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expressionism that was considered
in Europe.

Ques: How do you feel/ about the fact that all this happened so fast and you story begins in 1954, '55 and now you're talking about the Venice Biennale of 1964 -- ten whole years. Isn't that a pretty short time for so much to have happened?

Leo: Well we had gathered momentum with our first wave of terribly important international, internationally recognized painting, abstract expressionism. And once that had been accepted by the whole word as the first American contribution to painting that was not local and provincial, from then on it was easy to...to make other things, important things that happened after, after that, acceptable. Certainly, now to come back t o Rauschenberg, he and Johns were very instrumental in breaking a deadlock, as it occurred at one point, when there was seemingly no way out from abstract expressionism, and they --Rauschenberg and Johns -- were probably a bridge to a new, new developments have occurred right after them so rapidly that it's almost incredible that two people of that magnitude should immediately then be succeeded by other painters, not only immediately tracable to their influence, but like Stiller for instance who really also becomes -- we can underst and Stiller in terms of, of say Johns too, although his connection with him may seem a remote first sight. Perhaps I haven't answer the question  properly, but it's a complex one.