Yugoslavian artist Albert Alcalay arrived in the United States with his wife Vera in 1951 and within a few years had established himself as a central figure among Rocky Neck’s “modernists."

The same year Alcalay arrived in the country, The Cape Ann Festival of the Arts began its 10-year run. It would serve as an important outlet for Rocky Neck’s avant-garde circle of artists. In 1961 Alcalay wrote an essay for the Festival’s exhibition catalog. He wrote that as modern thinkers, “we have to recognize that a fundamental transformation of our world outlook is taking place on every level of thinking and feeling.” He argued that contemporary artists had been “thrown into a chaotic world” and needed to look not in “sentimental sources of the past” but in “the air and breath of the present.”

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