This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

Magdalena Dabrowski retraces the course of geometric abstract art in our century, she divides the years from 1910 to 1980- into five spans. The first: Origins of the Nonobjective - Cubism, Futurism, Cubo-Futurism. The second: Surface to space - Suprematism, de Stiji, Russian Constructivism. Then, Internation constructivism, followed by Paris-New Yourk connection and finally, Nonfigurative tendrncies.