" Between Art and Life ", Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 1 May 1999 - 11 July 1999.

While Europe lay in cultural confusion in the aftermath of the second World War, the United States experienced an unprecedented economic intellectual and cultural revival. Yet this American renaissance was by no means free of European influence Surrealist Art and individual artists like Archile Gorky and Hans Hoffman paved the way for a vigorous renewal in the visual Arts. New York became the Mecca for exile European artists. While reference to the European models are clearly present, what makes the works of these artists unmistakably new is the simplicity and expressive vitality of the solutions they discovered.

The exhibition begins with the father figures, Hans Hoffman and Archive Gorky, the works presented in this exhibition are grouped in three sections: Abstract Expressionism ( 1945 - 1955 ), Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Philip Guston, their paintings described by Harold Rozenberg as Action Painting. The generation of transition ( 1950 - 1960 ), a counter - movement emerged around 1950 by Artists as Larry Rivers, Robert Rauchenberg, Jasper Johns and Jim Dine questioned the law of strict abstraction and introduced a representational motifs into their art, and Pop Art, ( 1960 - 1970 ), by artists like Andy Wharhol, Roy Liechtenstein, Tom Wesselman, they tried to eliminate every trace of their own individual hand.

Willem De Kooning, "Two women in the country", 117,1cm x 103,5cm, oil, Smithsonian Institutution, Washington DC, 1954.

This is a beautifully organized show in this museum, it's a must for someone who is in Europe.

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