Charles G. Shaw, Wrigley's, 1937, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago

The Park Avenue Cubists:
Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen, and Shaw

Dapper and discerning, A.E. Gallatin, George L.K. Morris, Suzy Frelinghuysen, and Charles G. Shaw were committed artists as well as passionate patrons. The first major museum exhibition devoted entirely to the work of these four artists, The Park Avenue Cubists reveals the group's ardent belief that American abstraction could make a unique contribution to the evolution of visual experiments begun by the European modernists. This exhibition featuring some 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper is on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art from April 26- July 31, 2003.

Gallatin, Morris, Frelinghuysen, and Shaw were dubbed "the Park Avenue Cubists" by fellow members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group because the friends shared privileged backgrounds. Regardless of their comfortable circumstances and glamorous lifestyles, the four were dedicated artists and supporters of the goals of American artists who promoted abstraction in opposition to the realist painting that dominated the American art scene during the depression and its aftermath.

While inspired by the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris, and Léger, and considering themselves the aesthetic heirs to avant-garde French culture, the Park Avenue Cubists maintained a firm belief in American abstraction and determination to create a truly American strain of modern art. In their quest to extend European modernism, they melded the stylistic lessons of Cubism and its derivations with indigenous American subject matter, from Hopi katsinas to Manhattan cityscapes. The results were

innovative and prescient works that absorbed lessons from European models to advance a new, yet distinctly American abstract language. As guest curator Debra Bricker Balken observes, "Appropriating popular imagery from billboards and advertising logos, they not only looked back to Analytic Cubism’s incorporation of printed paper ephemera, but also ahead to the work of Stuart Davis and Pop artists such as Andy Warhol. Their preoccupation with the compositional or visual attributes of painting led to one of the first formulations of a reductivist, abstract language of art in the United States."

All four of the Park Avenue Cubists pursued multiple occupations in the arts. Both Morris and Shaw published widely, making eloquent arguments in support of formalist art and the aesthetic ideals of the European and American modernists. Frelinghuysen had an alternate career as an opera singer, and Gallatin organized and promoted modernism in his Museum of Living Art in New York. In addition to works of art, the exhibition includes artifacts, photographs of the artists, a film, as well as examples of their numerous publications and articles.


Suzy Frelinghuysen, Printemps, 1938, oil and mixed media, Naples Museum of Art

The Park Avenue Cubists is accompanied by a fully illustrated book published by Ashgate Ltd. with essays by Balken and Robert S. Lubar, Associate Professor of Modern Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The exhibition will also travel to the Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, September 2-November 30, 2003.

This exhibition has been organized by the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, and has been made possible, in part, with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., and the Abby Weed Grey Trust.