In May, 2013, the Cleveland Artists Foundation celebrates the range and excellence of art and designs created by members of Cleveland’s early Modernist art community. Cleveland has long been remarkable among American cities for the whole-hearted way in which its artist community embraced Modernism during the early years of the twentieth  century.
Encouraged by a close relationship with the Cleveland School of Art, regional modernism flourished far from the  European centers of the avant-garde. Back in 1910, a group of young but serious and enthusiastic artists, most of whom  worked in Cleveland’s dynamic commercial trades, banded together for the purpose of pursuing their ‘radically progressive’ ideas along artistic lines untrammeled by the limitations of academic art. Well-known names such as  William Zorach and William Sommer were among its ranks but the majority of artists are now largely unknown.

 

The upcoming exhibit at the Cleveland Artists Foundation celebrates this triumph of artistic expression by assembling an array of posters, paintings, sculptures and decorative designs encompassing both the fine art and commercial work of  these early Cleveland Modernists.