Walter Quirt

As one of the first Americans to experiment with surrealism in the early 1930s, illustrator and painter Walter Quirt made pioneering efforts to change society for the better through art that was as political as it was self-aware. Quirt quickly drew critical attention with his first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1936. His “radical” Social Surrealist paintings, depicting the gross economic, racial, and labor inequities during the Depression of the 1930s, firmly established his bona fides as an important modern artist. When Alfred H. Barr, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, opened MoMA’s first exhibition of Surrealism, “FANTASTIC ART, DADA, AND SURREALISM” in 1937, the Museum and American Artists Congress co-sponsored a symposium to explain and discuss these new avant-garde movements. They chose Walter Quirt and Salvador Dali to be the featured speakers representing Surrealism to a fascinated public and art-critical media.

Quirt’s radical beliefs and unpredictable personality went hand-in-hand with his ever-changing artistic style, and his passionate temperament allowed him to create a body of work ranging from colorful depictions of simple joy to profoundly haunting masterpieces.

Quirt was a significant contributor to the canon of 20th century American avante-garde, represented in New York between 1936 and 1959, by the top galleries including Julien Levy and Durlocher Brothers. Robert Coates, art critic for The New Yorker, and the critic who coined the term, “Abstract Expressionism”, described Quirt in 1943 as …one of the most impassioned artists alive today!”