Monograffi Fine Art Galleries
~  The Magic Zone - American Magic Realism  ~

          Alfred H. Barr Jr., Director of the Museum of Modern Art, played an important role in defining Magic Realism in American art. In the late 1920s Barr introduced the term Precisionist to describe the early works of Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. In the late 1920s he wrote extensively to Gustav Hartlaub about Neue Sachlichkeit and German art. In the early 1930s Barr and his wife lived in Stuttgart, Germany, and witnessed first-hand the closure of museums and takeover by the Nazis. In 1936 he curated the exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada , Surrealism at MoMA. Barr observed parallels between Neue Sachlichkeit and developments in American Scene painting. He also noted that there was a broad trend across the country in the creation of a new type of special art, an American response to Surrealism.

           In 1943 Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Dorothy C. Miller curated the exhibition American Realists and Magic Realists at MoMA. He defined Magic Realism as "the work of painters who by means of an exact realistic technique try to make plausible and convincing their improbable, dreamlike or fantastic visions". Influenced by both Precisionism and Surrealism, and grounded in the traditions of American Realism, many paintings of the 1930s and 40s were created outside the parameters of Regionalism or Social Realism. These paintings occupy a special niche. Most were painted by relatively unknown painters. They exhibit a timeless quality, born in the imagination.

       
 

 The Red Ventilator (1945)
by Arthur Osver

 

Landscape in Perspective (1934)
by Harold Lehman

 

Clara Carter (1931)
by Clarence Holbrook Carter

 

 

           
 

  Woman with Negro Sculpture (c1929) by Audrey Buller

 

Bread and Honey (1948)
by Audrey Buller

 

Black Panther (1934)
by Alice Dinneen

 

 

 

     
 

The Picnic
by Zama Vanessa Helder

 

Pettit Mansion (1942)
by Zama Vanessa Helder

 

 

       
 

Memory of the Charles River (1936)
by O Louis Gugliemi

 

East River (1934)
by Jara Henry Valenta

 

 

       
 

De Profundis (1947)
by William S. Schwartz

 

September 27 1943 (1943)
by John Atherton

 

 

     
 

Ashokan Dam (1934)
by Arnold Wiltz

 

 De Profundis (1947)
by William S. Schwartz

 

 

     
 

Corn Dance, Taos (1937)
by Edward Laning

 

Hooversille (1933)
by John Langley Howard

 

 

     
 

Engine House and Bunkers (1934) by Austin Mecklem

 

The White Factory (1928)
by Katherine Schmidt

 
 

 

   
 

This Was the Place (1946) by Karl Fortess

 

 

   
 

Carosel by Clarence Holbrook Carter

 

 

   
 

Rain on the Prairie (c1949) by Peter Hurd