MANCHESTER, NH.-The Currier Museum of Art presents In the American Grain: Dove, Hartley, Marin, O'Keeffe, and Stieglitz, on view through January 2, 2006. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Alfred Stieglitz was at the center of avant-garde circles in New York City. His gallery, 291, named for its address on Fifth Avenue, was one of the first in America to display revolutionary works by European artists such as Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. Stieglitz’s promotion of abstract art attracted young American artists like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe, who became collectively known as the Stieglitz Circle.

United in their belief that pure abstract forms had the potential to communicate feelings and ideas, the group interpreted nature as the source of their abstraction. Invoking the influence of American writers, the title of this exhibition expresses the desire of these artists to create works that were grounded in the American experience. Dove, Hartley, Marin, and O'Keeffe sought to capture its spirituality, vitality, and essence.

With unwavering financial and moral support from Stieglitz and collectors such as Duncan Phillips, these artists’ success set the stage for a new American modernist aesthetic that would change the course of American art. At one time a conservative art critic, Phillips had initially dismissed the European avant-garde, but he came to terms with abstraction and soon became an avid supporter of living American artists. From 1926 to 1946, he amassed a aesthetically cohesive collection of works by these American artists for display in his museum, acquiring the world’s largest and most representative group of paintings by Dove, key examples of every aspect of Marin’s development, signature works by O’Keefe and Hartley, and important photographs by Stieglitz.

Organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., this striking exhibition features more than forty cornerstone paintings by Dove, Hartley, Marin, and O’Keeffe, as well as a selection of photographs by Stieglitz. The Currier Museum of Art is proud to be the only New England venue for this important national tour. Combined with the Currier’s own works by these artists and their contemporaries, this exhibition provides the opportunity to explore the groundbreaking innovations of five of the country’s most accomplished and influential early twentieth-century artists.