Seachange: Abstraction in Norman Lewis’ Time

Norman Lewis’ career spanned four-and-a-half decades between 1935 and 1979. During that time American artists developed dynamic approaches to abstract art. This installation uses work from PAFA’s permanent collection to complement Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis and provide a context for his achievement. Lewis tirelessly explored new ways of using abstraction to react to images, sensations, and sounds in the world. During his lifetime the American art world witnessed great transformations that resulted in more expressive options for artists than ever.  Artists drew from a wide range of sources in order to reject realism and attempt a new vocabulary of form and content. Seachange brings together a broad range of abstract art made by Lewis’s contemporaries from the 1930s through about 1990.