5th Annual Exhibition Brochure

AAA 5th Annual Exhibit Side 1

The American Abstract Artists Fifth Annual Exhibition was held at the Riverside Museum in New York City, Feb. 9 – 23, 1941. The foldout brochure included an essay and a numbered list of exhibiting artists. A symposium on abstract art with Balcomb Greene as moderator, Harry Holtzman and Hans Hofmann was held in the main gallery on Feb. 16, 1941.

Text from Announcement Brochure

This is the Fifth Annual Exhibition of the American Abstract Artists. To emphasize Abstract Artists in America, will make clearer the attitude and viewpoint of this organization, for a clear differentiation between esthetic values and national values is essential in relation to plastic art. The failure to distinguish the one from the other has led to the confusion of both. Even more than fifty years after its development, the habit is to allude to the advanced phases of modern art as merely European idioms, and fail to see that art is not merely the expression of nationality. The falsification of the facts is also often based upon the attempt to foist confusion upon the public under patriotic and traditional disguise. Such fallacies presuppose a split, a separation of content and form, or, in other words, they oppose the intuition of esthetic emotions with emphasis on the colloquial, descriptive, naturalistic aspects of expression. This is the consequence of the failure to perceive that the real expression of art is always and everywhere profoundly the same: universal. Esthetic values do not change with latitude and longitude; the cultural significance of art does not change with geographic movement. It is the concept of art that changes.

To understand Abstract Art, is in reality, the problem of understanding any and all art from a qualitative viewpoint. “Abstract” signifies a direct, untrammeled relationship of the elements of plastic expression. The abstract artist is concerned with the universal values, the real expression of art. Because it is the clearest effort to represent these values, Abstract Art is in the forefront of esthetic development.

Exhibiting Artists

AAA 5th Annual Exhibition
  1. Josef Albers
  2. Ilya Bolotowsky
  3. H. Bowden
  4. Byron Browne
  5. Giorgio Cavallon
  6. A.N. Christie
  7. Werner Drewes
  8. Susie Frelinghuysen
  9. A.E. Gallatin
  10. Sidney Geist
  11. Fritz Glarner
  12. Balcomb Greene
  13. Gertrude Greene
  14. Haaniah Harari
  15. Carl Holty
  16. Harry Holtzman
  17. Dorothy Joralemon
  18. Ray Kaiser
  19. Frederick P. Kann
  20. Paul Kelpe
  21. Leonore Krassner
  22. Eleanor De Laittre
  23. Leo Lances
  24. Ibram Lassaw
  25. Fernand Leger
  26. Agnes Lyall
  27. George McNeil
  28. L. Moholy-Nagy
  29. Piet Mondrian
  30. George L.K. Morris
  31. Alice Mason
  32. I. Rice Pereira
  33. Margaret Peterson
  34. A. D. F. Reinhardt
  35. Ralph M. Rosenborg
  36. Louis Schranker
  37. Charles G. Shaw
  38. Esphyr Slobodkina
  39. Florence Swift
  40. Albert Swiden
  41. R.D. Turnbull
  42. Vaclav Vytlacil
  43. Harry Wildenberg
  44. Robert Jay Wolff
  45. Wilfrid Zogbaum
  46. Jean Xceron

Officers

Balcomb Greene, chairman
Harry Holtzman, secretary
A. D. F. Reinhardt, treasurer