THE HARD-TO-CLASSIFY WORK OF A LITTLE-KNOWN, VISIONARY MODERNIST PAINTER FROM PENNSYLVANIA EMERGES

by Edward M. Gómez

For every emblematic, canonical master whose life story and achievements have been well examined and immortalized in the textbook narrative of modern art’s history, how many other less well-known, innovative, remarkably accomplished artists are there whose stories are also worth telling, and whose diverse bodies of work are also worth exploring in depth and documenting for the ages?

Thanks to the work that certain, so-called revisionist art historians have carried out in recent decades, many female, non-white, and other artists who had long been overlooked or unknown for many years have begun to receive serious critical and curatorial consideration, and their work gradually has entered modernism’s canon. In carrying out their research and analysis, these art historians often have been influenced by and have employed the techniques of postmodernist critical theory.