American Abstract Artists

File:Archives of American Art - Irene Rice Pereira - 2322 CROPPED.jpg with a painting, 1938. I. Rice Pereira was an early member of American Abstract Artists.|alt=Irene Rice Pereira smoking a cigarette while looking at a painting|left]]

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.Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, Sandra Kraskin. p.p. 5, 9. 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.{{Cite book |last=Mecklenburg |first=Virginia M. |title=The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |year=1989 |isbn=0874747171 |location=Washington D.C. |pages=11}} 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.{{Cite journal |last=Larsen |first=Susan C |title=The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941 |journal=Archives of American Art Journal |date=1974 |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=2–3|doi=10.1086/aaa.14.1.1556919 }}{{Cite book |last=Dabrowski |first=Magdalena |title=Contrasts of Form : Geometric Abstract Art, 1910-1980: from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, including the Riklis Collection of McCrory Corporation (see The Paris–New York Connection 1930-1959) |publisher=The Museum of Modern Art |year=1985 |isbn=0870702874 |location=New York |pages=155}}{{Cite web |title=About Harry Holtzman {{!}} Harry Holtzman (see Early life) |url=https://www.harryholtzman.com/about-harry-holtzman/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230520015604/https://www.harryholtzman.com/about-harry-holtzman/ |archive-date=May 20, 2023 |access-date=January 14, 2024 |website=Harry Holtzman}}{{Cite web |title=Tamara Abstraction – Works – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (see Description) |url=https://collections.mfa.org/objects/359775 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220913031939/https://collections.mfa.org/objects/359775/tamara-abstraction;jsessionid=91F60DC1F47E4362AD696B15192B4156?ctx=27203e77-d9fd-4de1-826b-740e2d80a9fe&idx=1712 |archive-date=September 13, 2022 |access-date=January 14, 2024 |website=Museum of Fine Arts Boston}}{{Cite web |title=Burgoyne Diller {{!}} Untitled {{!}} Smithsonian American Art Museum |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/untitled-41390 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230318111451/https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/untitled-41390 |archive-date=March 18, 2023 |access-date=January 14, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}} It outlined the purpose of AAA and the importance of exhibitions in promoting the growth and acceptance of abstract art in the United States.Larsen, Susan C. "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941", Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1974), p. 3.

File:Archives_of_American_Art_-_Jose_De_Rivera_-_2059.jpg, 1937. The sculptor was an early American Abstract Artists member.|278x278px]]

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."{{Cite book |title=American Abstract Artists General Prospectus (pamphlet) |publisher=American Abstract Artists |date=January 1937 |location=New York, NY}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Snyder |first=Gary |title=American Abstract Art (exhibition catalog September 8 –October 28, 1995) |publisher=Snyder Fine Art |year=1995 |location=New York|page=3}}{{Cite journal |last=Embick |first=Lucy |title=The Expressionist Current in New York's Avant-Garde, 1935–1940: The Paintings of 'The Ten' |url=https://rar.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/RAR-vol.-5-1984.pdf |url-status=live |journal=The Rutgers Art Review |volume=V |issue=Spring 1984 |pages=60 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240219090214/https://rar.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/RAR-vol.-5-1984.pdf |archive-date=February 19, 2024}}{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=John R. and Susan C. Larsen |title=Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927–1944 |publisher=Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute and H.M. Abrams |year=1984 |isbn=0810918056 |location=Pittsburgh and New York |pages=36}}

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.{{Cite web |title=Charmion von Wiegand Collage 264 The Mountain Way |url=https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/CHARMION-VON-WIEGAND-Collage-264-The-Mountain-Way?saleno=2614&lotNo=251&refNo=799914 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240410093405/https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/CHARMION%C2%A0VON-WIEGAND-Collage-264-The-Mountain-Way?saleno=2614&lotNo=251&refNo=799914 |archive-date=April 10, 2024 |access-date=April 10, 2024 |website=Swann Auction Galleries}}{{Cite web |title=Charmion Von Wiegand |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/charmion-von-wiegand-5179 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230529154823/https://americanart.si.edu/artist/charmion-von-wiegand-5179 |archive-date=May 29, 2023 |access-date=April 10, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}} 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{{Cite book |url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5aa2a9ad8ab7220ffea2a334/t/5b58bb198a922d579245e191/1532541815998/CURRENTLY+80+CATALOG.pdf |title=Sculptors Guild Currently 80 |publisher=Sculptors Guild and Westbeth Gallery |year=2017 |location=New York City |pages=76–78 |access-date=January 23, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230629101534/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5aa2a9ad8ab7220ffea2a334/t/5b58bb198a922d579245e191/1532541815998/CURRENTLY+80+CATALOG.pdf |archive-date=June 29, 2023}}), The Ten also known as The Ten Whitney Dissenters (Ilya Bolotowsky, Louis Schanker,{{Cite book |last=Weiss |first=Jeffrey S and John Gage |url=https://archive.org/details/markrothko00weis/page/336/mode/2up |title=Mark Rothko |publisher=National Gallery of Art (U.S.); Whitney Museum of American Art; Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris |year=1998 |isbn=0300075057 |edition=2nd print |location=Washington : National Gallery of Art; New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press |pages=336}} Karl Knaths, Ralph Rosenberg), Artists Union (Byron Browne,{{Cite web |title=Byron Browne – Smithsonian American Art Museum (see More Information – Artists Biography) |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/byron-browne-621 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230922120810/https://americanart.si.edu/artist/byron-browne-621 |archive-date=September 22, 2023 |access-date=January 24, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}} Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, Ibram Lassaw, Michael Loew{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956/page/84/mode/2up |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=85}}) and American Artists' Congress (Ilya Bolotowsky, Byron Browne, Werner Drewes, Carl Holty, Irene Rice Pereira{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956/page/128/mode/2up |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=129}}).{{Cite web |title=Past Members – American Abstract Artists |url=https://americanabstractartists.org/current-members/past/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231019035416/https://americanabstractartists.org/current-members/past/ |archive-date=October 19, 2023 |access-date=January 24, 2024 |website=American Abstract Artists}}

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.Abstract Painting in America, exhibition catalog. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1935. Introduction by Stuart Davis. Exhibition dates February 12 - March 22, 1935. pp 3-10. 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.{{Cite book |last=Marter |first=Joan M. |title=The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Volume 1 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=9780195335798 |location=New York |pages=89}} Ibram Lassaw was the only sculptor to be represented in the first AAA exhibit.{{Cite web |last=Anderson |first=Wayne |date=Summer 1967 |title=American Sculpture: The Situation in the Fifties |url=https://www.artforum.com/features/american-sculpture-the-situation-in-the-fifties-211341/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231105000805/https://www.artforum.com/features/american-sculpture-the-situation-in-the-fifties-211341/ |archive-date=November 5, 2023 |access-date=February 10, 2024 |website=Artforum |page=63}} 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.{{Cite web |title=A Collection of 'Unseen' Abstract Art Goes on View |url=https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/a-collection-of-unseen-abstract-art-goes-on-view/article_879f7293-2935-568a-a372-d5b0b8d9e53f.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220814034614/https://www.berkshireeagle.com/archives/a-collection-of-unseen-abstract-art-goes-on-view/article_879f7293-2935-568a-a372-d5b0b8d9e53f.html |archive-date=August 14, 2022 |access-date=February 17, 2022 |website=The Berkshire Eagle|date=July 10, 2019 }} Morris had established the Gallery of Living Art in 1927, a public collection of modern art in New York City.{{Cite web |title=Albert E. Gallatin |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/research-centers/leonard-a-lauder-research-center/research-resources/modern-art-index-project/gallatin |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230601220025/https://www.metmuseum.org/research-centers/leonard-a-lauder-research-center/research-resources/modern-art-index-project/gallatin |archive-date=June 1, 2023 |access-date=February 17, 2024 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}} Future exhibitions and publications would establish AAA as a major forum for the discussion and presentation of new abstract and non-objective art.American Abstract Artists, The Language of Abstraction, exhibition catalog. Betty Parsons Gallery, Marilyn Pearl Gallery, 1979. Text by Susan Larson. p. 2. 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.

File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Untitled_From_the_Williamsburg_Housing_Project_Murals_-_Paul_Kelpe.jpg, Untitled, From the Williamsburg Housing Project Murals, 1938. Brooklyn Museum (L1990.1.3). Paul Kelpe was a founding member of American Abstract Artists. ]]

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{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956/page/28/mode/2up |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=29}} and fascism.{{Cite book |last=McCarthy |first=David |title=American Artists Against War, 1935–2010 |publisher=University of California Press |year=2015 |isbn=9780520286702 |location=Oakland, CA |pages=17}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Kalfatovic |first=Martin R. |title=The New Deal Fine Arts Projects : A Bibliography, 1933–1992 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=1994 |isbn=0810827492 |location=Metuchen, NJ |pages=lvii–lviii}} In the 1930s American Abstract Artists was divided on political grounds with disagreements among Communist Party members who demanded AAA advocate political positions.{{Cite book |last=Mecklenburg |first=Virginia M. |title=The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |year=1989 |isbn=0874747171 |location=Washington D.C. |pages=20}} Some artists who joined AAA were interested in Trotskyism,{{Cite journal |last=Guilbaut |first=Serge and Thomas Repensek |title=The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America: Greenberg, Pollock, or from Trotskyism to the New Liberalism of the 'Vital Center' |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/778453 |journal=October |volume=15 |issue=Winter 1980 |pages=66 |jstor=778453 }} and there was turbulence between the group's Trotskyist and Stalinist members.{{Cite web |last=Agee |first=William and Carl Holty |title=Oral history interview with Carl Holty, 1964 Dec. 8 |url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_212757 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201227081056/https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_212757 |archive-date=December 27, 2020 |access-date=February 7, 2024 |website=Smithsonian Archives of American Art |page=13}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Holden |first=J. Z. |date=February 2, 2009 |title=Lee Krasner: Recollections, Cultural Context and New Perspectives |url=http://www.hamptons.com/detail.ihtml?id=1527&apid=3290&sid=3&cid=12&arc=1 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090203031931/http://www.hamptons.com/detail.ihtml?id=1527&apid=3290&sid=3&cid=12&arc=1 |archive-date=February 3, 2009 |website=Hamptons.com}}{{Cite book |last=Gabriel |first=Mary |title=Ninth Street Women |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=2018 |isbn=9780316226196 |location=New York |pages=32}} AAA founders Balcomb and Gertrude Greene were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art within the anti-Stalinist left.{{Cite journal |last=Greene |first=Balcomb |title=Congressmen – Flowers – Clench |journal=Partisan Review |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=39, 40}}{{Cite web |last=J |first=Annie |date=March 5, 2017 |title=Working Artists: Balcomb and Gertrude Greene |url=https://readingpartisanreview1930s.com/2017/03/05/working-artists-balcomb-and-gertrude-greene/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230209122449/https://readingpartisanreview1930s.com/2017/03/05/working-artists-balcomb-and-gertrude-greene/ |archive-date=February 9, 2023 |access-date=March 30, 2024 |website=Reading Partisan Review: 1930s–1970s}}{{Cite web |title=Balcomb Greene |url=https://www.rogallery.com/artists/balcomb-greene/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230608150409/https://www.rogallery.com/artists/balcomb-greene/ |archive-date=June 8, 2023 |access-date=March 30, 2024 |website=RoGallery}} 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."{{Cite journal |year=2023 |title=Past/Present: American Abstract Artists Members Honor Their Predecessors |journal=American Abstract Artists Journal |volume=6 |pages=12}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Gabriel |first=Mary |title=Ninth Street Women |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=2018 |isbn=9780316226196 |location=New York |pages=98}} 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.{{Cite web |title=Sensory Overload |url=https://mam.org/exhibitions/details/sensory/details.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230923100438/https://mam.org/exhibitions/details/sensory/details.htm |archive-date=September 23, 2023 |access-date=April 22, 2024 |website=Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM)}}{{Cite web |title=Josef Albers Paintings, Bio, Ideas |url=https://www.theartstory.org/artist/albers-josef/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240306005248/https://www.theartstory.org/artist/albers-josef/ |archive-date=March 6, 2024 |access-date=April 22, 2024 |website=TheArtStory}}{{Cite web |title=László Moholy-Nagy Art, Bio, Ideas |url=https://www.theartstory.org/artist/moholy-nagy-laszlo/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223224633/https://www.theartstory.org/artist/moholy-nagy-laszlo/ |archive-date=February 23, 2024 |access-date=April 23, 2024 |website=TheArtStory}}

Artist run organizations like the Artists Union and American Artists' Congress, which included AAA members, were involved with the Communist Party USA.{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956 |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=Artists Union: pp. 85, 149. American Artists' Congress: pp. 123–124, 129}} 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.{{Cite journal |last=Monroe |first=Gerald M. |date=1974 |title=Artists As Militant Trade Union Workers during the Great Depression |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1556920 |journal=Archives of American Art Journal |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=7–10 |doi=10.1086/aaa.14.1.1556920 |jstor=1556920 |url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |title=Staff listing |journal=Art Front |publication-place=New York |issue=December 1936 |pages=3}}{{Cite journal |title=Staff listing |journal=Art Front |publication-place=New York |issue=April 1936 |page=3}} Art Front had a proletariat political viewpoint where the artist was a worker "like a machinist, bricklayer or cobbler in the industrial sphere."{{Cite journal |last=Weber |first=Max |title=The Artist and His Audience |journal=Art Front |publication-place=New York |issue=May 1936 |pages=8}}{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956/page/40/mode/2up |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=41}} "National Organization" was permanent feature of the magazine for "organizing artists groups on an economic basis" as a labor movement.{{Cite journal |title=National Organization |journal=Art Front |publication-place=New York |issue=April 1936 |pages=2 (also in the other issues)}} 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).{{Cite web |last=Kallir |first=Jane |date=April 20, 2017 |title=A weapon in the class struggle: American artists and the Communist Party |url=https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/visual-art/item/2506-a-weapon-in-the-class-struggle-american-artists-and-the-communist-party |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230209213809/https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/visual-art/item/2506-a-weapon-in-the-class-struggle-american-artists-and-the-communist-party |archive-date=February 9, 2023 |access-date=February 18, 2024 |website=Culture Matters}} 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.{{Cite journal |last=Kainen |first=Jacob |date=May 1937 |title=Exhibitions – American Abstract Artists |journal=Art Front |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=25, 26}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Compagnon |first=Madeleine |date=2020-10-05 |title=How the Artists Union Shook Up the New Deal |url=https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-artists-union-shook-up-the-new-deal/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230519203549/https://daily.jstor.org/how-the-artists-union-shook-up-the-new-deal/ |archive-date=2023-05-19 |access-date=2024-01-31 |website=JSTOR Daily |language=en-US}}{{Cite journal |title=Relief Riots |journal=Art Digest |volume=11 |issue=December 15, 1936 |pages=13}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Hammer |first=Isabelle |date=October 11, 2019 |title=Radical and Controversial: The Paintings of Abstract Expressionism |url=https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/2019/lee_krasner/lee_krasner_abstract_expressionism_usa_new_york/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221218045552/https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/2019/lee_krasner/lee_krasner_abstract_expressionism_usa_new_york/ |archive-date=December 18, 2022 |access-date=July 20, 2024 |website=Schirn Mag}}File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Painting_No._48_-_Marsden_Hartley_-_overall.jpg (American, 1877–1943). Painting No. 48, 1913. Brooklyn Museum]]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.Larsen, Susan C. "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941", pp. 4, 6.{{Cite web |last=Meier |first=Allison |date=November 10, 2017 |title=Revisiting MoMA's Controversial 1940 Italian Renaissance Blockbuster |url=https://hyperallergic.com/408683/esopus-moma-italian-renaissance-exhibit/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230922141507/https://hyperallergic.com/408683/esopus-moma-italian-renaissance-exhibit/ |archive-date=September 22, 2023 |access-date=March 26, 2024 |website=Hyperallergic}} 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.Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, Sandra Kraskin. p. 11. 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."{{Cite web |last=Kane |first=Lauren |date=May 1, 2019 |title=How Not to Be Forgotten |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/05/01/esphyr-slobodkinas-notes-for-a-biographer/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231205130101/https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/05/01/esphyr-slobodkinas-notes-for-a-biographer/ |archive-date=December 5, 2023 |access-date=October 6, 2024 |website=The Paris Review}} 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.{{Cite news |date=April 17, 1940 |title=Artists Denounce Modern Museum |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1940/04/17/archives/artists-denounce-modern-museum-avant-garde-demands-to-know-if-it.html |url-status=live |work=The New York Times |pages=23}}

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".{{Cite web |url=http://www.americanabstractartists.org/history/artcritics/ |title=The Art Critics —! | American Abstract Artists Brochure 1940 |access-date=March 27, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110620045921/http://www.americanabstractartists.org/history/artcritics/ |archive-date=June 20, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all }} It also characterized the aesthetic vacillations of Thomas Craven, critic of the New York American,{{Cite web|url=http://arthistorians.info/cravent|title=Dictionary of Art Historians}} 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.Larsen, Susan C. "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941", pp. 6, 7. 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."{{Cite web |title=Kramer, Hilton. "Art View." The New York Times. July 8, 1979, Section D, p. 25. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/08/archives/art-view-a-dated-defense-of-abstractionism.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240103160756/https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/08/archives/art-view-a-dated-defense-of-abstractionism.html |archive-date=January 3, 2024 |access-date=January 22, 2024 |website=The New York Times}}File:Jean Xceron WPA.jpg painting, 1942. Jean Xceron was an early member of American Abstract Artists.|alt=Jean Xceron wearing a beret, painting with a brush while holding a palette|left|271x271px]]The picketing, broadside and brochure in 1940 were a game of positioning the organization in opposition to an art institution and established critics as part of a self-conscious process to legitimizing an avant-garde.{{Cite web |last=Corris |first=Michael |date=May 29, 2011 |title=The Poverty of Poetry Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era |url=http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=1714 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230603054204/http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=1714 |archive-date=June 3, 2023 |access-date=March 16, 2024 |website=Art Journal Open}} AAA combated prevailing hostile attitudes toward abstraction and prepared the way for its acceptance after World War II. AAA was a precursor to abstract expressionism by helping abstract art discover its identity in the United States.Larsen, Susan C. "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941", p. 7. However American Abstract Artists included many but did not represent all early American artists working abstractly such as those in Stieglitz Group like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and John Marin.{{Cite web |title=Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle, National Gallery of Art |url=https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2016/alfred-stieglitz-and-his-circle.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240103130815/https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2016/alfred-stieglitz-and-his-circle.html |archive-date=January 3, 2024 |access-date=January 22, 2024 |website=National Gallery of Art}} Marin was credited with influencing Abstract Expressionists.{{citation |title=Art in Review: John Marin |first=Martha |last=Schwendener |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E7DD153FF934A15753C1A9609C8B63 |periodical=The New York Times |date=October 26, 2006}}. San Francisco Bay Area Abstract Expressionists were also not in AAA like Clyfford Still, Jay DeFeo and Frank Lobdell.{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscoscho00land_0/page/n301/mode/2up|title=Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press, 1996. Introduction by Dore Ashton. Still: p. 5, DeFeo: p. 165, Lobell: p. 141.}} In the 1940s Clyfford Still was teaching at California School of Fine Arts, later renamed San Francisco Art Institute. He had his first museum show at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts in 1943.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscoscho00land_0/page/n301/mode/2up|title=Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press, 1996. Introduction by Dore Ashton. p.5, 52–54|date=1996 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-08611-1 }}{{Cite web |title=Clyfford Still and the San Francisco Scene, 1946–1950 |url=https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/exhibitions/sf/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240103130815/https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/exhibitions/sf/ |archive-date=January 3, 2024 |access-date=January 22, 2024 |website=Clyfford Still Museum}}

During the 1920s and 1930s many European artist immigrants settled in New York and joined AAA: Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Giorgio Cavallon, Fritz Glarner, Ibram Lassaw, Fernand Léger, László Moholy-Nagy, and Piet Mondrian and Hans Richter.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1996 |location=New York, NY |pages=18}}{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Alumni Collect: Twentieth-Century Masterpieces from the Collections of Baruch College Alumni, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1997 |location=New York |pages=14}} Jean Xceron was in the inner circle of Abstraction-Création, moved to New York City in 1937 and joined American Abstract Artists who welcomed him as a leading Parisian artist.{{Cite web |title=About the Artist: Jean Xceron |url=https://peytonwright.com/modern/artwork/composition-326/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240303145914/https://peytonwright.com/modern/artwork/composition-326/ |archive-date=March 3, 2024 |access-date=July 21, 2024 |website=Peyton Wright Gallery}} This created a paradox for the group, AAA secured prestige by increasing the group's international character with its European expatriate modern masters but was then seen as not "American" enough to represent the United States.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1996 |location=New York, NY |pages=20}} The exhibitions, organization and its strict geometrical style no longer functioned as an avant-garde influence in New York City.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1996 |location=New York, NY |pages=20–21}} During the early 1940s the New York School gained momentum and throughout the mid-1940s and 1950s Abstract Expressionism dominated the American avant-garde.Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, Sandra Kraskin. p. 25. The AAA was influential for a few years, from 1937 to 1940, setting the trend at the moment before the center of the art world shifted from Paris to New York after World War II. Though some members of American Abstract Artists rose to fame and international recognition in the following decades, the membership represented the interwar generation with all the doubts and inner turmoil of that time.{{Cite journal |last=Seibert |first=Elke |title='First Surrealists Were Cavemen': The American Abstract Artists and Their Appropriation of Prehistoric Rock Pictures in 1937 |journal=Getty Research Journal |publisher=University of Chicago Press |publication-date=2019 |volume=11 |pages=31, 35}} As an egalitarian artist run organization, AAA was serious about its professional goal of gaining acceptance of abstraction but applied minimal standards in selecting applicants based on the quality of their work for membership.{{Cite journal |last=Walch |first=Peter |date=1977 |title=American Abstract Artists |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/776069 |journal=Art Journal |volume=37 |issue=Fall 1977 |pages=47 |doi=10.1080/00043249.1977.10793396 |jstor=776069 |url-access=subscription }} Founding member Alice Trumbull Mason wrote in a letter to the AAA membership dated May 23, 1944: "it has become apparent that, as public interest in abstract art has increased the members have shown less and less interest in furthering the aims for which the group was founded. This year indeed many, as far as the group is concerned, have ceased to function entirely." Carl Holty recommended the group disband as AAA had served its purpose which was to show abstract artists who were not being shown. By the spring of 1947 only 14 out of 39 founding members remained to take part in the AAA 11th annual exhibit at the Riverside Museum.Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, Sandra Kraskin. New York: Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College and The City University of New York, 1996. pp. 19–20. In the fall of 1949 The Club became the major forum for discussion of the avant-garde and abstraction in New York City, which included some of the AAA members.{{Cite web|url=https://www.artforum.com/features/how-the-artists-of-the-new-school-found-their-first-audience-themselves-211829/|title=Sandler, Irving. "The Club: How the artists of the New School found their first audience-themselves." Artforum, September 1965, pages 27–31.|date=September 1965 }}{{Cite web|url=https://www.villagepreservation.org/2019/04/03/when-the-club-ruled-the-art-world-from-east-8th-street/|title=Winchell, Louisa. "When 'the Club' Ruled the Art World from East 8th Street," Off the Grid – Village Preservation Blog. Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. April 3, 2019.|date=April 3, 2019 }} American Abstract Artists continued its mandate as an advocate for abstract art.

File:Vaclav_Vytlacil2.jpg in 1979. He was a founding member of AAA.]]

American Abstract Artists exists today despite never disbanding, the association was most active from 1936 to 1941.Patterson, Jody. "Modernism for the Masses: Painters, Politics, and Public Murals in New Deal New York." (PhD dissertation, University of London, 2009), p. 119, OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 1006192586. AAA was founded during a very political time but is no longer politically engaged and doesn't host annual membership exhibitions any more.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Reclaiming Artists of the New York School: Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s (exhibition catalog) |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, City University of New York |year=1994 |location=New York |pages=6 |asin=B001PNWUTU}}{{Cite book |last=DiGiovanna |first=Rebecca |title=Blurring Boundaries: The Women of AAA (exhibition catalog) |publisher=Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville |year=2018 |location=Knoxville, TN |pages=4–6}} In a 2019 interview AAA affirmed that the key to its future is diversity, equity and inclusion in demographics, artistic disciplines and expanding with satellite chapters in other regions outside of New York City.{{Cite web |last=Phillip |first=Barcio |date=April 24, 2019 |title=Diversity is Key to the Future of American Abstract Artists (interview) |url=https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/american-abstract-artists-interview |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230321041737/https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/american-abstract-artists-interview |archive-date=March 21, 2023 |access-date=February 19, 2024 |website=Ideel Art}} Traditionally American Abstract Artists has always been a New York based group rarely opening its circle to artists beyond New York City.{{Cite web |last=Wilk |first=Deborah |date=June 27, 2007 |title=Studio City |url=https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/november-2005/studio-city/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230130180333/https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/november-2005/studio-city/ |archive-date=January 30, 2023 |access-date=September 28, 2024 |website=Chicago}} To date the organization has produced over 75 exhibitions of its membership in museums and galleries across the United States. AAA has published 5 Journals, in addition to brochures, books, catalogs, and has hosted critical panels and symposia. AAA distributes its published materials internationally to cultural organizations.Continuum: In Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of AAA, exhibition press release. St. Peter's College Art Gallery, O'Toole Library, Jersey City, NJ (March 21 – April 25, 2007). The most recent journal Past/Present: American Abstract Artists Members Honor Their Predecessors is a nostalgic look back where "current members were asked to write about a deceased member they admired or who had influenced them" examining their personal history. American Abstract Artist produces print portfolios by its membership. AAA print portfolios are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate in London, and the Archives of American Art. Early members included Josef Albers, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, David Smith,{{Cite web |title=Tate – American Abstract Artists |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/american-abstract-artists-aaa |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240101170431/https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/american-abstract-artists-aaa |archive-date=January 1, 2024 |access-date=January 22, 2024 |website=Tate – Art Term – American Abstract Artists (AAA). Lists members: Albers, de Kooning, Krasner, Pollock and Smith}}{{Cite web |title=A dictionary of modern and contemporary art |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofmode0000chil |access-date= |website=Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith. "American Abstract Artists (AAA)." Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2009. p. 20. (lists members: Albers, de Kooning, Pollock, Smith and several others)}}{{Cite web |title=Galaxy, 1947 by Jackson Pollock |url=https://www.jackson-pollock.org/galaxy.jsp |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240106114846/https://www.jackson-pollock.org/galaxy.jsp |archive-date=January 6, 2024 |access-date=January 22, 2024 |website=Jackson Pollock. Website cites Clement Greenberg's review of the 1947 American Abstract Artists annual exhibition. Lists Pollock as an AAA member}}{{Cite web |title=Jean Hélion – Standing Figure [states that de Kooning was member along with Hélion] |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/482468 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230606034509/https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/482468 |archive-date=June 6, 2023 |access-date=March 29, 2024 |website=Metropolitan Museum of Art}} John Ferren, I. Rice Pereira, Ad Reinhardt{{Cite web|url=https://www.artforum.com/features/american-geometric-abstraction-in-the-late-thirties-209892/|title=Elderfield, John. "American Geometric Abstraction in the Late Thirties." Artforum, Dec. 1972, 35–42.}}{{Cite book |last=Rose |first=Barbara |title=American Art Since 1900 (lists AAA members: Albers, Ferren, Krasner, de Kooning, Pereira, Reinhardt, Smith) |publisher=Praeger Publishers |year=1975 |isbn=0275716503 |edition=2nd |location=New York |pages=122}} and Clement Greenberg.{{Cite book |last=Wilkin |first=Karen |title=The Onward of Art |publisher=1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery |year=2015 |isbn=9780997207200 |location=New York |pages=11}} Ferren, a California native, was one of the few AAA members to reach artistic maturity in Paris.{{Cite web |title=John Ferren – Smithsonian American Art Museum |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/john-ferren-1524 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107185405/https://americanart.si.edu/artist/john-ferren-1524 |archive-date=January 7, 2024 |access-date=January 7, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}}

American Abstract Artists was one of a number of Great Depression Era artist run organizations in the United States, others included Artists Union, American Artists' Congress, American Artists School, John Reed Club,{{Cite book |last=Hemingway |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/andrew-hemingway-artists-on-the-left-american-artists-and-the-communist-movement-1926-1956 |title=Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0300092202 |location=New Haven and London |pages=Artist Union: 86, American Artists' Congress: 125, American Artists School: 132, John Reed Club: 47}} The Ten, Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors,{{Cite web |title=About |url=https://www.fedart.org/about |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929072140/https://www.fedart.org/about |archive-date=September 29, 2023 |access-date=January 26, 2024 |website=Federation of Modern Painters & Sculptors}} Harlem Artists Guild,{{Cite book |last=Patton |first=Sharon F. |url=https://archive.org/details/africanamericana00patt_0/page/146/mode/2up |title=African-American Art |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1998 |isbn=0192842544 |location=New York |pages=147}} Sculptors Guild,{{Cite web |title=About SG – Sculptors Guild |url=https://www.sculptorsguild.org/about |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230628191149/https://www.sculptorsguild.org/about |archive-date=June 28, 2023 |access-date=January 26, 2024 |website=Sculptors Guild}} Artists' Committee of Action{{Cite web |title=Biographical Note {{!}} A Finding Aid to the Hugo Gellert papers, 1916–1986 |url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/hugo-gellert-papers-7845/biographical-note |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230605111931/https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/hugo-gellert-papers-7845/biographical-note |archive-date=June 5, 2023 |access-date=February 3, 2024 |website=Smithsonian Archives of American Art}} and Unemployed Artists Group.

File:1936caDeKooningStudyForWilliamsburgProject.jpg, Federal Art Project Study for the Williamsburg Project, 1936 or 1937. De Kooning was an early AAA member.]]Several different versions of the founding of American Abstract Artists exist. Each early member remembers a different story about the events preceding the founding of American Abstract Artists.{{Cite book |last=Spender |first=Matthew |title=From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky |publisher=University of California Press |year=2000 |isbn=0520225481 |edition=1st paperback |location=Berkeley, CA |pages=388}} In the beginning they weren't sure if they should be an informal discussion group concerned with the problems in their work, an exhibition society or a group focused on teaching.{{Cite book |last=Spender |first=Matthew |title=From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky |publisher=University of California Press |year=2000 |isbn=0520225481 |edition=1st paperback |location=Berkeley, CA |pages=158}} At one early meeting George McNeil was tasked with making a list of forty present and future members so the group could procure all four floors of the Municipal Art Gallery in New York City to exhibit. Failing to reach the required number of names he was authorized to use fictitious ones.{{Cite book |last=Spender |first=Matthew |title=From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky |publisher=University of California Press |year=2000 |isbn=0520225481 |edition=1st paperback |location=Berkeley, CA |pages=162}} Arshile Gorky attended early meetings and was instrumental in founding the AAA but never formally joined the organization.{{Cite book |last=Mecklenburg |first=Virginia M. |title=The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |year=1989 |isbn=0874747171 |location=Washington D.C. |pages=21}}{{Cite journal |last=Larsen |first=Susan C |title=The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941 |journal=Archives of American Art Journal |date=1974 |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=2–7|doi=10.1086/aaa.14.1.1556919 }}

The following 39 artists, who participated in the first AAA exhibit in 1937, are considered founding members.{{cite web |title=Founding Members |url=http://americanabstractartists.org/current-members/founding/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200519132633/https://americanabstractartists.org/current-members/founding/ |archive-date=May 19, 2020 |accessdate=6 July 2020 |website=American Abstract Artists}}{{Cite web |title=Membership List, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists 1937 |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/membership-list-portfolio-american-abstract-artists-7338 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220927135131/https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/membership-list-portfolio-american-abstract-artists-7338 |archive-date=September 27, 2022 |access-date=January 24, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}}{{Cite news |last=Jewell |first=Edward Alden |date=April 6, 1937 |title=Abstract Artists Open Show Today: They Arrange 'Demonstration of Revolt Against Literary Subject-Paintings' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1937/04/06/archives/abstract-artists-open-show-today-they-arrange-demonstration-of.html |access-date=January 12, 2021 |work=The New York Times |page=21}} (Richard Taylor was included in the Present Membership list in the American Abstract Artists General Prospectus from January 1937 but was not on the membership list for the inaugural exhibition at Squibb Gallery April 3–17, 1937.)

{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|

• Josef Albers
• Rosalind Bengelsdorf
• Ilya Bolotowsky
• Harry Bowden
• Byron Browne
• Jeanne Carles (also called Mercedes Carles, later Mercedes Matter)
• Giorgio Cavallon
• Arthur N. Christie
• Anna Cohen
• Burgoyne Diller
• Werner Drewes
• Herzl Emanuel
• Robert Foster
• Balcomb Greene
• Gertrude Greene
• Hananiah Harari
• Carl Holty
• Harry Holtzman
• Ray Kaiser
• Frederick Kann
• Paul Kelpe
• Marie Kennedy
• Leo Lances
• Ibram Lassaw
• Agnes Lyall
• Alice Trumbull Mason
• Mercedes Matter (formerly Jeanne Carles)
• George McNeil
• George L. K. Morris
• John Opper
• Ralph Rosenborg
• Louis Schanker
• Charles Green Shaw
• Esphyr Slobodkina
• Albert Swinden
• Rupert D. Turnbull
• Vaclav Vytlacil
• Rudolph Weisenborn
• Frederick J. Whiteman
• Wilfrid Zogbaum

}}

The idea for the organization was conceived in 1934 when Katherine Sophie Dreier, who founded the Society of Independent Artists with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and others, contacted Burgoyne Diller about forming a group of abstract artists for an exhibition and to produce portfolio of their work. A group assembled and would become the American Abstract Artists with its first exhibit in 1937 accompanied by the AAA 1937 portfolio of lithographs.{{Cite book |last=Knott |first=Robert |title=American Abstract Art of the 1930'S And 1940'S: The J. Donald Nichols Collection |publisher=Harry N. Abrams Inc |year=1998 |isbn=0810963752 |edition=1st |location=New York |page=181}}{{Cite web |title=Katherine S. Dreier |url=https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/history/katherine-s-dreier |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240216185224/https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/history/katherine-s-dreier |archive-date=February 16, 2024 |access-date=March 22, 2024 |website=The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation}}

In 1935, four friends, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, Byron Browne, Albert Swinden, and Ibram Lassaw, met in Bengelsdorf's 230 Wooster Street studio to discuss organizing an exhibit of abstract artists they knew in New York City which would become the inaugural AAA exhibition at Squibb Galleries.

Rosalind Bengelsdorf's account lists 9 founders detailed as a "small group of abstract artists who met at Ibram Lassaw's studio at 232 Wooster Street, New York, early in 1936. The gathering consisted roughly of Byron Browne, Gertrude and Balcomb Greene, Harry Holtzman, George McNeil, Albert Swiden, Lassaw, Burgoyne Diller, and myself. It was on this occasion we decided to form a cooperative exhibition society. Therefore this association became the first actual meeting of the American Abstract Artists, and we were, in fact, its founders."{{Cite book |last=O'Connor |first=Francis V. |title=Art for the Millions |publisher=New York Graphic Society |year=1973 |isbn=9780821204399 |location=Greenwich, CT |pages=228}}

The AAA General Prospectus from January 29, 1937 lists 28 artists: "The present membership (January, 1937) of American Abstract Artists consists of the following names: George McNeil, Jeanne Carles, A. N. Christie, C. R. Holty, Harry Holtzman, Marie Kennedy, Ray Kaiser, W. M. Zogbaum, Ibram Lassaw, Gertrude Peter Greene, Byron Browne, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, George L. K. Morris, Vaclav Vyrlacil, Paul Kelpe, Balcomb Greene, R. D. Turnbull, Frederick J. Whiteman, John Opper, Albert Swinden, lIya Bolotowsky, George Cavallon, Leo Lances, Alice Mason, Esphyr Slobodkina, Werner Drewes, Richard Taylor, Josef Albers." This published membership list of 28 artists existed months before the list for the first exhibit in April 1937 with 39 founding members, showing a discrepancy or another version of the founding. Some accounts list these 28 artists as the charter or founding members of American Abstract Artists.

File:Piet_Mondriaan,_1942_-_New_York_City_I.jpg, New York City I, 1942]]

In the 1930s, Paris was the center of geometric abstraction that came out of Synthetic Cubism, Cercle et Carré, and Abstraction-Création. The start of World War II caused the focus of geometric abstraction to shift to New York City and the American Abstract Artists group.{{Cite web |last=Dabrowski |first=Magdalena |date=October 2004 |title=Geometric Abstraction – Essay |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/geab/hd_geab.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240405151536/https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/geab/hd_geab.htm |archive-date=April 5, 2024 |access-date=April 5, 2024 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History}} At its founding in 1937 AAA was tolerant and diverse in the types of abstract artwork created by the membership: biomorphic, cubist, and geometric. There was debate that AAA should have a definitive definition of abstract art but the membership could never agree.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1996 |location=New York, NY |pages=14, 15}} Instead the group focused on the difference between abstraction based on observation of the natural world and non-objective work which used non-referential invented forms generally involving geometric abstraction.{{Cite book |last=Auping |first=Michael |title=Abstraction, Geometry, Painting: Selected Geometric Abstract Painting in America Since 1945 |publisher=Harry N. Abrams and Albright-Knox Art Gallery |year=1989 |isbn=0810910276 |location=New York |pages=27, 28}}

The geometric faction influenced the membership's work and the organization's policies, and by the late 1930s the AAA was a bastion of geometric abstraction.{{Cite book |last=Auping |first=Michael |title=Abstraction, Geometry, Painting: Selected Geometric Abstract Painting in America Since 1945 |publisher=Harry N. Abrams and Albright-Knox Art Gallery |year=1989 |isbn=0810910276 |location=New York |pages=31}} In a review in The New Yorker of the 1939 Annual Exhibit, Robert Coates said "the trend of the group is toward the purest of 'pure' abstraction, in which all recognizable symbols are abandoned in favor of strict geometric form."{{Cite magazine |last=Coates |first=Robert |date=March 1939 |title=The Art Galleries: Abstractionists and What About Them? |magazine=The New Yorker |pages=57}} For the 1939 AAA Annual Exhibit, expressionist abstract art was eliminated by the exhibition committee during the selection and hanging of work for the show, a change from the group's original character and policies.{{Cite journal |last=Larsen |first=Susan C |title=The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941 |journal=Archives of American Art Journal |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=5}} In a Smithsonian Archives of American Art interview Ad Reinhardt discusses censorship in American Abstract Artists exhibits during the late 1930s when some members insisted on strict purity and urged that painters like Irene Rice Pereira, Louis Schanker and Byron Browne not be shown in the AAA exhibitions describing their shapes as gimmickry.{{Cite web |last=Phillips |first=Harlan |title=Oral history interview with Ad Reinhardt, circa 1964 |url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-ad-reinhardt-12891 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231023010218/https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-ad-reinhardt-12891 |archive-date=October 23, 2023 |access-date=April 11, 2024 |website=Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution}} Founder Jeanne Carles paintings took a different direction in abstraction from the group as well. Her work was reproduced in the 1938 Yearbook but she was excluded from the 1939 Yearbook even though she was listed as a member in the publication.{{Cite book |title=American Abstract Artists 1938 Yearbook |publisher=American Abstract Artists |year=1938 |location=New York |publication-date=1938 |pages=39}}{{Cite journal |last=Marter |first=Joan |date=2007 |title=Negotiating Abstraction: Lee Krasner, Mercedes Carles Matter and the Hofmann Years |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20358129 |journal=Woman's Art Journal |volume=28 |issue=2 |page=37 |jstor=20358129 }}

Piet Mondrian had a strong influence on the membership and Ilya Bolotowsky, Harry Holtzman, Burgoyne Diller, Alice Trumbull Mason and Charmion von Wiegand incorporated Mondrian's Neoplasticism into their painting further embeding AAA's aesthetic in geometric abstraction.{{Cite book |last=Kraskin |first=Sandra |title=Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog |publisher=Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College |year=1996 |location=New York|pages=14, 18, 19}} The push for a geometric aesthetic continued with Paul Kelpe who was a founder, secretary, treasurer, and a controversial member. He was asked to resign his membership because his abstract shapes, inspired by Wassily Kandinsky and El Lissitzky, appeared to float illusionistically in three-dimensional space making his paintings too representational for the AAA.{{Cite book |last=Marter |first=Joan M. |title=The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Volume 3 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=9780195335798 |location=New York |pages=26, 27}}{{Cite web |last=Friedman |first=Bernard |title=Paul Kelpe – Artists |url=https://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/paul-kelpe |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220929175257/https://www.chicagomodern.org/artists/paul-kelpe |archive-date=September 29, 2022 |access-date=April 5, 2024 |website=Modernism in the New City – Chicago Artists, 1920-1950}}{{Cite web |title=Luce Foundation Center for American Art – Paul Kelpe |url=http://americanart.si.edu/luce/artist.cfm?key=344&artistmedia=0&subkey=2594&object=1359 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304041956/http://americanart.si.edu/luce/artist.cfm?key=344&artistmedia=0&subkey=2594&object=1359 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |access-date=April 4, 2024 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}} During the 1940s some members left the cooperative, including founders Rosalind Bengelsdorf and Ray Kaiser, because the organization abandoned a broad interpretation of abstraction for strict geometry.{{Cite web |title=Boldness Knew No Limits: Women and the Emergence of American Abstraction |url=https://whitney.org/essays/labyrinth-of-forms |access-date=2024-05-11 |website=whitney.org |language=en}}

The AAA helped abstract art gain acceptance among critics and audiences in the United States but only embraced a certain type of abstraction, work with a dynamic geometric clarity.{{Cite web |date=March 28, 2016 |title=AAA Stands for American Abstract Artists |url=https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/american-abstract-artists |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209235617/https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/american-abstract-artists |archive-date=December 9, 2023 |access-date=April 5, 2024 |website=Ideelart}} AAA's members based their ideology and visual language on European modern art, specifically Cubism, Neoplasticism, and Constructivism.{{Cite web |title=American Abstract Artists 1930s and 1940s |url=https://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/exhibitions/american-abstract-artists-1930s-and-1940s |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231210175054/https://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/exhibitions/american-abstract-artists-1930s-and-1940s |archive-date=December 10, 2023 |access-date=April 22, 2024 |website=Michael Rosenfeld Gallery}} Clement Greenberg stated in 'American Type' Painting that Abstract Expressionism was the first manifestation of American art to draw serious attention in the United States and Europe, attacking the expendable conventions of art and influencing the avant-garde.{{Cite book |last=Greenberg |first=Clement |title="'American Type' Painting," in Art and Culture: Critical Essays |publisher=Beacon Press |year=1961 |isbn=0807066818 |location=Boston |publication-date=1965 |page=209}} With the popularity of abstract expressionism after World War II there was a dichotomy between geometric and gestural abstraction, which the group saw as American Abstract Artists vs. Abstract Expressionists. AAA preceded but ignored the rise of the "New York School" of Abstract Expressionism. The group remained separate from it, promoting pure geometric abstraction within AAA's ranks, and set itself apart from discussions about and reactions against Abstract Expressionism which included Post-Painterly Abstraction in the 1960s.{{Cite book |last=Auping |first=Michael |title=Abstraction, Geometry, Painting: Selected Geometric Abstract Painting in America Since 1945 |publisher=Harry N. Abrams and Albright-Knox Art Gallery |year=1989 |isbn=0810910276 |location=New York |pages=89}}{{Cite book |last=Rickey |first=George |title=Constructivism: Origins and Evolution |publisher=George Braziller, Inc |year=1967 |isbn=9780807613818 |edition=2nd |location=New York |publication-date=1969 |pages=65, 66}}{{Cite book |last1=Arnason |first1=H.H. |title=History of Modern Art |last2=Prather |first2=Marla F. |publisher=Prentice Hall and Harry N. Abrams |year=1998 |isbn=0131830562 |edition=4th |location=Upper Saddle River, NJ |pages=437 |chapter=19 – Abstract Expressionism and the New American Art}} The American Abstract Artists worked to develop a utopian vision of universal harmony using geometry and nonobjective art based on order and stability, free from references to the real world.{{Cite web |last=Lewes |first=Carol |date=August 10, 1999 |title=The American Century Art & Culture 1900-2000 |url=https://www.newtownbee.com/08101999/the-american-century-art-culture-1900-2000/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240424105549/https://www.newtownbee.com/08101999/the-american-century-art-culture-1900-2000/ |archive-date=April 24, 2024 |access-date=April 24, 2024 |website=The Newtown Bee}}

{{Reflist}}

• American Abstract Artists, The Language of Abstraction, exhibition catalog. Betty Parsons Gallery, Marilyn Pearl Gallery, 1979. Text by Susan Larson.
• Larsen, Susan C. "The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936–1941", Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1974), pp. 2–7.
• Pioneers of Abstract Art: American Abstract Artists, 1936–1996, exhibition catalog. Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, 1996. Text by Sandra Kraskin.
• Continuum: In Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of AAA, exhibition press release. St. Peter's College Art Gallery, O'Toole Library, Jersey City, NJ (March 21 – April 25, 2007).

• [http://www.americanabstractartists.org/ American Abstract Artists]
• [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/american-abstract-artists-records-9533 American Abstract Artists records, 1935–1982] in the collection of the Archives of American Art
• [https://www.bctv.org/video/women-american-abstract-artists-10-23-19/ New Arts Alive. "Women of American Abstract Artists." BCTV, 54:10. Oct 23, 2019.] [https://archive.org/details/bctvpa-Women_American_Abstract_Artists_10-23-19 Archived] Episode on history and female members of AAA
• {{YouTube|CG-Fl0VnHUo|"Presentation of a member's work to the AAA"}}

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Category:American artist groups and collectives

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Category:Abstract art

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Category:American abstract artists

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Category:1937 establishments in the United States