by Bram Dijkstra (Abrams, New York City), $60.

A uniquely American brand of Expressionism developed in the United States from the 1920s until the end of Word War II. Its proponents, many of whom were raised in the urban ghettos of the East Coast or Chicago, pushed for social justice in their paintings and often employed jarring distortions and unconventional color systems. This innovative movement, however, was thoroughly overshadowed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism.

In American Expressionism: Art and Social Change 1920–1950 author Bram Dijkstra offers a polemical, provocative analysis of the achievement of these American artists of the 1920s and ‘30s. Dijkstra argues that government and corporate interests promoted Abstract Expressionism as a means to suppress the socially active idealism that grew during the Depression. It was this mindset, he maintains, that provoked powerful critics to mock the Expressionists and even to unjustly link them to the art of Hitler’s Third Reich. Dijkstra is a cultural historian and professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at San Diego. He recently published the widely acclaimed Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood (1996).