Release date: 20-Apr-05

Pavia's Archive of American Abstract Expressionism Acquired by Emory

The Philip Pavia and Natalie Edgar Archive, a collection of documentary material revealing the birth of Abstract Expressionism in New York from 1948-70, has been acquired by the Woodruff Library of Emory University. Pavia passed away last week due to complications from a stroke.

Among the highlights are original writings by top figures in 20th-century American art, including Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, to name only a few. Also present are records of the 8th Street Club; original essays, lectures and manifestos of It Is, A Magazine for Abstract Art; papers from the 23rd Street Workshop Club; plus correspondence and 560 original photographs.

"The Pavia-Edgar Archive is one of the last significant collections of Abstract Expressionist papers in private hands," says James Meyer, associate professor of art history at Emory. "The papers related to It Is include original handwritten and typed texts and drawings by such famous artists as Ad Reinhardt and Franz Kline. The only archive of this kind in the Southeast and a significant addition to Emory's art holdings, this is an invaluable resource for scholars."

Writings from Elaine de Kooning, Thomas Hess, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Dore Ashton, Harold Rosenberg, Irving Sandler and Allan Kaprow document a time when the apex of the cultural world shifted from Paris to Lower Manhattan, and the new ideas of Abstract Expressionism were being discussed and debated. Of particular interest is a letter by Alfred Barr tracing the history of the use and evolution of the term "Abstract Expressionism." The archive also includes a statement of philosophy written by Motherwell for a Philadelphia panel.

"The archive is a treasure trove of materials documenting the artistic debates and personal interchanges of the artists and writers who participated in two important phenomena in the New York avant-garde from the forties to the mid-sixties," says Clark Poling, professor of art history at Emory. "The participants represented both the generation of the Abstract Expressionists and the emerging Pop artists, so the primary materials in the archive are a boon to scholars of other aspects of American culture of that period in addition to art historians."

Pavia, one of the artists who met with his contemporaries informally at the Waldorf Cafeteria, formalized the group into The Club, or the 8th Street Club, which he ran from 1948-55. Club gatherings were attended by Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Barnett Newman and others associated with Abstract Expressionism during that period. After the club disbanded, Pavia edited and published six issues of It Is, A Magazine for Abstract Art. The archive contains all the material published in It Is from 1955-65, along with layout experiments and 250 pages of unpublished texts. In 1965, members of the 8th Street Club asked Pavia to form another group. The resulting 23rd Street Workshop Club continued until 1970 and included more than 50 artistic events documented in the archive.

In April 2004, at the age of 92, Pavia received a Guggenheim Award for a series of recent sculptures. An exhibition of his terracotta works was presented in New York in March 2005. Pavia exhibited at the top galleries in the 1960s and 70s, including Kootz and Martha Jackson. In 1967 his traveling museum exhibition made stops in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The tour culminated with a one-year exhibition in New York in front of the Guggenheim Museum of his groundbreaking "Scattered Collage" (marble, 1967). He won two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards, received an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and was named 2001 Artist Equity Honoree.

Artist and writer Natalie Edgar met husband Philip Pavia through the New York art scene in 1960. Edgar studied painting at Brooklyn College with Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Alfred Russell and other luminaries from the era and later studied art history at Columbia University. When she graduated, she began a 14-year writing post with ARTnews that placed her, she says, "right into the fray" of art in New York. An accomplished painter, Edgar has had 10 solo exhibitions in New York.

The archive augments an art history collection in Emory's libraries with strengths that include Italian Renaissance in the Suida Collection (1998 purchase of the Suida-Manning Library, an important library of rare books on European art) and Egyptology from the 1920s (2002 purchase of highlights from the Varille Library and a recent gift from the widow of Nicholas B. Millet). The Seydell Endowment has fostered a renowned collection of material on Belgium, including rare books from Rubens to Magritte.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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