Introduction to Art after 1945, USA

Abstract

The translated text is the introductory chapter in Marisa Volpi Orlando’s book Arte dopo il 1945, U.S.A. (1969). This was the first Italian-language survey book of American art after the Second World War. It was the outcome of the writer’s firsthand experience of American art and culture during her extended visit to the US in 1966. Volpi's text should be read with Silvia Bottinelli's essay on Volpi, published in this volume.

Keywords:

• Art after 1945
• American art
• Abstract Expressionism
• Pop Art
• New York
• Italian art criticism

Acknowledgments

My thanks for their advice and for their guiding conversations, kind hospitality and help in providing addresses, photographs, etc. above all to the critic Clement Greenberg, the painter Barnett Newman, Professsor Mayer Shapiro, the critic Alan R. Solomon; the artists Piero Dorazio, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Helen Frankenthaler, Louis Nevelson, Jules Olitski, Willem De Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein; and also Mrs Duncan Phillips, of Washington DC, Mr Leo Castelli, Mr and Mrs Leon Kraushar, Mr Ben Heller, Mr and Mrs Donald Blinken, Professor William Rubin, Mr and Mrs Donald Grossman, Mr Bernard Reis, Mrs Alfred Barr, of New York; Mr and Mrs H. Gate Lloyd, of Philadelphia; Mr and Mrs Albert Newmann, of Chicago; Mr and Mrs Gifford Phillips, Mr Frederik Weissman, of Los Angeles; the critic Michael Fried, Mr and Mrs Lewis Cabot, of Boston; for the photographs, the André Emmerick, [Virginia] Dwan, Marlborough-Gerson, Martha Jackson, Sidney Janis, Fischbach, Stable, Odyssia galleries in New York; Tartaruga in Rome; the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

Notes

1 In the last six months, what we might call “a sculpture of gesture and materials” has developed, deriving from Informel Art and Happenings, March 1969.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marisa Volpi Orlandini

Translated by Lucinda Byatt from Italian

Originally published as “Introduzione,” Arte dopo il 1945, U.S.A. (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1969), 6–13.