ABSTRACT
Trailing for a long time behind European painting, and often transforming into the latter’s docile echo, American painting has only gained its genuine artistic independence on a large scale in the wake of the Second World War. First-class European artists, who had been forced by the Nazi invasion to emigrate (Piet Mondrian’s case is a key example), brought to the USA a series of tendencies from the old continent. Without aiming for an exhaustive analysis, but rather for an elaboration on and illustration of the idea posited in the title, the exhibition offers a rigorous selection of eighty works by nineteen artists of a very high artistic caliber. The latter had been recruited among the most notable representatives of American painting, including the creators of widely debated currents such as Jackson Pollock with his “Gestural” painting or R. Rauschenberg with his “Pop art.”.
