Relatively few American artists from the "pre-Pollock" era are known to the European public: Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Walker Evans… Now, for the first time, this exhibition presents a broad panorama of the past 40 years of modern American art, from the New World's introduction to Impressionism through the work of Winslow Holer, to the first great works of Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman...), via the unique, solitary figure of Edward Hopper.
Paintings, sculptures, graphic works and photographs testify to the extraordinary diversity of movements, influences and individual styles characterising American art of the past half-century. The exhibition explores the impact and assimilation of innovative movements from Europe (Dadaism, Surrealism etc.), the rise of a specifically American artistic identity, the parallel rise of regional entities across the US, and the conscious affirmation of a Black identity in art. Organised in conjunction with FRAME (the French American Museums Exchange), the exhibition complements a number of earlier shows at the Musée Fabre, including the summer 1999 exhibition of American abstract art after 1950, and explorations of particular modern movements, including the Section d'Or, which retraced the history of Cubism, in 2001.