1937 ANNUAL EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PAINTING
Whitney Museum of American Art
[Whitney Museum of American Art]: 1937 ANNUAL EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PAINTING. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1937. Original Edition. Slim quarto. Thick printed saddle-stitched wrappers. 20 pp. 6 black and white plates. Exhibition checklist of 115 items. Lower wrapper lightly soiled, otherwise a fine, fresh copy. Scarce.
6.125 x 9.25 softcover booklet with 20 pages and 6 black and white reproductions of artwork exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art from November 10 to December 12, 1937. A fascinating document that presents a whos-who of American Contemporary Art during the height of the Great Depression.
Includes reproductions by Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Julian Levi, Guy Pène Du Bois, William Gropper, Conrad Albrizio, and Charles Locke. Of note to contemporary scholars is the extensive index, featuring the names and addresses of the 115 participating artists, including Arnold Blanch, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Harry Gottlieb, William Gropper, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Julian E. Levi, Theodore Roszak, and many others.
This slim Exhibition Guide serves as a visual report to the public’ of the Federal Art Project’s first year, with many of the artists subsidized by the Federal Government. The Federal Art Project (FAP) was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration Federal One program in the United States. It operated from August 29, 1935, until June 30, 1943. Reputed to have created more than 200,000 separate works, FAP artists created posters, murals and paintings. Some works still stand among the most-significant pieces of public art in the country.
The program made no distinction between representational and nonrepresentational art. Abstraction had not yet gained favor in the 1930s and 1940s and, thus, was virtually unsalable. As a result, the program supported such iconic artists as Jackson Pollock before their work could earn them income.
The FAP's primary goals were to employ out-of-work artists and to provide art for non-federal government buildings: schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. The work was divided into art production, art instruction and art research. The primary output of the art-research group was the Index of American Design, a mammoth and comprehensive study of American material culture.
The FAP was one of a short-lived series of Depression-era visual-arts programs, which included the Section of Painting and Sculpture and the Public Works of Art Project (both of which, unlike the WPA-operated FAP, were operated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury).
“For the first time in American art history a direct and sound relationship has been established between the American public and the artist . . . new horizons have come into view. American artists have discovered that they have work to do in the world.”-- Holger Cahill, National Director Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration