By about 1950, forward-looking New York painting was seen as synonymous with abstraction, especially charged, gestural Abstract Expressionism. But there was also a strong group of dissenters: artists, all born in the 1920s and many of them students of Hans Hofmann, who never lost their enthusiasm for recognizable imagery, without rejecting Abstract Expressionism’s love of malleable oil paint. Although most of them began as abstract artists, they all evolved into painters working from observation, using a fluid, urgent touch to translate their perceptions into eloquent, highly individualized visual languages, almost always informed by the hand; that is, unlike the Color Field and Minimalist artists, these artists remained, for the most part, “painterly” painters. In light of their important contributions to twentieth-century American art, The Artist Book Foundation presents the catalogue for the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center's eponymous 2020 exhibition, Figuration Never Died: New York Painterly Painting, 1950–1970.
These rebellious artists include Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher, Paul Georges, Grace Hartigan, Wolf Kahn, Alex Katz, Albert Kresch, Robert de Niro Sr., Paul Resika, and Anne Tabachnick. The compelling figurative work they made between about 1950 and 1970, in contrast to the prevailing Abstract Expressionism of the time, constitutes a significant chapter in the history of recent American Modernism. Their work not only greatly expands our conception of the story of New York painting, but it also presages and contextualizes today’s multiplicity of artistic concepts and processes. Given both the aesthetic diversity of today’s New York art world and the dependence of many younger artists on digital media or the appearance of digital media, it seems an appropriate moment to reconsider the work of these daring pioneers, as both precursor and opposition to current norms. It is especially important to do this now, while some of these artists are still alive.

Karen Wilkin is an independent curator and art critic specializing in twentieth-century Modernism. She has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, and Hans Hofmann, among many others. Bruce Weber was senior curator at the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts. His specialty is in American painting, sculpture, and drawings from the late-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, and he has also frequently curated and written on contemporary American art. Danny Lichtenfeld is the director of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Contents: 5
Director’s Statement | Danny Lichtenfeld: 7
Acknowledgments: 9
Foreword | Bruce Weber: 11
Figuration Never Died | Karen Wilkin: 15
Ten New York Painterly Painters: 31
Robert De Niro, Sr.: 32
Lois Dodd: 40
Jane Freilicher: 48
Paul Georges: 56
Grace Hartigan: 66
Wolf Kahn: 74
Alex Katz: 84
Albert Kresch: 92
Paul Resika: 100
Anne Tabachnick: 108
Exhibition Checklist: 117
Photography Credits: 119
Copyright Page: 120

This exhibition at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center focuses on 10 inventive artists from this generation, whom we could describe as painterly: Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922–2003), Lois Dodd (1927–), Jane Freilicher (1924–2014), Paul Georges (1923–2002), Grace Hartigan (1922–2008), Wolf Kahn (1927–2020), Alex Katz (1927–), Albert Kresch (1922–), Paul Resika (1928–), and Anne Tabachnik (1927–1995).7 They are linked not only by their mutual fascination with making reference to the visible, but also by their closeness in age, friendships, and shared experiences in the small New York art world of the 1950s and 1960s. . . . There seem to have been multiple triggers for their stubborn attraction to figuration. Many—De Niro, Freilicher, Georges, Kahn, Kresch, Resika, and Tabachnick—were students of Hans Hofmann and so thoroughly absorbed his ideas about the dynamic construction of pictures that they always remain apparent no matter how referential their imagery. That former Hofmann students were exploring painting from perception is not altogether surprising. Kahn noted that Hofmann “was interested in people who were interested in representation. He used to say that the problem with modern art is, it has no human content.”