Villa America: American Moderns 1900-1950

Published by the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, this gorgeous hardcover book by Elizabeth Armstrong  documents for the first time one of the world's most celebrated private collections of early twentieth-century American art. Curtis Galleries, Inc. founder Myron Kunin has spent much of his life slowly amassing major paintings by key American modernists including Georgia O'Keeffe, Romare Bearden, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Philip Guston, Marsden Hartley and Alice Neel--artists who reshaped America's understanding of itself at the beginning of the twentieth century. "Villa America, " which takes its title from a 1922 Gerald Murphy painting, presents 75 canvases from 48 of the most important artists of the era. Its powerful illustrations range from members the Stieglitz Circle to the painters of the American Scene. Much of the work shown has rarely been seen before. 152 pages.