Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Storms into Nashville!

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, hosts our traveling exhibition, which opens today and runs through September 9, 2001.

Modernism and Abstraction showcases about seventy artworks that show American artists responding to the dynamism of the twentieth century.

The pulse of modern life animates H. Lyman Säyen's dancers in The Thundershower. Säyen studied with Matisse in Paris and was among the first to introduce avant-garde styles into America. Here, his dynamic shapes foreshadow the patterns of Art Deco, the dominant decorative style of the 1920s and '30s.

Source: Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: H. Lyman Säyen, 1875–1918, The Thudershower, about 1917–18, tempera on wood, 36 x 46 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Säyen to his nation.