admitting less well known today than.

admitting less well known today than, say, Pollock de Kooning or Rothko Richard Pousette-Dart fits solidly into the first generation of Abstract Expressionism, right down to his inclusion in the famous 1951 photograph of "The Irascibles," in Life magazine. This present to view consisted primarily of his large oils done in the 1940 and '50s

Pousette-Dart's work from the early to mid-1940s, derived from the Jungian collective unconscious and filtered by the agency of Picasso, easily recalls the early work of his equals in the movement. Abstract notice Spirit Adagio and Figure are useful examples of the style. In each, totemic proper spheres such as an eye, a horse's head reminiscent of Picasso's horse in Guernica or a face resembling an African mask hang from or peek from one side a gridlike structure. Gottlieb and Rothko did similar works. The palette is primarily the earth tones of early Cubism, further his squeezing of black paint directly from the tube to create doodlelike lines atop a welter of impasto gives an impression the two of structure and of the attempt to break untie from it Piet Mondrian, engage Chaim Soutine.

Like many of his comrade artists, Pousette-Dart tried to harness abstraction to the great themes of art, as in Crucifixion. Sometimes he went at it in ways that no single in kind could attempt with a straight face today, as in Comprehension of the Atom. A cluster of small watercolors from the early '40 included in this exhibit depict vaguely biomorphic forms in glowing, jewel-like colors, colors that Pousette-Dart did not now permit himself in oil. by dint of the early 1950s, his prompt to a lighter, more vibrant palette and a flatter, les painterly phraseology is obvious in such works as Fantasia of gold Dawn and The Wave. in the last named of these, for example, a mass of disparate, swirling shapes coalesces into a soaring, birdlike form. With these works, Pousefte-Dart mov into something recognizably his own

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