The Gray Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition at its new location at 18 Cooper Square is the kind of deep dive into a cultural moment that has long distinguished New York University’s art institution, formerly the Gray Art Gallery. For your survey Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-62independent scholar Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert, director of the museum, investigated the phenomenon of American artists pouring into the French capital after World War II.
The exhibition includes more than 130 works made in Paris by around 70 artists. Many, including Herbert Gentry, Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, and Kenneth Noland, traveled to Paris on the GI Bill that provided funds for military veterans to continue their education. “The GI Bill allowed them to travel to Paris and immediately enroll in one of the art academies without having to apply, unlike in this country,” says Balken. “They were given a stipend of $75 a month and $25 for books, which was a large sum in post-war France.”
Others, such as Carmen Herrera, Joan Mitchell or Claire Falkenstein, were attracted by the sense of freedom of the big European city. Black artists like Beauford Delaney, Ed Clark and Harold Cousins moved there “partly because Paris was a more hospitable city for African Americans,” says Balken. The show also shines a light on some little-known figures, such as the Japanese-American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, who enlisted in the army to escape internment. After moving to Paris on the GI Bill, in 1950 he co-founded Galerie Huit, which for six years exhibited American artists including Al Held, Sam Francis and Shirley Jaffe. With this exhibit, the curators want to “show that she was much more diverse than the people that art history has recognized,” says Gumpert.
- Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-62, Gray Art Museum, New York, until July 20
