Subtitled "Arts, Communication, Environment: A World Review," trans|formation was an ambitious New York review edited by the abstract painter Harry Holtzman with Martin James, deliberately cutting across the arts and sciences rather than treating them as separate cultural worlds.
Holtzman, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group and a close friend of Piet Mondrian, published the journal annually through Wittenborn, Schultz across three issues between 1950 and 1952. Its stated mission was explicit: to treat art, science, and technology as a continuum rather than isolated, mutually antagonistic specialisations, and to provide "authentic glimpses into the emerging forms of the now."
Although embedded in the New York art world, trans|formation was devoted neither to art nor to architecture alone, soliciting contributions from natural and social scientists alongside artists and architects. Its holistic framing of the "environment" is now seen as an early anticipation of the interdisciplinary experiments more fully developed in the 1960s.
trans|formation published three issues in total, between 1950 and 1952. This archive currently holds Issue 1 (1950) only; Issues 2 and 3 have not yet been digitised.
One building has been extracted from the issue. See the project in the project directory.
American abstract painter, founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, and a close friend and authority on the work of Piet Mondrian. Edited the journal throughout its three-issue run.
Co-edited the journal alongside Holtzman.
The scan held in this archive was digitised, paginated, and assembled into a PDF booklet by the Architectural Periodicals Database team.
Copyright status has not yet been fully researched for this title. Under US law, works published in 1950 may already be in the public domain if their copyright was not properly renewed, though this has not been independently confirmed. Harry Holtzman died in 1987, meaning his individually authored contributions would remain in copyright in the EU until 2057 under Directive 2006/116/EC. The Architectural Periodicals Database does not assert ownership of the original creative content, only of the database itself. If you are a rights holder and believe your work has been used without appropriate permission, please contact us at info@architecturalperiodicals.com.