Title: American abstract art of the 1930's and 1940's : the J. Donald Nichols collection /
Authors: Knott, Robert.; Wake Forest University.
Publisher: Wake Forest University ; Abrams,
Year: 1998
Subjects: Nichols, J. Donald Art collections Exhibitions.; American Abstract Artists Exhibitions.; Art, Abstract United States Exhibitions; Art, Abstract New York (State) New York Exhibitions.; Art, Modern United States Exhibitions.; Art, Modern New York (State) New York Exhibitions.; Art Private collections North Carolina Winston-Salem Exhibitions.; Painting, Abstract United States Exhibitions.
Abstract: This volume presents a partial catalog of 1930s and 1940s era abstract works that are in the art collection of J. Donald Nichols. Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. This art collection was on exhibition at the Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC in the late 1990s. Familiar artists Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers, Arshile Gorky, and Stuart Davis are all included here. Artists in the collection are from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Women artists are quite strongly represented in the collection, including Russian born Esphyr Slobodkina. The J. Donald Nichols Collection is now recognized as perhaps the finest collection of American abstract art of the 1930s and 1940s ever assembled.
Contents: Introduction -- Building a collection -- Defenders of abstraction -- Plates -- New York/Paris and the American abstract artists group -- The museum of non-objective painting -- The transcendental painting group -- The Chicago Bauhaus -- Regional modernism -- Artists' biographies -- Selected general bibliography -- Index of the collection.