TEXAS MODERN: The Rediscovery of Early Texas Abstraction (1935-1965) includes works of art from over a dozen public institutions and private collectors, opening this field of study with the first in-depth, critical analysis of Texas' indigenous modernist art. Featured are well-known artists like William Lester, Everett Spruce and others of the Dallas Nine and Fort Worth Circle. But Texas Modern also includes lesser-known modernists from Houston, Denton, San Antonio and elsewhere who were responding to the contemporary advances in industrialization, technology and artmaking in equally impressive ways. The book includes an introduction and essays by art historians Katie Robinson Edwards, Mark L. Smith and James Edwards that provide both contextual and formal analysis of the artworks. Selected biographies and a comprehensive bibliography are also included. Through its breadth and depth, this exhibition attempts to define the evolution of abstract art in Texas, and thereby brings a perspective as fresh as these artworks to the entire American art scene at midcentury.

Hardcover