The New York School Second Generation: Paintings by Twenty-Three Artists by The Jewish Museum - 1957

New York: The Jewish Museum, 1957. First Edition, First Printing. Small 4to (9 x 7 inches; 227 x 177 mm), 16 pages plus 15 pages of black-and-white plates in stapled wrappers. Some scattered toning and soiling, faint shallow vertical crease. Overall, a Very Good copy. *Rare catalogue for an important exhibition notable for introducing Jasper Johns to the art world. The exhibition featured 22 other artists, many of them early in their careers (Johns was 26). Artists included Elaine de Kooning, Robert de Niro, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg, and George Segal, among others.*Johns exhibited "Target in Green," which caught the eye of Leo Castelli, who had recently established an art gallery. Shortly after, Castelli met Johns and offered him his first solo show, launching one of the great artistic careers of the 20th century.*In his introduction, the art critic Leo Steinberg makes a forthright declaration right at the start: "No sense pretending that the work of these 23 younger New York painters is easily understood. It is not. With few exceptions, it is deliberately recondite, uncompromising and exclusive; we are meant to break our teeth on it."*There were no other copies in commerce as of November 12, 2018. This catalogue documents a groundbreaking exhibition that remains a touchstone of 20th-century American art.