The Atom. One World records what, for the artist, was a crucial visual trope associated with his assessment of emerging new technology and its subsequent impact on the world. In presenting an image of the ominous mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, Richard Pousette-Dart highlights the irony of world unity attained through the common threat of nuclear destruction. A first-generation Abstract Expressionist and founding member of what is known as the New York School, Pousette-Dart was the youngest of this loosely-knit group that included modern art titans such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. In 1944, Peggy Guggenheim, a strong supporter of American Abstract Expressionism, gave Pousette-Dart a solo exhibition at her New York museum-gallery, Art of This Century.