American Art History1930-1950

From social realism to abstract expressionism...

By Karen Stackow, January 2010

SOCIAL REALISM; 1930's

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FAP (Federal Art Project) was designed to promote the idea of a unified and positive American spirit during the Depression period. Baker's mural pictures the early history and industry of South County through a scene featuring fertile land, productive activities, and muscular laborers. All these representations emphasize the reward and value of hard work, which was deemed crucial to putting an end to economic hardship. Ernest Hamlin Baker's The Activities of the Narragansett Planter

Thomas Hart Benton, The Fieldworkers,1945

Social Realism-Regionalist

American Scene painters, a humble, anti-modernist style and a desire to depict everydaylife.

The midnight run of Paul Revere, 1931

American Scene Painters or Regionalist Grant Wood

Amercan Gothic, 1930

Family Doctor 1940

Grant Wood, Stone City, Iowa, 1930

Social Realism-RegionalistAndrew Wyeth, Magic Realism, 1940's

Edward Hopper

• Representational;• The truth of Urban

and Rural America

• Effects of the Depression

• Solitude, Isolation

• Drug Store, 1927

• Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Gas, 1940

Abstraction; Late 1930's

• No moral,• political, • or social agenda.• Reduction• Geometric

Arthur Dove, City Moon, 1938

Arthur Dove, Haystack,1931

Abstract Expressionism, 1940's

Energetic • Gestural

Surface• there is no subject • at all, but instead • pure abstract form

Willem de Kooning, 1948

IndividualExpression

Ashile Gorky The Raven,1937 The Barber,19388

Franz Kline

Black Reflections

1959