critical opposition and there was little support from art galleries and museums. The American Abstract Artists group was established as a forum for discussion and debate of abstract art and to provide exhibition opportunities when few other possibilities existed. In late 1935 and early 1936 a small group of artists, who would become founding members of AAA, had sporadic informal meetings in their studios about exhibiting abstract art. This culminated in November 1936 at a larger meeting in Harry Holtzman's loft where he was seeking support for an abstract artist cooperative and workshop but the idea was not accepted among the attendees. However Holtzman's organization of the November meeting was crucial in bringing together many of the painters and sculptors who would establish AAA the following year. On January 15, 1937 the artists met and decided they would create a group named American Abstract Artists. The American Abstract Artists General Prospectus was issued in January 29, 1937 founding the organization. It outlined the purpose of AAA and the importance of exhibitions in promoting the growth and acceptance of abstract art in the United States.

Under the heading General Purpose, the American Abstract Artists General Prospectus (1937) says "Our purpose is to unite American 'abstract' artists, (1) to bring before the public their individual works, (2) to foster public appreciation of this direction and painting and sculpture, (3) to afford each artist the opportunity of developing his own work by becoming familiar with the efforts of others, by recognizing differences as well as those elements he may have in common with them." The prospectus also proposes "that the most direct approach to our objective is the exhibition of our work." The American artists that embraced abstraction in the face of prevailing styles of realism and who banded together in New York to form AAA in 1937, sought to educate the American public about abstract art, promote solidarity among abstract artists, and explore new exhibition possibilities.

American Abstract Artists General Prospectus grouped members into two tiers: Membership and Associate Membership. Associate Members did not exhibit but were sympathetic to the organizations goals. As an example of how the membership process worked, Charmion von Wiegand became an associate member of the American Abstract Artists in 1941 at AAA Founder Carl Holty's recommendation, then a full member in 1947, began exhibiting with AAA in 1948, and was its president from 1951 to 1953. The prospectus did not place limitations upon its members showing with other groups. Other 1930s Depression Era artist run organizations included AAA members: Sculptors Guild (Louise Bourgeois, Ibram Lassaw, José Ruiz de Rivera, Louis Schanker, Wilfred Zogbaum), The Ten also known as The Ten Whitney Dissenters (Ilya Bolotowsky, Louis Schanker, Karl Knaths, Ralph Rosenberg), Artists Union (Byron Browne, Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, Ibram Lassaw, Michael Loew) and American Artists' Congress (Ilya Bolotowsky, Byron Browne, Werner Drewes, Carl Holty, Irene Rice Pereira).

AAA held its inaugural exhibition in 1937 at the Squibb Gallery in New York City. This was the most extensive and widely attended exhibition of American abstract painting outside of a museum during the 1930s. Two years earlier the Whitney Museum of American Art held an exhibit, "Abstract Painting in America," from February 12 - March 22, 1935, with 65 abstract artists working in the United States including future AAA founders and members Byron Browne, Werner Drewes, Balcomb Greene, Karl Knaths, Irene Rice Pereira, and Louis Schanker. The majority of AAA worked in either a Cubist inspired idiom, a geometric style with biomorphic forms or Neoplasticism, and the group officially rejected Expressionism and Surrealism. Ibram Lassaw was the only sculptor to be represented in the first AAA exhibit. For the 1937 exhibition AAA produced its first print portfolio of original zinc plate lithographs, instead of documenting the exhibit with a catalog. George L. K. Morris, an exhibitor and founding member of the AAA, purchased 10 pieces from the show. Morris had established the Gallery of Living Art in 1927, a public collection of modern art in New York City. Future exhibitions and publications would establish AAA as a major forum for the discussion and presentation of new abstract and non-objective art. Over the next few years Morris and his wife Suzy Frelinghuysen, who joined AAA, collected artwork by 25 members of the American Abstract Artists group.

There was extensive hostile criticism of AAA exhibits in New York City newspapers and art magazines of the time. The most influential critics dismissed American abstract art as too European and therefore "un-American", a term that meant suspected of having communist ties. The Communist Party in the United States and USSR viewed art as a weapon in class struggle and fascism. Radicalization of the unemployed American artist became a major factor in the life of New Deal artists, especially in New York City. Radical artists had been joining the Communist Party for years and forming their own organizations. In the 1930s American Abstract Artists was divided on political grounds with disagreements among Communist Party members who demanded AAA advocate political positions. Some artists who joined AAA were interested in Trotskyism, and there was turbulence between the group's Trotskyist and Stalinist members. Lee Krasner's beliefs as a Trotskyite landed her in jail where she met AAA founding member Mercedes Carles Matter, through her Lee Krasner joined the AAA. AAA founders Balcomb and Gertrude Greene were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art within the anti-Stalinist left. Communists opposed fascism, believed in the idea that art was a weapon in the war against it and "abstract art was seen as a threat to the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe." American Abstract Artists declared for its annual in March 1942 that it is a "privilege and necessity" to make and exhibit abstract art as an affront to fascism. The National Socialists forced Bauhaus teachers, including Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, to expatriate from Germany and immigrate to the United States where they continued teaching and influenced a group of artists in New York City who formed the American Abstract Artists, which Albers and Moholy-Nagy joined.

Artist run organizations like the Artists Union and American Artists' Congress, which included AAA members, were involved with the Communist Party USA. Art Front was a magazine published by the Artists Union in New York. The first two Artists Union presidents would become American Abstract Artists founders and future AAA founding and early members were Editors-in-Chief and on the Business Staff of Art Front. Art Front had a proletariat political viewpoint where the artist was a worker "like a machinist, bricklayer or cobbler in the industrial sphere." "National Organization" was permanent feature of the magazine for "organizing artists groups on an economic basis" as a labor movement. The argument of class struggle was that the government should eliminate the dependence of American artists (the worker or proletariat) from the caprice of private patronage (the bourgeoisie). In an Art Front review of AAA's first exhibit Jacob Kainen wrote that dictates of the market conspired against abstract artists in the United States and it is natural they band together in mutual defense. Artists organized as cultural workers used militant trade union tactics like picketing and confrontations with the police which contributed to their solidarity. On December 1, 1936 the Artists Union held a sit-in turned riot at the Federal Art Project offices where the police arrested 219 artists protesting WPA layoffs. American Abstract Artists would do the same issuing its own publications in protest and demonstrate as well. Lee Krasner as a board member of the Artists Union worked with American Abstract Artists to fight for fair pay of artists' work.

American abstract art was struggling to win acceptance and AAA personified this. The 1938 Yearbook addressed criticisms levied against abstract art by the press and public. It also featured essays related to principles behind and the practice of making abstract art. In 1940, AAA printed a broadside titled "How Modern is the Museum of Modern Art?" which was handed out at their protest of the Italian Masters exhibit in front of MoMA. AAA questioned MoMA's stated commitment to modern and contemporary art when it was actually exhibiting Italian Renaissance artwork. At the time the Museum of Modern Art also had a policy of featuring European abstraction while endorsing American regionalism and scene painting. This policy helped entrench the notion that abstraction was foreign to the American experience. Esphyr Slobodkina, a founding member and future president of the American Abstract Artists Group, described the Museum of Modern Art as a shameful display of "snobbish discrimination" that preferred to exhibit "gilt-edged, 100% secure, thoroughly documented and world renowned exponents of foreign abstract art." However, out of the fifty-two AAA members listed on the broadside distributed at the MoMA protest, eighteen had exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art including George L.K. Morris who had been a member of the museum's board of advisors. In 1940 AAA also produced a 12-page pamphlet: "The Art Critics – ! How Do They Serve the Public? What Do They Say? How Much Do They Know? Let's Look at the Record." The AAA publication quoted critics, highlighting misstatements and contradictions in the press. The pamphlet excoriated notable New York Herald Tribune critic Royal Cortissoz for his rigid loyalty to traditionalism, his patent distaste for abstract and modern art, and generally for what the pamphlet regarded as his "resistance to knowledge". It also characterized the aesthetic vacillations of Thomas Craven, critic of the New York American, as opportunistic. In 1936, Craven labeled Picasso's work "Bohemian infantilism". The ensuing years would see a growing public appreciation for abstract art until, in 1939, the critic made an about-face and lauded Picasso for his "unrivaled inventiveness". The pamphlet applauded Henry McBride of the New York Sun and Robert Coates of The New Yorker for their critical efforts regarding abstract art. "The Art Critics" showed the lack of knowledge the critics from New York City newspapers and art publications had about developments in 20th-century art. Controversy persisted and in a 1979 New York Times exhibition review Hilton Kramer asserted that "The truth is, a group like the American Abstract Artists no longer has any serious function to perform, and its continued existence is little more than an act of nostalgia... Surely it is time to disband."