Venues:
Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, August 17–September 25, 2007.
Lugano: Galleria Gottardo, October 10–December 22, 2007.

Curator:
Philip Rylands.

Consulting curator:
Luca Massimo Barbero.

Artist:
Richard Pousette-Dart.

Exhibition description:
This exhibition was the first retrospective of Richard Pousette-Dart to be held in Europe. Pousette-Dart was the youngest of the pioneering New York group of the Abstract Expressionists, active in New York in the early 1940s. Between 1941 and 1942 his mural-scale canvases anticipated Jackson Pollock’s ‘break-through’ to mural-scale work in 1943. Pousette-Dart’s technique at the time emphasized matter, gesture and layering, and became the first pictorial statement of what came to be known as ‘action painting.’ He was influenced by Oriental philosophy and American transcendentalist thinking. The conviction that the materials and abstract symbols of painting could reveal universal truths in the realm of the spirit never failed him. Peggy Guggenheim gave Pousette-Dart a solo exhibition in 1947 at her Art of This Century gallery. Moreover, Pousette-Dart’s painting, together with that of his New York contemporaries such as Pollock, Arshile Gorky and William Baziotes, was first shown in Europe thanks to Peggy Guggenheim, when her collection was presented at the 24th Venice Biennale in 1948.

Partnerships:
Exhibition organized by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in collaboration with the Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart, New York, and the American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich.

Catalogue:
Rylands, Philip. Richard Pousette-Dart. Milano: Skira, 2007.

Two catalogues, in English and Italian. Catalogues include a foreword by Thomas Krens (Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), Franco Rogantini (Director, Galleria Gottardo) and Philip Rylands (Director, Peggy Guggenheim Collection), and essays by Philip Rylands, Kristin Hübner and Lowery Stokes Sims. Catalogue also contains the checklist of the exhibition, a critical chronology and a bibliography.

Library location: GUGG PGC 2007 .01 (Italian), GUGG PGC 2007 .02 (English).