An exciting group biography that reveals how exiles from war-torn France brought surrealism to America, contributing to the shift of the art scene's center from Paris to New York and launching the movement that became known as Abstract Expressionism. American artist Robert Motherwell made an unexpected statement in 1957: "I have only known two art modes well... the Parisian surrealists, with whom I began to paint seriously in New York in 1940, and the homegrown movement that has become known as 'Abstract Expressionism,' but which should genetically be called 'Abstract Surrealism.'" Motherwell's bold statement that Abstract Expressionism was neither new nor local, but the result of a brief romance between America and France, bordered on the controversial. "Surrealists in New York" tells the story of this "romance" and the European exiles who brought surrealism with them—a cultural exchange between the Old and New Worlds—centered around the introspective printmaker Stanley William Hayter and the legendary printing studio Atelier 17 he founded. In Hayter's studio, artistic experiments literally defined the boundaries of modern art. There, Jackson Pollock discovered the balance between freedom and control that would culminate in his signature drips. The influence of Max Ernst, André Masson, Louise Bourgeois, and other illustrious émigrés on the works of Motherwell, Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the American avant-garde has long been overlooked in art history. Charles Darwent draws on original documents, interviews, and archival material, bringing to life the events and personalities from this pivotal encounter. Revealing a fascinating new perspective on twentieth-century art history.