The Orange County Museum of Art is presenting, through October 2, “Villa America: American Moderns, 1900-1950,” featuring major paintings by key American Modernists including Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth and Marsden Hartley, who reshaped the view of American art at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The exhibition continues with artists such as Ben Shahn, Philip Evergood, Paul Cadmus, Reginald Marsh, Philip Guston and Romare Bearden, who celebrated an “American Scene” and created powerful images of everyday American life.

“Villa America” also includes works by American Regionalists Grant Wood and John Curry, as well as Charles Sheeler and Niles Spencer, who returned to a form of classical realism to celebrate the American landscape in their paintings of the period. A diverse selection of major figurative works and artist portraits and self portraits is also featured in this outstanding exhibition.

“Villa America” presents for the first time one of the most celebrated private collections of American art from the first half of the Twentieth Century,” says museum director Dennis Szakacs. “Over the last 30 years, Myron Kunin has assembled over 400 works, including many of the finest paintings by virtually every significant artist of the era.

“Yet some of the most exciting revelations here are Kunin’s interest in less recognized but highly illuminating works by well-known figures,” he continued, “such as wonderful early landscapes and portraits by Stuart Davis, as well as his attraction to complex artist self portraits and an affinity for intimate, often unnerving nudes. Kunin’s maverick sensibility melds with a devotion to great painting and offers a highly personal entry into the American century.”

“Villa America: American Moderns, 1900-1950” is organized by Elizabeth Armstrong, deputy director for programs and chief curator. It is accompanied by a 150-page catalog with contributions by William Agee, Elizabeth Armstrong, Patricia Sue Canterbury, Wanda Corn, Bram Dijkstra and Karal Ann Marling. For the first time, the museum will introduce an iPod audio tour of the exhibition.

The exhibition begins with a look at key American Modernists working in Europe and New York during the first quarter of the century.

The exhibition’s title is taken from the name of Murphy’s home in southern France, which served as a gathering place for American and European Modernist alike. Symbolizing the creative cross-germination spawned by artists, writers and other cultural movers and shakers during these critical years, “Villa America” is also the title of a Murphy painting in the exhibition.

After World War I, as New York began to eclipse Europe as the destination for creative people, American artists returned and many artists from abroad moved to the United States.

“Self Portrait among the Churchgoers, 1939,” Ben Shahn, tempera on Masonite, collection of Curtis Galleries, Inc, founder Myron Kunin.

The first section of the exhibition includes more than 20paintings from the early “Villa America” years – from the firstwave of American modernists who traversed the Atlantic and explorednew avenues of expression opened up by their European counterparts,to a second and large wave of progressive artists who emergedfollowing the Armory Show, many of whom exhibited with AlfredStieglitz at his famous 291 Gallery.

A strong “regionalist” movement in painting was also one of the results of the Depression and it can be seen as a grassroots reaction to the cosmopolitanism of the preceding two decades. Grant Wood’s painting “Return from Bohemia,” 1935, which gives its name to this section of the exhibition, captures the endorsement of rural life and local customs. At the same time, an artist such as Charles Sheeler, who had experimented with Cubism earlier in the century, brought a photographic clarity and realism to his work of the 1930s and 1940s. Other artists working in a realistic mode – such as Ben Shahn, Bernard Perlin and Andrew Wyeth – are also well represented in this section of the exhibition.

In addition to offering a chronological overview of American art of the first half of the Twentieth Century, “Villa America” highlights a selection of major figurative works that span the entire period, from early American masterpieces by Robert Henri and George Luks to midcentury nudes by Milton Avery and Andrew Wyeth.

Finally, the exhibition includes a gallery devoted to self portraits by Paul Cadmus, Arthur Carles, Joseph Stella and George Tooker, together with portraits by Stuart Davis, Alice Neel, Morgan Russell, David Smith and Pavel Tschelitchew of friends, acquaintances and other notable sitters.

Newport Beach-Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach is at 850 San Clemente Drive. Hours are 11 am to 5 pm Tuesday-Sunday, with extended hours Thursdays from 11 am to 8 pm. Admission is $10.

For information, 949-759-1122, or www.ocma.net.