AMERICANS 1942: 18 ARTISTS FROM 9 STATES
Dorothy C. Miller [Editor], E. McKnight Kauffer [Designer]
Dorothy C. Miller [Editor]: AMERICANS 1942. 18 ARTISTS FROM 9 STATES. New York: Museum of Modern Art, January 1942. Quarto. First edition [6,500 copies]. Decorated paper covered boards designed by E. McKnight Kauffer. Matching dust jacket. 128 pp. 123 black and white plates. Dust jacket faintly edgeworn and lightly spotted. McKnight Kauffer boards fresh and clean. A nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
7.75 x 10.25 hardcover books with 128 pages and 123 black and white plates and statements by the artists. Dust jacket by American expatriate E. McKnight Kauffer. "First of a series of exhibitions.which will provide a survey of the arts in the United States during the 1940's." An eclectic selection dictated, perhaps, by the emphasis on representing several regions of the U.S.
Features illustrated profiles of Darrel Austin, Hyman Bloom, Raymond Breinin, Samuel Cashwan, Francis Chapin, Emma Lu Davis, Morris Graves, Joseph Hirsch, Donal Hord, Charles Howard, Rico Lebrun, Jack Levine, Helen Lundeberg, Fletcher Martin, Octavio Medellin, Knud Merrild, Mitchell Siporin and Everett Spruce.
Americans 1942, 18 Artists from 9 States, an exhibition composed of approximately two hundred paintings and sculptures, opens at the Museum of Modern Art Wednesday, January 21, where it will remain on view through March 8. A large part of it will then be circulated to other museums and art galleries throughout the country.
The exhibition has been directed by Dorothy C. Miller, Associate Curator of the Museum's Department of Painting and Sculpture, who spent several months last summer traveling over the country in search of the best work of artists, many of them little known—in some cases entirely unknown—to the New York art world. Miss Miller has also edited and written the foreword to the catalog which the Museum will publish simultaneously with the exhibition. The catalog, 128 pages, is illustrated by 123 halftone reproductions of the artists work. Biographies of the artists, many of them written by the artists themselves, are included.
In the foreword Miss Miller writes in part as follows:
"New York artists and the New York public will make the acquaintance in this show of at least two painters whoso names and pictures are unknown to them. Several others, though not complete strangers, have never had a one-man exhibition in Now York. Of the rest, some are newcomers who have made their mark in the last year or two, others have been showing for some years but have never been well known in the east. "Most of them have studied and worked in towns far removed from the art centers of the Atlantic seaboard—some, in fact, have never been in the east. They come from Texas,' California, Oregon, Washington, Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts—and these are only a few of the States where one may discover high talent and sound training in the arts....
"Younger artists predominate and their recent work has been favored. Five of the men are past forty but the average age of the eighteen artists is thirty-five. The average date of the works in the exhibition is 1939. Succeeding shows of the series will follow the development not only of the younger artists but also that of our older and better known painters and sculptors who must not be lost sight of in our enthusiasm for new discoveries and youthful promise. [Museum of Modern Art press release, January 21, 1942]