A Manhattan Booth Puts Cold War Science in the Frame

Collectors at Independent 20th Century this month can walk up to canvases that once caught the eye of the physicists at Los Alamos. The paintings belong to Emil Bisttram, a leading voice of the Transcendental movement, whose surreal, atomic-tinged compositions are now hanging in Addison Rowe Gallery's booth at the New York fair. It is an unusual pairing of subject and audience: abstract, spiritually minded painting that once resonated with the scientists building the bomb. For anyone building out a collection around American modernism, the booth offers a direct look at where that history and this art actually met.

With reporting from Artnet News.