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Bauhaus by Walter Gropius
Source One of the great landmarks of the twentieth century, Gropius' Bauhaus buildings exemplify the primary tenets of Modernist architecture: the celebration of industrial materials and construction techniques, and the banishing of ornament and handcrafted elements in favor of a sleek, machinelike aesthetic. -
Bombardment by Philip Guston
SourceThe emotionally charged scene, which reflects the artist's recent exposure to the activist art of the Mexican mural movement, depicts the aerial bombardment of a civilian population by Franco's warplanes. However, the traditional tondo (circle) format, typically identified with Italian Renaissance painting, suggests that Guston intended to create a universal icon decrying human hatred and destruction rather than a specific commentary on the war in Spain. -
Wine Glass by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
SourceDuring the first half of the twentieth century, a number of abstract artists who were working simultaneously in several different mediums praised photography as the most progressive means of expression. Requiring the mediation of a mechanical device the camera and chemical solutions, photography represented the ultimate Modernist art form. science and technology were essential to the artwork s creation. -
Reflection of a Man in a Dresser Mirror - Aaron Siskind
SourceSiskind turned the medium of photography on its head, taking pictures of found objects that were simultaneously true-to-life and abstract; he was one of the first photographers to combine what was known as "straight" photography (recording the real world as the lens "sees" it) with abstraction. -
Window's Lament by David Smith
SourceA rare and important example of Smith's early sculptural work, its intriguing form exemplifies the artist's inimitable approach to abstraction. Its bronze frame encloses a space that suggests a mental landscape in which the artist has inserted abstract ideograms that allude to the cycle of life and death. While the sculpture's title refers to the artist's bereaved mother, its highly inventive abstract vocabulary also addresses universal themes of loss -
Waterfall by Arshile Gorky
In this painting, amorphous shapes and drips of liquid paint suggest the fluidity of the waterfall. "Arshile Gorky, 'Waterfall' 1943." Tate. Tate UK, 01 Aug. 2004. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gorky-waterfall-t01319. -
The Syrian Bull by Rothko
SourceThe Syrian Bull represents Rothko's response to European Surrealism, the dominant aesthetic force in New York artistic circles from the late 1930s to the mid '40s. The painting also served as a catalyst in an early published debate about the modernist painting of that period, the emerging New York School. -
Untitled J by Clyfford Still
SourceClyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II. Still has been credited with laying the groundwork for the movement, as his shift from representational to abstract painting occurred between 1938 and 1942, earlier than his colleagues like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, who continued to paint in figurative-surrealist style -
Composition by Lee Krasner
SourceThe picture’s overlapping skeins of dripped white paint form small, geometric compartments and convoluted designs atop a densely textured surface. Although seemingly impenetrable and unreadable, Composition celebrates painting as a primal means of communication through an analogy to picture-based writing systems. -
Number 1 (Lavender Mist) by Jackson Pollock
SourcePollock’s method was based on his earlier experiments with dripping and splattering paint on ceramic, glass, and canvas on an easel. Now, he laid a large canvas on the floor of his studio barn, nearly covering the space. Using house paint, he dripped, poured, and flung pigment from loaded brushes and sticks while walking around it. He said that this was his way of being “in” his work, acting as a medium in the creative process. -
Hudson River by David Smith
David Smith worked in welded steel to produce what he called “drawings in space.” In Hudson River Landscape, he transformed steel agricultural tool fragments and foundry castoffs into a semi-figurative sculpture. "Hudson River Landscape." Whitney Museum of American Art: David Smith:. Whitney Museum of American Art, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. http://collection.whitney.org/object/687. -
Abstract Painting, Blue by Ad Reinhardt
SourceWith his monochromatic canvases of the 1950s and 60s, Ad Reinhardt desired to make “pure” paintings evincing an “art for art’s sake” position rather than working to communicate emotion or the physical act of painting itself. Abstract Painting, Blue exemplifies the severe style and symmetry he was able to achieve through the drastic reduction of form in favor of color. -
Canticle by Mark Tobey
Tobey, like Pollock, was known for his calligraphic style of allover compositions. "'Canticle', casein on paper by Mark Tobey, 1954". Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%27Canticle%27,_casein_on_paper_by_Mark_Tobey,_1954.jpg#/media/File:%27Canticle%27,_casein_on_paper_by_Mark_Tobey,_1954.jpg -
Gotham News by Willem de Kooning
SourceGood for MoMA that Gotham News is best viewed in person, because reproductions cannot convey the textual richness of de Kooning's large and thick brushstrokes. Measuring 69 x 79 inches, the painting presents a busy traffic jam of complementary colors, near accidents between red and green, blue and orange, or black and white. If it could talk, the work would yell. The mottled pink passage near the bottom left suggests the presence of mortal flesh in a world of zigzags and sharp corners. -
Mahoning by Franz Kline
SourceUsing inexpensive commercial paints and large house painter’s brushes, he built graphic networks of rough but controlled bars of black paint on white backgrounds, creating positive shapes with the white areas as well as with the black strokes. Paintings such as Mahoning (1956) are characteristically of such large dimensions that the total effect is one of majesty and power. -
S by John Chamberlain
SourceJohn Chamberlain is known internationally for his long career of making vividly colored and vibrantly dynamic sculptures using discarded automobile parts that he twisted and welded into monumental shapes. He used the early modernist techniques of collage and assemblage at a magnified scale and he emphasized the brilliant colors of automotive paint. Chamberlain's sculptures appeared in New York at the same time as the paintings of the Abstract Expressionists -
Banquet by Ibram Lassaw
SourceBanquet exemplifies Lassaw's structural use of forged metal alone, without an underlying structure, to produce even more spontaneously created sculptures. As Lassaw has written, "The work is a 'happening' somewhat independent of my conscious will.. The work uses the artist to get itself born." -
Cubi VI by David Smith
The Cubis are among Smith's final experiments in his progression toward a more simplified, abstract form of expression. As an example of Modernism, these are representative of the monumental works in industrial materials that characterized much of the sculpture from this period. "SMITH CUBI VI" by עברית: דייויד סמית', אמריקני, 1965-1906 - Talmoryair (talk). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SMITH_CUBI_VI.JPG#/media/File:SMITH_CUBI_VI.JPG -
Choke by Robert Rauschenberg
Sourcen the 1950s, Rauschenberg began assembling disparate found objects into works called "combines," which he then painted with loose, gestural brushwork derived from the Abstract Expressionists. The following decade, as demonstrated in Choke, Rauschenberg combined this individualistic, expressionist brushwork with the more detached, mechanical techniques of commercial printing. -
Broken Obelisk by Barnett Newman
SourceMade in 1967—a time of great unrest in the United States—what Newman is achieving here is a memorial form, which is not a memorial to anything in particular. There is this idea of soaring aspiration unfulfilled, a lament for a time that isnt any more one of heroes, but one of assassinations, of broken dreams, disappointments, hopes. -
Continuity #1 by Ibram Lassaw
SourceThe forms created by empty space in Continuity #1 are as important, if not more important, than the lines themselves. Here, as in many of his works, Lassaw combined geometric and biomorphic shapes, drawing the viewer's eye into the maze-like composition. -
Aurora by Mark di Suvero
SourceAurora is a tour de force of design and engineering. Its sophisticated structural system distributes eight tons of steel over three diagonal supports to combine massive scale with elegance of proportion. Several of the linear elements converge within a central circular hub and then explode outward, imparting tension and dynamism to the whole. The title, Aurora, comes from a poem about New York City by Federico García Lorca. -
Maman by Louise Bourgeois
SourceAlmost 9 meters tall, Maman is one of the most ambitious of a series of sculptures by Bourgeois that take as their subject the spider, a motif that first appeared in several of the artist's drawings in the 1940s and came to assume a central place in her work during the 1990s.
