Experimentalists' Year

Each year-end, Art News casts a retrospective eye over the U.S. one-man shows of the year, makes a "Ten Best" selection. This week its critical nods for 1944 go entirely to experimental artists. Most of them are better known to the art world than to the public. Art News's ten artists of the year:

P: Alexander Calder, Manhattan sculptor --for experimental, surrealistic forms in rough plaster and bronze.

P: Jose de Creeft, Spanish-born sculptor --for simple, imaginative figure pieces in stone.

P: Julio de Diego, Spanish-born painter--for canvases of architectural and literary fantasy.

P: Vaughn Flannery, Maryland horse-breeder and ad-man-turned-painter -- for his first one-man show, of nostalgic semi-abstractions, mainly based on horse-racing and theatrical subjects.

P: Jean Helion, French-born abstractionist -- for figure paintings of sharp-angled robotlike men & women.

P: Walt Kuhn, oldtime Manhattan modernist -- for haunting, austere circus figures in oil for which he is best known, plus a few landscapes and still lifes.

P: Reginald Marsh, famed Manhattan painter of metropolitan low-life -- for doing it in watercolors this time.

P: Josef Scharl, Munich-born refugee artist of top-rank Continental reputation --for a roomful of boldly painted portraits and landscapes.

P: Kurt Seligmann, Swiss-born painter --for a show of abstract oils with an accent of surrealism.

P: Ben Shahn, New Jerseyite, veteran social protester -- for a show of tempera paintings forming an illustrative pageant of wit, horror, love and leftward politics.

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