BEfore 1940

Born into slavery in Alabama, Bill Traylor spent his life as a rural farm worker after the Thirteenth Amendment emancipation in 1865 freed him. While his 15 children moved to different areas, many migrating North, he remained in Alabama. He started working as an artist at the age of 80, in 1936, producing over 1000 works of art often by the side of the street in Montgomery County.

Art Terms
Self Taught  

Art Education in the 1930s

Advancement occurs through education. Western art was catapulted toward the New by European art exhibitions and teachers who emigrated from Europe during the rise of Fascism and the Nazi regime, including Josef and Anni Albers, faculty from The Bauhaus in Germany, and Hans Hofmann, an abstract painter and teacher in Munich who settled in New York. Their common purpose was to develop Modernist art education to allow for a creative and intellectual culture to counter the suppression of free thought that terrorized the West. With them came a bedrock of modernist techniques and theories that would shape abstraction in America and beyond. The schools that had the greatest influence in the 30s, 40s and into the 50s were the renowned Black Mountain College, and the Greenwich Village and Provincetown studios of Hans Hofmann.

The Harlem Renaissance, 1920s-1930s

“The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world,” the National Museum of African American History and Culture explains. “Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.” In order to help achieve this shared objective, artistic African Americans from all over the country flocked to Harlem, where their creativity was fostered and their work was groundbreaking. Kelly Richman-Abdou, My Modern Met, July, 2020

Social + Political Context

With the rise of nationalism around the world came a migration of individuals seeking asylum along with economic crises forced by countries facing climate shifts and market failures resulting in redefining moments including The Great Depression in America during the Hoover Administration (1929-1933), followed by the FDR Administration (1933-37).

Style Precursors + Influences

From 1900-1940, a fervent period of experimentation occurred fostered by movements of the 19th century, and enabled by new techniques, media and styles preceding World War 2. The pace, scrutiny, traumas and freedoms of these first decades were liberating like few times prior. And openings that occurred, would define a century in Western art.

Art Terms
Bauhaus
Dada
Surrealism
Automatism

"Spanish Republican forces sent Guernica on an international tour to create awareness of the war and raise funds for Spanish refugees. It traveled the world for 19 years and then was loaned for safekeeping to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso refused to allow it to return to Spain until the country “enjoyed public liberties and democratic institutions,” which finally occurred in 1981." Khan Academy

"In December 1931, The Museum of Modern Art mounted a major exhibition of work by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. It was only the second retrospective at the Museum, and it was wildly popular, breaking attendance records in its five-week run." MoMA