ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines Raymond Jonson's early life in the West and Chicago, his involvement with the Chicago Little Theatre, and his active role as a leader of the Chicago avant-garde. It explores the boldly colorful paintings of 1929 to 1936 in which Jonson slowly worked toward greater abstraction by using numerals, alphabet letters, plants and trees, colors, the cosmos, and the sciences as more conceptual but still recognizable and intelligible subjects for art. The book analyzes Jonson's earliest purely abstract paintings of the 1930s and his developing theories on the spiritual in abstract art. It also examines in detail his important contributions to the Transcendental Painting Group and the sources, influences, and development of Jonson's "absolute painting" in the period from 1938 to around 1950. The book discusses Jonson's late career, from around 1950 until he ceased painting in 1978.
