Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists, 1925-1945

Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists, 1925-1945 by Sims, Lowery Stokes. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780942949247.

This catalog from a 2003 exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem-"one of the most ambitious shows this museum has produced ... [and] also one of the more stimulating," according to the New York Times-surveys 102 works by African American artists from the mid-20th century. Contrasting their development with that of their white contemporaries, who were progressing through cubism, surrealism, and abstract impressionism in the modernist landscape, it examines works by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Wifredo Lam, Elizabeth Catlett, Lois Mailou Jones, Hale Woodruff, and James VanDerZee.