The European influence on modern American art

Charles Darwent’s Surrealists in New York is somewhat misleadingly titled, though its true content and focus are revealed in the subtitle: ‘Atelier 17 and the Birth of Abstract Expressionism.’ Perhaps that sounds obscure and even academic. If so, it gives the wrong idea, for this is a very readable and accessible account of a hitherto unexplored area of mainstream art history. Many of us suspected the importance of European influence on what is always claimed as the thoroughly American art movement of Abstract Expressionism. This book sets out the situation in detail, and makes a convincing argument for giving credit not only to a bunch of European émigrés but to an Englishman as well.

Darwent’s contention is that the English painter and printmaker Stanley William Hayter (1901-88), who founded and ran an experimental print workshop called Atelier 17, first in Paris and later in New York, was a crucial influence on the development of Abstract Expressionism in America.