Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.
Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian who developed new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works. An expert on early Christian, Medieval and modern art, he explored periods and movements with an eye toward their works' social, political and material constructions.
George Clair Tooker, Jr. was an American figurative painter. His works are associated with Magic realism, Social realism, Photorealism, and Surrealism. His subjects are depicted naturally as in a photograph, but the images use flat tones, an ambiguous perspective, and alarming juxtapositions to suggest an imagined or dreamed reality. He did not agree with the association of his work with Magic realism or Surrealism, as he said, "I am after painting reality impressed on the mind so hard that it returns as a dream, but I am not after painting dreams as such, or fantasy." In 1968, he was elected to the National Academy of Design and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tooker was one of nine recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 2007.
The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer a major in comic art.
Colleen Browning was an Anglo-American realist and magical realist painter.
Paul Cadmus was an American artist widely known for his egg tempera paintings of gritty social interactions in urban settings. He also produced many highly finished drawings of single nude male figures. His paintings combine elements of eroticism and social critique in a style often called magic realism.
Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, philanthropist, and cultural figure in New York City, noted especially as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. He developed and sustained the company with his organizing ability and fundraising for more than four decades, serving as the company's general director from 1946 to 1989. According to the New York Times, he was "an expert in many fields", organizing art exhibits and lecture tours in the same years.
The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
John Ferguson Weir (1841–1926) was an American painter, sculptor, writer, and educator. He was a son of painter Robert Walter Weir, long-time professor of drawing at the Military Academy at West Point. His younger brother, J. Alden Weir, also became a well-known artist who painted in the style of American Impressionism. His niece was artist and educator Irene Weir.
Adolf Dehn was an American artist known mainly as a lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, he participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including regionalism, social realism, and caricature. A two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.
Dorothea Rockburne is a Canadian abstract painter, drawing inspiration primarily from her deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Her work is geometric and abstract, seemingly simple but very precise to reflect the mathematical concepts she strives to concretize. "I wanted very much to see the equations I was studying, so I started making them in my studio," she has said. "I was visually solving equations." Her attraction to Mannerism has also influenced her work.
Robert Remsen Vickrey was a Massachusetts-based artist and author who specialized in the ancient medium of egg tempera. His paintings are surreal dreamlike visions of sunset shadows of bicycles, nuns in front of mural-painted brick walls, and children playing.
Jared French was an American painter who specialized in the medium of egg tempera. He was one of the artists attributed to the style of art known as magic realism along with contemporaries George Tooker and Paul Cadmus.
Irving Sandler was an American art critic, art historian, and educator. He provided numerous first hand accounts of American art, beginning with abstract expressionism in the 1950s. He also managed the Tanager Gallery downtown and co-ordinated the New York Artists Club of the New York School from 1955 to its demise in 1962 as well as documenting numerous conversations at the Cedar Street Tavern and other art venues. Al Held named him, "Our Boswell of the New York scene," and Frank O'Hara immortalized him as the "balayeur des artistes" because of Sandler's constant presence and habit of taking notes at art world events. Sandler saw himself as an impartial observer of this period, as opposed to polemical advocates such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg.
Robert Gwathmey was an American social realist painter. His wife was photographer Rosalie Gwathmey(September 15, 1908 – February 12, 2001) and his son was architect Charles Gwathmey.
The Fairfield University Art Museum, formerly the Bellarmine Museum of Art, is an art museum located on the renovated lower level of Bellarmine Hall on the campus of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. The museum features Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Celtic, and Asian art and artifacts in three distinct galleries totaling 2,700 square feet (250 m2) of space.
William Clutz was an American artist known for urban paintings, pastels, and charcoal drawings of pedestrian scenes transformed by light. He was associated with a revival in figurative representation in American art during the 1950s and 1960s.
Virginia Dehn was an American painter and printmaker. Her work was known for its interpretation of natural themes in almost abstract forms. She exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the U.S. Her paintings are included in many public collections.
Henry Koerner was an Austrian-born American painter and graphic designer best known for his early Magical Realist works of the late 1940s and his portrait covers for Time magazine.
Robert Coleman Jackson is an American painter and author based in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. He is known for his realistic still life paintings.
