History Visual arts American modernist literature Architecture and space

Main schools and movements of American modernism

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  the Stieglitz group
  
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  the Arensberg circle
  
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  color painters
  
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  Precisionism
  
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  the Independents
  
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  the Philadelphia school
  
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  New York independents
  
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  Chicago and westward
  

Modernist painting
Main articles: Modernism, History of painting, and Western painting
Georgia O'Keeffe, known as the "Mother of American modernism",^[4] has been a major figure in American Modernism since the 1920s. She has received widespread recognition, for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is chiefly known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills, from 1935 is a well known painting by O'Keeffe.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills, 1935

Arthur Dove, Me and the Moon 1937
Arthur Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career.^[5] Dove did a series of experimental collage works in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion.
African-American painter Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) is one of the best-known and most influential African-American modernist painters. His works contributed strongly to the development of an aesthetic movement that is closely related to distinct features of African-American heritage and culture. Douglas influenced African-American visual arts especially during the Harlem Renaissance.
One of Douglas' most popular paintings is The Crucifixion. It was published in James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones in 1927. The crucifixion scene that is depicted in the painting shows several elements that constitute Douglas' art: clear-cut delineation, change of shadows and light, stylized human bodies and geometric figures as concentric circles in contrast to linear forms. The painting's theme resembles not only the biblical scene but can also be seen as an allusion to African-American religious tradition: the oversized, dark Jesus is bearing his cross, his eyes directed to heaven from which light is cast down onto his followers. Stylized Roman soldiers are flanking the scene with their pointed spears. As a result, the observer is reminded for instance of the African-American gospel tradition but also of a history of suppression. Beauford Delaney, Charles Alston, Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden were also important African-American Modernist painters that inspired generations of artists that followed them.