During World War II the Carnegie International was suspended and from 1943 to 1949 the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Museum of Art) focused on American art in annual exhibitions titled "Painting in the United States."

Today an exhibition of 48 paintings by artists represented in those shows -- 42 of which hung in the exhibitions -- opens at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg.

From Edward Hopper's isolated figure standing beside his house in a "Pennsylvania Coal Town" to Gladys Rockmore Davis' tender depiction of two children reading at "The End of Summer," from the sculpted components of Arthur G. Dove's abstract "Arrangement in Form II" to the anthropomorphized industrial machinery of Arthur Osver's "The Red Ventilator," the works speak to a period and to a place.

This "Painting in the United States" also is timely, running concurrently with the 55th International and with Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary year. And this collection of quintessential American paintings opens at a venue with a national reputation for collecting and presenting American art just before the Fourth of July.

Westmoreland and exhibition curator Barbara Jones says her purpose in organizing the exhibition, some 65 years after the historic shows, and "when the United States is once more at war," was twofold. She wanted to gather as many of the original paintings as possible, and to represent the diversity of styles artists were working in, inviting a fresh look at them.

Art seemed to be in as much turmoil as the larger world in the 1940s, and that's reflected in the exhibition, which includes a wide variety of expression.

Jones has arranged the show, and the catalogue, by style, Realism and Modernism being the two main movements represented.

Many of the artists changed their painting styles as abstraction gained dominance in those years and afterward. Those who didn't were "essentially ignored," Jones says. "People thought of them as carrying over from the '40s. They were left out of textbooks."

The new styles often weren't easily accepted, by the public or by critics.

Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi's "Room 110," for example, a very abstract still life, was virulently attacked even though it won first prize in the 1944 exhibition.

The Pittsburgh Press, which Jones says routinely ran photographs of the show's prize winners, created a parody of "Room 110" and published it with two titles, "Padded Cell 7-11" or "The Maid's Day Off." (Kuniyoshi is represented here by "Mother and Daughter.")

Some complained that an award should not be granted to a Japanese-American during war time, and only through the effort of friends was Kuniyoshi -- a patriot who had designed posters for the war effort -- spared the internment camps.

Jones got the idea for this exhibition while researching the retrospective of Samuel Rosenberg's art that she curated in 2003, noting that the Pittsburgh artist had been invited to exhibit in all seven of the "Painting" shows. Rosenberg's "Long on the Way," included here, was not in the previous show.

Pulling "Painting" together was no small task. Approximately 50 new artists were invited for each exhibition, and each comprised between 300 and 350 paintings. She researched almost 600 artists, some of whom are comparatively scantily archived.

Among her favorite finds are artist couples -- the probable subject of a future exhibition -- exemplified by George L.K. Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen, showing "Commandos Attacked by Dogs"( he was one of few artists whose imagery reflected the war) and "Composition with Toreador Drinking" respectively.

But each of these 48 choice works fills a gap in the experience of our recent past and has an enticing story to tell.