The Library

🧵 - A thread on 'Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group'

Abstract painting meets theosophical spirituality in 1930s New Mexico: a book on radical American modernism. 

Published in 2021 and covering all nine of the group's original members. Cover artwork by desert transcendentalist Agnes Pelton.

🧵 - TPG

Founded in Santa Fe + Taos, New Mexico, in 1938, at a time when social realism reigned in American art, the TPG sought to promote abstract art that pursued enlightenment + spiritual illumination.

'Blue Forms' (1942) by Florence Miller Pierce

artist & poet
exploring text & language
through sound & visual poetry

🧵 - TPG (3)

Despite the quality of their works, these Southwest artists have been neglected in most surveys of American art, and their paintings are rarely exhibited outside of New Mexico.

'Creative Forces' (1936) by Emil Bisttram

🧵 - TPG (4)

Faced with the double disadvantage of being an openly spiritual movement from the wrong side of the Mississippi, the TPG has remained a well hidden secret mostly known only to cognoscenti. 

'Beyond Civilization to Texas' (1950) by Robert Gribroek

🧵 - TPG (5)

The group’s artists are crucial contributors to an alternative through-line in 20th-century abstraction. 

They evoke the women artists in my previous thread on the 'World Receivers' catalogue, who all fall under the same loose transcendental + visionary category.

'Movement' (1939) by Stuart Walker

🧵 - TPG (6)

Essays the book, including by Dane Rudhyar, examine the TPG in light of their international artistic peers, and underscore their involvement with esoteric thought and Theosophy. In this regard, it's impossible not to be reminded again of the legacy of Hilma af Klint.

'Voyaging' (1931) by Agnes Pelton

🧵 - TPG (7)

2 women, 
Agnes Pelton + Florence Miller Pierce, 

7 men, 
Emil Bisttram, Robert Gribbroek, 
Lawren Harris, Raymond Jonson, 
William Lumpkins, Horace Towner Pierce 
and Stuart Walker

together formed the TPG. 

Each artist warrants an in-depth exploration! 

'Eclipse' (1935) by Raymond Jonson