?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(AMERICAN ABSTRACT ART.) American Abstract Artists Group First Exhibition Group of 30 (of 39) lithographs and lithographed table of contents. 233x305 mm; 9 1/4x12 inches (sheets), full margins. Folio sheets, title and prints loose as issued, toned. Contains prints by Bengelsdorf, Bolotowsky, Browne, Holty, Kennedy, Lyall, Schanker, Shaw, Turnbull, Vytlacil, and others. Lacking prints by Albers, Bowden, Carles, Cohen, Diller, Foster, Holtzman, Kann, Lances, and Weisenborn. Scattered minor wear includes occasional light marginal creasing, toning to very edges. New York: Cane Press for Squibb Gallery, 1937
the seminal inaugural exhibition that spurred the growth of abstract expressionism and the new york school throughout the 1940s and 1950s. According to Susan C. Larsen, " Five hundred copies were printed and sold for fifty cents at Squibb Gallery. Only a few are known to be extant; a complete portfolio is on file with the Archives of American Art," (The American Abstract Artists: A Documentary History 1936-1941, Archives of American Art Journal, volume 14, number 1, 1975, p. 3). In 1937, one year after the establishment of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group, a general prospectus was issued that called for the exposure and understanding of abstract and non-objective art through the exhibition of its artwork. That same year, on April 2nd, 39 of its members exhibited their work at the the very first AAA exhibition at Squibb Gallery. This was the largest and most attended American abstract art exhibition outside of a major museum in the 1930s. On occasion of this momentous exhibition, the AAA did not print an exhibition catalogue but produced a portfolio of original zinc plate lithographs, 30 of which are included in this lot. Among the AAA were forerunners of the abstract art movement in America, such luminaries as Josef Albers,Werner Drewes, Byron Browne and Burgoyne Diller.
