DESIGNER UNKNOWN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. 1913.
20x14 inches, 50 3/4x35 1/2 cm.
Condition B+ / A-: scuffing in image; minor creases and abrasions along edges. Printed on card.
Among the most significant events in the history of modern art, the Armory Show introduced Americans to Impressionism, Neo- and Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism and modern sculpture. Though coolly received by critics, the show was an inspiration to American artists such as Man Ray, Stuart Davis, and Joseph Stella. The show was America's introduction to Europe's Modernist painters like Picasso, Matisse, Gaugin and Van Gogh. It was at this show that Marcel Duchamp's "scandalous" Nude Descending the Staircase and other Cubist and Futurist works sent shocks through the American art world, which could not at all come to terms with such a departure from conventional representational art, threatened by the unknown. The uprooted pine tree image on the poster (which was the same used for the cover of the exhibition catalogue) is taken from the Massachusetts Revolutionary-era battle flag, "proclaiming liberation from the art of the past" (Shapiro p. 135), and clearly signifying another revolution, this time in art. The Armory is, incidentally, directly across the street from Swann Galleries. rare.