Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work, and the Early Cultivation of American Modernism
Abstract
Leadership in the early cultivation of modernism in America rested with a group of New York avant-garde artists either influenced by or inspired by the photographer and connoisseur Alfred Stieglitz, 1864-1946 . Stieglitz was a key stimulus to American artists who wanted to be informed of, as well as debate, the changes in painting going on in Europe in the early twentieth century. Under Stieglitz’s tutelage, a growing population of artists absorbed modernist ideas. In many ways, the success of the famous New York Armory Show of 1913 was a direct result of Stieglitz’s influence as were many of the artistic experiments with new stylistic forms that occurred in the decade before 1913.
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