Continuum: The Ascent of the Modern

Between the wars, the enormous import of the 1913 Armory Show begins to be felt among Taos artists coming to terms with the ascendance of two parallel modernist currents--one espousing a Cubist approach to space exemplified by Andrew Dasburg, and the other embracing a reliance on expressive form mediated by intensely subjective color, represented by John Marin and Marsden Hartley.

Yet common to the interwar Taos artists in both camps is an acute personal expression born of the region’s exotic isolation, and provoked by the enormous presence of the landscape, constantly yielding work in both styles that sought to reconcile a conscious exploration of Cubist structure or Expressionist form with the landscape, pueblo, and town’s inherent recourse to representation.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.