An Abstract Impulse : Fifty Years of Abstraction at the National Academy

Comprised of nearly fifty paintings, sculptures and works on paper, The Abstract Impulse highlights artists in such critical movements as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Op Art. Artists who are included are such canonical figures as Robert Motherwell, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, and Robert Mangold among others. This publication, together with its coinciding exhibition, seeks to unveil the pluralistic ways in which abstraction developed after 1950, which will be revealed by the grouping of the works stylistically and thematically into three general sections: gesture, geometry, and introspection.