of the term, which connoted harmony and a higher plane of taste. In 1936 paintings of his were included in a show at the Galerie Pierre, Paris. Previously exhibited Paul Reinhardt Galleries in New York, it was then called "Five Contemporary American Concretionists" and lacked his work. He was generally reticent about his work but in 1938 told an interviewer that he tried to strip his painting down to the essentials of art. The statement fits with his writings on the artists whose work he admired. He felt art was best when least connected to things in the world: pure line, color, shape, texture, and tone. In keeping with this attitude, he rarely gave his paintings distinctive names, leaving them untitled or calling them simply "Composition" or "Abstraction." In 1937 Gallatin joined the American Abstract Artists group (to which Morris already belonged) and began to give it financial support. The group was formed by a loose assembly of artists to help educate the public about abstract art and to hold exhibitions. The following year, at the Georgette Passedoit Gallery in New York, he had his first solo exhibition and also sold a painting, Composition (1938), to the Museum of Modern Art. During the summer of that year he made his last trip abroad and thereafter enlarged his collection without traveling. In 1939 he exhibited with two other members of American Abstract Artists—Morris and Charles G. Shaw—at the gallery of Jacques Seligmann in New York. Since all three were non-objective painters and all were wealthy New Yorkers, they came to be called the "Park Avenue Cubists." From that time forward, non-objective art in general and Gallatin's art in particular became increasingly accepted within the New York art world. In 1941 he was said to paint with taste, fine touch, and inventive skill. In 1945 Edward Alden Jewell referred to him as an "impressive exponent of this form of abstraction" whose "work is refreshingly individual," "vigorous and expertly painted," and in 1947 he wrote that Gallatin was secure in his position as "uncompromising nonobjectivist" whose work was "all neatness and smooth reasonable decorum." In 1942 Gallatin was referred to as New York's "abstract king" in a profile that appeared in the "Talk of the Town" section of the New Yorker magazine. Later life and work During the 1940s Gallatin continued to exhibit his own paintings and organize exhibits of others. In 1942