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New York City was a capital on the rise. Its skyscrapers soared superior than any other buildings in the world, manifesting the surging objective of a young country that was transforming itself with technological prowess. Europe was at war while American industry was generating jobs and products that promised to recover daily life. But American inventiveness complete beyond industry. In New York City, a handful of artists were determined to create American modern art.

The book and its companion showing present an overlooked chapter in the history of American modernism. Between the wars, artists on both sides of the Atlantic were creating a new illustration language celebrating an America not of virgin wilderness but of ingenuity and invention. They used tools of the new styles--cubism, expressionism, and dadaism--to make America's sinuous, glistening, engineered world, from spark plugs and dynamos to factories, suspension bridges, and skyscrapers.

Generations of artists across the twentieth century have turned to this pioneering group as a source of inspiration, says McDonnell. Any number of contemporary painters still look back to them and find pleased and formal devices to emulate, including the incredible paint handling and pictorial vocabulary that they generated.