Fundación Juan March, Madrid
March 6 - June 7, 2020
The photograph that would become the canonical portrait of the generation of artists known as the New York School was taken by Life magazine in 1950 to illustrate its coverage of a collective protest against the exhibition American Painting Today, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art that same year. Using the photograph as a starting point, The Irascibles: Painters Against the Museum (New York, 1950) presents the group of artists who took part in the protest and shows the enormous complexity of the American art world of the time, including William Baziotes, James Brooks, Fritz Bultman, Jimmy Ernst, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Weldon Kees, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Theodoros Stamos, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still and Bradley Walker Tomlin.
The exhibition’s publication (Rizzoli 2020) collects paintings by the artists, images from Leen's photoshoot and extensive documentation of the letter-writing process with relevant catalogs and magazines. Featuring more than 230 illustrations alongside original essays by several art historians and curators.