Although the myth persists that figurative painting in New York did not exist after the age of Abstract Expressionism, many artists in fact worked with a painterly, representational vocabulary during this period and throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This dissertation is the first survey of a group of painters working in this mode, all born around the 1920s and living in New York. Several, though not all, were students of Hans Hofmann; most knew one another; some were close friends or colleagues as art teachers. I highlight nine artists: Rosemarie Beck (1923-2003), Leland Bell (1922-1991), Nell Blaine (1922-1996), Robert De Niro (1922-1993), Paul Georges (1923-2002), Albert Kresch (b. 1922), Mercedes Matter (1913-2001), Louisa Matthiasdottir (1917-2000), and Paul Resika (b. 1928).

This group of artists has been marginalized in standard art historical surveys and accounts of the period. In general, this is because figurative painting of this period does not fit into a teleological reading of art history, with abstraction perceived as the ultimate progression and goal of painting. As Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism gained force, the figurative painters were increasingly marginalized in the art world.

The aim of this dissertation is to re-contextualize these artists into the New York art world of their time by discussing their training as abstractionists, their aesthetic theory, their teaching, their critical reception, and their careers. I focus particularly on the ways in which they reconciled the principles of abstraction with representational content. Although abstraction and representation were increasingly polarized in the art world, the painters themselves, and several critics and writers on their work were able to see the possibilities for a more dialectical synthesis of the two.