Addison Rowe Gallery

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

The Transcendental Years

In 1938, Emil Bisttram joined Raymond Jonson and other artists in founding the Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico.

The group sought to move painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, introducing a new dimension of abstraction to American art. Works from the following years reveal Bisttram continuing to explore geometry, color, spirituality, and non-objective form.

Untitled, 1944
Mixed media on paper
17 ½ × 23 ½ inches
Signed and dated at corners

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Explore Emil Bisttram – A Chronological Vision in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Color and the Cosmos

By the 1950s, Bisttram had become increasingly interested in growth, energy, and cosmic processes.

His later abstractions could transform these invisible ideas through movement and complex color harmonies. In this monumental Untitled work from 1959, a field of blue is interrupted by forms that seem to emerge, recede, and float within it.

Untitled, 1959
Oil on board
67 × 51 inches
Signed and dated lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Inquire and explore the exhibition in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Between Abstraction and the Visible World

Bisttram began his career as a representational painter, but increasingly experimented with non-objective forms as his ideas about art, spirituality, and abstraction evolved.

Yacht Basin, painted in 1954, offers another glimpse into that evolution. Recognizable suggestions of the world remain, but they are transformed through geometry, rhythm, and color.

Yacht Basin, 1954
Oil on canvas
36 × 32 inches
Signed and dated lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021
🔗 Inquire and view the exhibition in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Movement Made Visible

For Bisttram, abstraction became a language for forces that could be experienced but not necessarily seen.

In Wind Blown, color, line, and form create a composition charged with movement - part of Bisttram’s continuing exploration of nature, energy, and the rhythms underlying the visible world.

Wind Blown, 1959
Oil on board
50 × 39 inches
Signed and dated lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Inquire and explore Emil Bisttram – A Chronological Vision in the first comment.

🌟 Tonight in New York - VIP Night at Independent 20th Century 🌟
We’re here!

Addison Rowe Gallery is in New York presenting Emil Bisttram – A Chronological Vision, a rare cross-section of Bisttram’s remarkable journey from commercial artist to visionary abstractionist.

The presentation brings together works spanning his early career, the Transcendental Painting Group years, and his explorations of science, spirituality, energy and the atom.

If you’re at Independent 20th Century tonight, come see us at Booth 504.

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

We look forward to seeing you!

🌟 Scenes from Booth 504 🌟

There’s nothing quite like seeing the work in person -and even better, getting to share it with others.

A few scenes from Emil Bisttram - A Chronological Vision at Independent 20th Century in New York.

Come see us at Booth 504 through September 27.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Beyond the Visible

Created around the formative years of the Transcendental Painting Group, Bridge to Infinity offers a glimpse into Bisttram’s pursuit of an art that could reach beyond the visible world.

Founded in New Mexico in 1938, the group sought to move painting beyond representation, using form and color to express inner states, cosmic forces and spiritual realities.

Bridge to Infinity, c. 1940
Oil on masonite
35 ¼ × 26 ½ inches
Signed and dated lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Explore Emil Bisttram – A Chronological Vision in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

American Modernism Meets the Atomic Age

What connects an abstract painter in Taos to the scientists of Los Alamos?

By the 1950s, Bisttram was increasingly exploring ideas of growth, energy and cosmic processes. His proximity to Los Alamos - and his artistic connections with the laboratory - placed him close to a scientific community investigating forces that were transforming humanity’s understanding of the universe.

Moon Magic became part of that remarkable intersection between art and science, appearing in the Art and the Atom exhibitions associated with Los Alamos.

Moon Magic, 1960
Oil on canvas
31 ½ × 35 ½ inches
Signed lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Discover more in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Cosmic Evolution

For Emil Bisttram, abstraction offered a way to look beyond the visible world.

Profoundly spiritual, Bisttram explored ideas ranging from electricity and rebirth to plant growth, planetary forces and the fourth dimension. Circles, orbs and geometric forms could evoke both celestial bodies and microscopic structures - a meeting place between the spiritual and scientific worlds that fascinated him.

Cosmic Evolution, ca. 1940
Pencil on paper
18 ¼ × 14 ¼ inches
Signed lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Inquire and view the exhibition in the first comment.

🌟 Featured at Booth 504 - Independent 20th Century - Emil Bisttram 🌟

Creative Forces

Before the Transcendental Painting Group, before Art and the Atom, Bisttram was already looking beyond appearances.

Created in 1936, Creative Forces comes from a pivotal period in Emil Bisttram’s evolution from representational painting toward abstraction. Geometry would increasingly become a means through which he explored spirituality, nature, energy, and the unseen forces of the universe.

Creative Forces, 1936
Oil on canvas
48 × 36 inches
Signed lower right

Independent 20th Century
Booth 504
September 24–27, 2026
The Breuer
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021

🔗 Inquire and explore Emil Bisttram - A Chronological Vision in the first comment.