PORTLAND — Maine’s fresh, visual beauty and solitude played a pivotal role in the Modern Art movement of the 1990s.

A small group of avante garde artists from New York summered in a mid-coast region then-known as Seguinland. Here, they developed close personal and professional relationships — and a strong sense of place that influenced their works.

Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Gaston Lachaise, William and Marguerite Zorach and Max Weber, who emerged as leaders in the movement, spent summers in the area that today includes Bath, Georgetown Island, Little Good Harbor, Boothbay Harbor, Phippsburg and Seguin Island.

Photographers Paul Strand, Clarence White, F. Holland Day and Gertrude Kasebier also made their homes in this rural, unspoiled, location overlooking the sea.

Seguinland offered an artistic experience distinct from art colonies at Ogunquit and Monhegan Island because it was NOT an art community. It was a more isolated area where the artists, mentored by well-known photographer and avante garde art dealer Alfred Stieglitz of New York, could find solitude and share common interests in modernism and avante garde work.

The Portland Museum of Art is displaying paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs by these and other world-renowned artists in its “Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland, 1900-1940” exhibit running through Sept. 11.

Walking into the Great Hall on the first floor, one sees a huge concrete nude titled “Garden Figure,” by Lachaise. The original version of this piece, based on one of Lachaise’s early statuettes, was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller for a garden on his property in New York. The second version was made for Lachaise’s garden at Georgetown Island in Maine and donated to the PMA by the Isabel Lachaise Estate in 1964. The sculpture stands in front of a mural-size photograph of Lachaise’s home and garden on a large, fabric wall hanging, giving the installation a dream-like quality.

Also displayed are photos of houses owned by Lachaise and Fred Holland Day, as well as Marin Island, which John Marin purchased and where he painted, but never lived. He later moved to Cape Split in Addison.

This installation of photos, displayed near the elevator on the first floor, creates a feeling of entering Seguinland and is a good introduction to the exhibit on the second floor.

At the end of the hallway near the elevators, a film plays continuously showing the early fishing industry of Seguinland and various modes of transportation to that location. There is also an interesting map of the area.

Arriving on the second floor, one sees photographs taken by White, the best of which capture everyday life at Little Good Harbor in 1911. White’s most famous photograph is of Stieglitz, though it’s quite dark probably due to its age and the camera and developing process used then.

Some of the best paintings by Hartley, who was born in Lewiston in 1877, are “Two Shells,” “Gardener’s Glove and Shears” and “Jotham Island ( Fox Island) Off Indian Point, Georgetown, Maine.”

Marin’s works are like beacons of light foreshadowing abstract art in America. His “Pine Trees on Mountain Top, Small Point, Maine” (1915) and “Marin Island No. 1 Small Point-Maine” (1926) are like visual poems filled with abstract elements and lines that suggest, rather than define, the sea and pine trees.

Marguerite Zorach’s portrait drawing titled “Isabel Lachaise,” done in 1930, is an outstanding contribution to the exhibit. Also worthy of note is her “Clambake,” an oil painting depicting a family picnic at the ocean that includes her daughter, Dahlov Zorach Ipcar, with a cat.

“Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland, 1900-1040” is a pleasure to see and the hardcover, 170-page catalog containing many photos and a map is worth having in your library.

The museum at Seven Congress Square is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday; and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students with ID, $4 for youths ages 6-17 and free for children under 6. Admission is free from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday.

Pat Davidson Reef has a master’s degree in education and has taught art history at Catherine McAuley High School in Portland. She has written two children’s books, “Dahlov Ipcar, Artist,” and “Bernard Langlais, Sculptor.”