Albert Swinden

He was one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists, and he created significant murals as part of the Federal Art Project.

[2] In 1935, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the opening of the inaugural exhibit at the Federal Art Project Gallery, accompanied by Audrey McMahon, New York regional director for the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project.

Among the works on display was Abstraction, a sketch by Swinden; it was the design for a mural planned for the College of the City of New York.

A newspaper account described it as consisting of "brightly colored T-squares, triangles and rulers in horizontal, vertical and diagonal positions".

In 1935, he met with three friends, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, her future husband Byron Browne, and Ibram Lassaw, with the goal of exhibiting together.

The group grew and started meeting in Swinden's studio, which adjoined those of Balcomb and Gertrude Greene.

[9][10] One of the artists attending those meetings was painter John Opper, who said in an interview that Swinden was very quiet, shy, and inhibited.

[1] The other artists chosen for this project were Paul Kelpe, who painted two murals, and Ilya Bolotowsky and Balcomb Greene, each of whom created one.

[12] Swinden's large – 9.31 by 14.36 feet (2.84 m × 4.38 m) – untitled abstract mural has been described as a "carefully balanced, disciplined composition of rectangular shapes punctuated by occasional biomorphic forms".

[1] He was not able to execute the mural exactly as he had originally conceptualized, due to constraints of the installation space; for example, the unpainted upper corners which were inserted during restoration are where structural beams were present at the Williamsburg site.

This yearbook featured, among other things, essays such as Swinden's which expounded on theories and practices of abstract art.

[1][3][13] In a 1942 review of the American Abstract Artists' sixth annual exhibition, influential art critic Clement Greenberg wrote that among the "geometricians", Swinden "shows as much promise perhaps in his single unsuccessful painting as the others in their successful ones.