Excerpt from Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed
By Gail Levin, Ph.D.
Syd Soloman, born in 1917 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, might have become one of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Instead, he enlisted in the United States Army in 1941, serving in the Corps of Engineers, Initial Camouflage Battalion, eventually winning five bronze stars. Solomon thus missed the crucial years of the early 1940s in New York, when the art dealer Peggy Guggenheim ran her legendary gallery, “Art of This Century,” and when many influential European artists, such as Max Ernst, André Masson, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Fernand Léger, and Piet Mondrian, sought refuge from World War II and settled in and around New York. Their presence helped to inspire the development of a new and innovative style of modern art by American artists.
A touring exhibition surveying this moment, “Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years,” was on view in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978.3 As co-curator of the show, I received an indignant inquiry demanding to know why none of these artists had served in World War II. Intending to explore the early years of Abstract Expressionism, this show focused on work produced from 1935 to 1949 by artists considered the first generation of this movement: William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt, Theodoros Stamos, Cly fford Still, and Bradley Walker Tomlin.
On September 16, 1940, the United States instituted the first peacetime draft in American history: the Selective Training and Service Act required all men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register for the draft. After the United States entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made subject to military service; only women were exempt. We can look at some of the reasons the artists in the Whitney show did not serve.
Essays by Michael Auping, George S. Bolge, Gail Levin, Ph.D., and Mike Solomon
Designed by Mark Robinson
Published by Berry Campbell
Printed by Meridian, Rhode Island
