The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America Jennifer R. Gross PDF

Founded in 1920 by the artists Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray, the Société Anonyme was America’s first “experimental museum” for modern art, providing a means for artists, rather than historians, to chronicle the rise of modernism. The incredible collection of the Société Anonyme now belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery, and many of its masterpieces appear here in color and black and white reproductions, including works by Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Stella, along with a substantial number of works by the movement’s founders. With new archival information, including personal correspondence between Dreier and the artists whose work she assembled, capsule biographies of more than 100 artists, and a wealth of photographs from the era, this book is a veritable history of 20th-century art.