Vytlacil on Hoffman:

I remember one rather large one with a woman in a red dress or something sitting up in a chair rather stiffly and straight and very much in the manner he used to teach us in Munich. BRUCE HOOTON: He's not known for his figurative work, you know?

Vytlacil experimented on all aspects of art---he was searching for his identity---these are Vaclave Vytlacil’s words “VACLAV VYTLACIL: Yes, it may well have been. I had forgotten about that. I thought that my painting of the lightbulb was a miserable affair - I look back upon it now - seeing what the human mind can do, you know - to oneself - but we all have faith in it. So we dropped any such thing as that and it was never brought up again, and everyone turned to geometric painting. I think for the first time there were constructions made. I know I did eight or ten. I believe these were some of the very first constructions done in New York City on the basis of modern abstract sculptural form. Mine were sort of hard to describe - things hung onto a door - I mean various objects. I also did a three dimensional structure and had a great desire to go on with the three dimensional, but we were living in two rooms with a newly acquired family. So my wife instructed me "No more three dimensions" - and that was the end of that phase”

Despite his renown as a teacher, it wasn't until 1944 at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery, that Hofmann had his first solo exhibition in the United States. There he became part of the emerging New York School, and was friendly with Pollock, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Clyfford Still, and Mark Rothko. From that time on, Hofmann exhibited widely. The Addison Gallery of American Art organized a large retrospective of his work in 1948. In 1957 another was mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Although Hans Hofmann never joined the American Abstract Artists, he encouraged its membership and sent a letter of support when the organization was formally established. Yet, through his students, who represented not only a significant number of the membership, but an important counterbalance to the geometric formalists, Hofmann's influence within the group was remarkable

. Pollock introduced Hofmann to Peggy Guggenheim who arranged his first solo show in New York at her Art of This Century Gallery.  During the forties Hofmann's approach to painting began to change and his imagery became much more abstract, though identifiable subject matter still appeared in his pictures from this period.

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)
Yves Tanguy's wife hurled a forkful of fish at her husband's mistress, Peggy Guggenheim

Vytlacil was born in New York in 1892 to Czech immigrant parents. He studied for a time at the Art Students League, where he was introduced to the experiments of European modernists. Among the earliest works on view, Geranium in a Clay Pot (1920) is an exuberant canvas that shows the powerful impact of Post-Impressionism, particularly the work of Cezanne. Here, large green leaves outlined in thick black brushstrokes fill the centralized composition. Cubist-style fractured planes connote a bright red terra-cotta pot in the center foreground.

In 1921, Vytlacil traveled to Paris, hoping to immerse himself in the avant-garde scene. However, after only a few months in the city, he moved to Munich to study at Hofmann's art school. Inspired by the painter, who witnessed the early stages of Cubism and had a thorough knowledge of Cezanne's work, Vytlacil remained at the school for more than four years. Hofmann's hold over the younger artist is evident in some of this show's liveliest works, such as Boats and Water (ca. 1924). In this abstracted seascape, bright red and yellow ellipses in the lower portion of the panel represent boats. They counterpoint the upper area's patches of white, blue and black that indicate a port town.

Vytlacil painted in a similar vein after returning to New York in 1928 to teach at the Art Students League, but in the 1930s, as a cofounder of the American Abstract Artists group, he produced a number of non-representational pieces. Later, he resumed his experiments with figuration but always emphasized the abstract properties of color, shape and line. A large, vibrant canvas, Still-Life Composition (1945), for instance, is full of movement. It shows an arrangement of lemons, grapes and melons outlined in vigorous black brushstrokes and highlighted with dashes of purple and red. The forms seem to gyrate against a background of orange and brown. While Vytlacil was never regarded as an action painter, painting doesn't get much more action-packed than this

Throughout his career, Vaclav Vytlacil took inspiration from studying the works of the masters.

Vytlacil traveled to Europe in the early 1920’s to study the paintings of Cezanne.

The angular deformations and interrupted planes that typified Cezanne’s later work began to play

When Vytlacil returned to New York in the 1930’s, he sought to bring the modernism

that he had discovered in Europe to the United States. Upon founding the American Abstract Artists

 he continued to support a truly American identity in the modernist world. His still lifes and figures

In the late 30’s and early 40’s, Vaclav’s painting came closest to being non-representational.

 The collection housed by the Caldwell Gallery includes a number of pieces from this period, including

 one called “Untitled Abstraction” from 1938. With mixed media on paper mounted on panel,

 the work showcases unusual forms, both sharp and organic, floating in an overlapping atmosphere

of black, white, brown, and dark blue. In homage to his mentor, Hans Hoffman, and the emerging American Modernism,

Throughout the next decade, Vytlacil’s returned to more representational elements but maintained an interest in modernist space.

He developed freer brushstrokes and was less discriminatory in his choice of subject matter.

This is evident in his paintings from Martha’s Vineyard. He used a predominantly cool palette

of sea greens and blues with interjections of red and yellow. Though the subject of the painting is clear

 the execution is abstracted and the lines are more loosely applied. His gouache “Fish in Net”

 from 1948 realizes the subject of the title, if unconventionally. The bodies of fish are outlined with simplistic,

almost childlike lines with quick gestural strokes to represent the gills, the eyes, or the string of the net.

 They are laid flat against the canvas, and, without the suggestion of depth, they appear to be floating in space.

 The fish and the surrounding background are colored in with a myriad of unexpected tones further abstracting the forms.

 Other paintings like “Fishing Harbor” (1947) and “Two Gulls” from Martha’s Vineyard deconstruct their subjects,

Vytlacil maintained an interest in abstraction throughout his life but stopped short of achieving pure nonobjective art.

 His true gift to the art world lay in his continued advocacy of modern painting. Through his work and lengthy teaching career,

History

American Abstract Artists (AAA) was founded as an exhibiting organization in 1936
 to unite multi-generational American artists working abstractly. Since its inception,
AAA has played a pivotal role in the evolution of non-objective art in America.
The group was born in response to the lack of professional respect
 accorded American modernists in the 1930s. AAA's annual exhibition was the focus
for the energies of the emerging American avant-garde.

Past Members
Past members of AAA over the years have included:

The Influence of Hans Hofmann
Although never a member of AAA, it should be noted that artist Hans Hofmann had an
ongoing influence on many original founding and later members of the group:

* Original founding members of AAA who studied with Hofmann include Rosalind Bengelsdorf,
Harry Bowden, Georgio Cavallon, Burgoyne Diller, Carl Holty, Ray Kaiser (later Ray Eames),
Mercedes Matter, George McNeil, and Vaclav Vytlacil.

* Later AAA members who studied with Hofmann include Maurice Berezov, Nell Blaine,
Fritz Bultman, Perle Fine, Robert Goodnough, Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson,
Judith Rothschild, and Ward Jackson.

* Hofmann also addressed AAA's annual meeting at the Riverside Museum in 1941.

The Abstract Tradition, by Stephen Westfall
The following essay was published as an introduction to AAA's
60th Anniversary Print Portfolio, 1997.

During the sixty-one years of the existence of the American Abstract Artists group,
abstract art has evolved from a foray into largely unexplored imaginary territory
 into a mainstream modal of aesthetic practice. It seems inevitable that what started
out as a mission to foster a sense of community among abstract artists by promoting
and providing occasions to exhibit their work and offering a discursive forum for
 an exchange of views, would now find itself a valuable repository of the history
of the abstract movement in America. If professional organizations by their
nature tend toward parochialism, the AAA owes its longevity in part to the
relative absence of a party line. The will to abstraction, after all, is generated
 by a variety of private impulses and historical interpretations.

In its early years, the AAA was a refuge and source of strength for adventurous
 artists faced with a largely uncomprehending and often hostile art public.
Abstraction broke in America at the Armory Show in 1913, though Dove, Hartley,
and O'Keefe had made forays into abstraction even earlier. Considering
 the greater difficulties of travel and relative absence of photographic reproduction
it is marvelous how advanced the first American work was in relationship to
the acknowledged historical primacy of the European abstract painters.
 And to consider the work of pioneering Americans is to be reminded again
of how deeply they were influenced by the Symbolist movement in art and literature.
One sees this influence in their emphasis on the natural landscape as source imagery
 and their attempts to suggest a corollary between the external, natural world
 the interior world of imagination and psychology.

The American Abstract Artists group wasn't formed until more than
twenty years later,
 in 1936, out of a support network led by Carl Holty, Harry Holtzman,
and George L. K. Morris, among others. By this time, abstract art in the public
imagination
 had come to be equated with the clean lines and aesthetic pragmatism of the
 machine-age.
 A dynamic, geometric clarity was certainly the aesthetic goal of many abstract
artists,
 but there were others who worked under the influence of Surrealism and
Expressionism,
not to mention the natural landscape that so inspired the first generation of
American abstract artists.
 From its beginnings, the AAA sought to accommodate this diversity,
whatever the opinions of its individual members.

One manifestation of this tolerance of diversity was the welcome extended
to the European
artists fleeing the events of World War II. Mondrian, Leger, and Moholy-Nagy
 were only among
the best known arrivals who found fellowship and an exchange of ideas
within the AAA.
It is important to remember that, while some programs of abstraction
were imagined
as a universal language of form, the broader artistic climate in America
 up to and during
the war was marked by sentimental and nationalistic clamor for
representations of "local scene,
" national history and folklore. The international appeal and
 community of abstract art was
 regarded with grave, sometimes hysterical suspicion.

The politics of expanded and diversified identity consumes our
contemporary art discourse
 with much of the same sense of urgency. A measure of urgency is,
in fact, widely held
 to be one of the criteria of recognition for contemporary art.
The contemplative claim of most abstract art is felt by many
 to have lost its address.
There is also a residual, but still powerful resentment over
 the dominance of monumental
abstractionist styles both critically and in the marketplace during
the late fifties and sixties.
 Against this dynamic and contentious backdrop the AAA has typically gone
 about its business in low key fashion.
 It continues to provide a wide tent for its members, to provide forums
 for exhibitions and discussion,
 but it also now finds itself in an emergent, wholly natural role as conservator
 due to both its own longevity
 and the ebb and flow of critical acceptance.

The print portfolio at hand is in part a testament to that longevity.
 It is the third the organization has sponsored in sixty years.
The first was published in 1937,
and the second fifty years later. For the 1987 50th Anniversary Portfolio
two of the original participants
 Ibram Lassaw and Esphyr Slobodinka, each contributed a new lithograph.
Many more from the 1987 portfolio are represented this time around,
 along with several new names.
 As the new portfolio demonstrates, the AAA continues to abjure any
 party line about
what abstraction should be or look like. Of course,
the geometric is strongly represented,
but gestural and organically derived imagery is also present.
Some of the work is diagrammatic,
reflecting imaginations that express themselves more fully in three dimensions.
 And the visualizing inscription of the computer is increasingly in evidence.
 Apart from the pleasures afforded by the individual prints
 the portfolio serves as an index
of the plurality of styles and intention embraced by abstract art.

The art world is much larger than it was when the AAA was founded.
The proliferation and hybridization of abstractionist styles
 has clearly been accommodated
 and encouraged by the group.
 If abstraction has been so thoroughly integrated
into contemporary art practice that it is often considered
a mode to work against,
then the subtle shift of balance in the AAA's stewardship
 from advocacy to conservatorship
will provide the careers it nourishes and discourse it foster
 a reminder of the deepening
connectedness that comes from being a part of a living tradition.