Contemporary American painters

Abstract

For the majority of Europeans, America, from the artistic point of view, is a colony of Europe, and exhibitions of American art in Europe, when they deal with the past, for instance the 17th and 18th centuries, are considered English, and when-they deal with contemporary art, Parisian. Both these judgments are false. It is true that Americans had emigrated from Europe with a European conception of art, but in the American climate, so different both from the natural and from the spiritual point of view, painting became drier, more concrete, and Puritanism itself gave a very special charm to early paintings and portraits. As a matter of fact they remind us of the “primitives” so highly valued today; in other words Americans have retained this preference for naivete and no where are there so many amateur Sunday painters as in the U.S.A. It is true that Americans do not have a Menzel nor a Delacroix, but the average of their painting is about the same as in Europe.