Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Although the term "abstract expressionism" was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates, it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine ''Der Sturm'', regarding German Expressionism. In the USA, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.

The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic.

Style

left|thumb|An abstract expressionist painting by Jane Frank (1918-1986): ''Crags and Crevices'', 1961 Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson, Max Ernst and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.

The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. California Abstract Expressionist Jay Meuser, who typically painted in the non-objective style, wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum, "It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples." Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from the violent and grotesque ''Women'' series of Willem de Kooning's figurative paintings and the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all four artists are classified as abstract expressionists.

Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. With artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Emma Kunz, and later on Rothko, Barnett Newman, John McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin, abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind.

Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression but also by the muralists of Mexico such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate the social protests of these painters. Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York like ''The Art of This Century Gallery''. The McCarthy era after World War II was a time of artistic censorship in the United States, but if the subject matter were totally abstract then it would be seen as apolitical, and therefore safe. Or if the art was political, the message was largely for the insiders.

While the movement is closely associated with painting, and painters like Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and others, collagist Anne Ryan and sculpture and certain sculptors in particular were also integral to Abstract Expressionism. David Smith, and his wife Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Isamu Noguchi, Ibram Lassaw, Theodore Roszak, Phillip Pavia, Mary Callery, Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Bourgeois, and Louise Nevelson in particular were some of the sculptors considered as being important members of the movement. In addition, the artists David Hare, John Chamberlain, James Rosati, Mark di Suvero, and sculptors Richard Lippold, Herbert Ferber, Raoul Hague, George Rickey, Reuben Nakian, and even Tony Smith, Seymour Lipton, Joseph Cornell, and several others were integral parts of the Abstract expressionist movement. Many of the sculptors listed participated in the Ninth Street Show the famous exhibition curated by Leo Castelli on East Ninth Street in New York City in 1951. Besides the painters and sculptors of the period the New York School of Abstract expressionism also generated a number of supportive poets, like Frank O'Hara and photographers like Aaron Siskind and Fred McDarrah, (whose book ''The Artist's World in Pictures'' documented the New York School during the 1950s), and filmmakers — notably Robert Frank — as well.

Although the abstract expressionist school spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and the San Francisco Bay area of California.

Art critics of the post–World War II era

In the 1940s there were not only few galleries (The Art of This Century, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Julien Levi Gallery and a few others) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman who functioned as critics as well.

While New York and the world were yet unfamiliar with the New York avant-garde by the late 1940s, most of the artists who have become household names today had their well established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the color field painters like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann. Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters like Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, as well as the seminal paintings of Arshile Gorky. Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of ''ARTnews'', championed Willem de Kooning.

The new critics elevated their proteges by casting other artists as "followers" or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal.

In 1958, Mark Tobey "became the first American painter since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Venice Biennale. Barnett Newman, a late member of the Uptown Group, wrote catalogue forewords and reviews, and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery. His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: — it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."

Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was a New York Trotskyite Clement Greenberg. As long time art critic for the ''Partisan Review'' and ''The Nation'', he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. The well-heeled artist Robert Motherwell joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era.

Clement Greenberg proclaimed abstract expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value. It supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet, in which painting became ever 'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface.

Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral."

One of the most vocal critics of abstract expressionism at the time was ''New York Times'' art critic John Canaday. Meyer Shapiro, and Leo Steinberg along with Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg were important art historians of the post-war era who voiced support for abstract expressionism. During the early to mid sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert Hughes added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around abstract expressionism.

History

World War II and the Post-War period

During the period leading up to and during World War II modernist artists, writers, and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who didn't flee perished. Among the artists and collectors who arrived in New York during the war (some with help from Varian Fry) were Hans Namuth, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Max Ernst, Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, Leo Castelli, Marcel Duchamp, André Masson, Roberto Matta, André Breton, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian. A few artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard remained in France and survived. The post-war period left the capitals of Europe in upheaval with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris, formerly the center of European culture and capital of the art world, the climate for art was a disaster and New York replaced Paris as the new center of the art world. In Europe after the war there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Art brut, and Lyrical Abstraction or Tachisme (the European equivalent to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein and Pierre Soulages among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting. In the United States a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to dominate the world stage and they were called ''Abstract Expressionists''.

Gorky, Hofmann and Graham

The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via great teachers in America like Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Russia. Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction was a "new language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works like "The Liver is the Cock's Comb". "The Betrothal II", and "One Year the Milkweed" immediately prefigured Abstract expressionism, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence. American artists also benefited from the presence of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst and the André Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery, and Peggy Guggenheim's gallery ''The Art of This Century'', as well as other factors. Hans Hofmann in particular as teacher, mentor and artist was both important and influential to the development and success of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Among Hofmann's protege's was Clement Greenberg who became an enormously influential voice for American painting and among his students was Lee Krasner who introduced her teacher Hans Hofmann to Jackson Pollock her husband.

Pollock and Abstract influences

During the late 1940s Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all Contemporary art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all that came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—the placing of unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials; linear skeins of paint dripped and thrown; drawing, staining, brushing; imagery and non-imagery—essentially blasted artmaking beyond any prior boundary. Abstract expressionism in general expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities that artists had available for the creation of new works of art.

The other Abstract expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Robert Motherwell, Peter Voulkos and others opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. The new art movements of the 1960s essentially followed the lead of Abstract Expressionism and in particular the innovations of Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Hofmann, Reinhardt and Newman. The radical Anti-Formalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, Conceptual art and the Feminist movement can be traced to the innovations of Abstract Expressionism. Rereadings into abstract art, done by art historians such as Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock and Catherine de Zegher critically shows, however, that pioneer women artists who have produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by the official accounts of its history, but finally began to achieve long overdue recognition in the wake of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

Action painting

The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms action painting and abstract expressionism interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme.

The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York School painters and critics. According to Rosenberg the canvas was "an arena in which to act". While abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had long been outspoken in their view of a painting as an arena within which to come to terms with the act of creation, earlier critics sympathetic to their cause, like Clement Greenberg, focused on their works' "objectness." To Greenberg, it was the physicality of the paintings' clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them as documents of the artists' existential struggle.

Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting's creation. This spontaneous activity was the "action" of the painter, through arm and wrist movement, painterly gestures, brushstrokes, thrown paint, splashed, stained, scumbled and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip onto the canvas, while rhythmically dancing, or even standing in the canvas, sometimes letting the paint fall according to the subconscious mind, thus letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself. All this, however, is difficult to explain or interpret because it is a supposed unconscious manifestation of the act of pure creation.

Abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic action paintings, with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and grotesque ''Women'' series of Willem de Kooning. (As seen below in the gallery) ''Woman V'' is one of a series of six paintings made by de Kooning between 1950 and 1953 that depict a three-quarter-length female figure. He began the first of these paintings, ''Woman I,'' collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, in June 1950, repeatedly changing and painting out the image until January or February 1952, when the painting was abandoned unfinished. The art historian Meyer Schapiro saw the painting in de Kooning's studio soon afterwards and encouraged the artist to persist. De Kooning's response was to begin three other paintings on the same theme; ''Woman II,'' collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, ''Woman III,'' Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, ''Woman IV,'' Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. During the summer of 1952, spent at East Hampton, de Kooning further explored the theme through drawings and pastels. He may have finished work on ''Woman I'' by the end of June, or possibly as late as November 1952, and probably the other three women pictures were concluded at much the same time. The ''Woman series'' are decidedly figurative paintings.

Another important artist is Franz Kline, as demonstrated by his painting ''Number 2,'' 1954 (see above) as with Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, was labelled an "action painter because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brush strokes and use of canvas. Automatic writing was an important vehicle for action painters Franz Kline in his black and white paintings, Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey and Cy Twombly who used gesture, surface, and line to create calligraphic, linear symbols and skeins that resemble language, and resonate as powerful manifestations from the collective unconscious. Robert Motherwell in his ''Elegy to the Spanish Republic'' series also painted powerful black and white paintings using gesture, surface and symbol evoking powerful emotional charges.

While other action painters notably Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Norman Bluhm, Joan Mitchell, and James Brooks (see gallery) used imagery via either abstract landscape or as expressionistic visions of the figure to articulate their highly personal and powerful evocations. James Brooks' paintings were particularly poetic and highly prescient in relationship to Lyrical Abstraction that became prominent in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

Color field

Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb (see gallery) and the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied was abstract), are classified as abstract expressionists, albeit from what Clement Greenberg termed the Color field direction of abstract expressionism. Both Hans Hofmann (see gallery) and Robert Motherwell (gallery) can be comfortably described as practitioners of action painting and Color field painting. In the 1940s Richard Pousette-Dart's tightly constructed imagery often depended upon themes of mythology and mysticism; as did the paintings of Adolph Gottlieb, and Jackson Pollock in that decade as well.

Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt and several series of paintings by Joan Miró. Art critic Clement Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. The Color Field painters sought to rid their art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis, Mark Tobey (see gallery) and especially Barnett Newman whose masterpiece ''Vir heroicus sublimis'' is in the collection of MoMA and Ad Reinhardt used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. In the case of Rothko and Gottlieb sometimes using symbol and sign as replacement of imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art, artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.

In distinction to the emotional energy and gestural surface marks of Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, the Color Field painters initially appeared to be cool and austere, effacing the individual mark in favor of large, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the actual shape of the canvas, which later in the 1960s Frank Stella in particular achieved in unusual ways with combinations of curved and straight edges. However Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive albeit in a different way from gestural Abstract expressionism.

Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School, and the San Francisco Bay area. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges). The canvas as the ''arena'' became a credo of Action painting, while the ''integrity of the picture plane'' became a credo of the Color field painters.

In the 1960s after abstract expressionism

In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s several new directions like Hard-edge painting exemplified by John McLaughlin expland other forms of Geometric abstraction, as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles. Clement Greenberg became the voice of ''Post-painterly abstraction;'' by curating an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions.

Abstract expressionism and the Cold War

Since the mid 1970s it has been argued by revisionist historians that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA, who saw it as representative of the USA as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets. The book by Frances Stonor Saunders, ''The Cultural Cold War—The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters'', published in the UK as ''Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War'', details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950–67. Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of ''The New York Times'', called ''Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and the Cold War'', argue that much of this information (as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it) concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s is flatly false, or at best (contrary to the revisionists' avowed historiographic principles) decontextualized . Other books on the subject include ''Art in the Cold War'' by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time; and ''Pollock and After'' edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted the Kimmelman article.

Consequences

Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923–2002) who was a member of the Montreal-based, surrealist-inspired group Les Automatistes helped introduce a related style that some might problematically call abstract impressionism to Paris in the 1950s. Michel Tapié's groundbreaking book, ''Un Art Autre'' (1952), was also enormously influential in this regard. Tapié was also a curator and exhibition organizer who promoted the works of Pollock and Hans Hofmann in Europe. By the 1960s, the movement's initial affect had been assimilated, yet its methods and proponents remained highly influential in art, affecting profoundly the work of many artists who followed. Abstract Expressionism preceded Tachisme, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Fluxus, Pop Art, Minimalism, Postminimalism, Neo-expressionism, and the other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements that evolved. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against abstract expressionism began with Hard-edge painting (Frank Stella, Robert Indiana and others) and Pop artists, notably Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein who achieved prominence in the US, accompanied by Richard Hamilton in Britain. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in the US formed a bridge between abstract expressionism and Pop art. Minimalism was exemplified by artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Mangold and Agnes Martin.

However, many painters, such as Jules Olitski, Jane Frank (a pupil of Hans Hofmann), and Antoni Tàpies continued to work in the abstract expressionist style for many years, extending and expanding its visual and philosophical implications, as many abstract artists continue to do today, in styles described as Lyrical Abstraction, Neo-expressionist and others.

Major paintings and sculpture

List of abstract expressionists

Major artists

Significant artists whose mature work defined American Abstract Expressionism:

Charles Alston

Alice Baber

William Baziotes

Norman Bluhm

Louise Bourgeois

Ernest Briggs

James Brooks

Fritz Bultman

Hans Burkhardt

Jack Bush

Alexander Calder

Nicolas Carone

Giorgio Cavallon

John Chamberlain

Elaine de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Robert De Niro, Sr.

Richard Diebenkorn

Mark di Suvero

Enrico Donati

Edward Dugmore

Friedel Dzubas

Jimmy Ernst

Herbert Ferber

Perle Fine

Sam Francis

Jane Frank

Helen Frankenthaler

Michael Goldberg

Robert Goodnough

Arshile Gorky

Adolph Gottlieb

Morris Graves

Cleve Gray

Philip Guston

David Hare

Grace Hartigan

Hans Hofmann

Paul Jenkins

Earl Kerkam

Franz Kline

Albert Kotin

Lee Krasner

Ibram Lassaw

Norman Lewis

Richard Lippold

Seymour Lipton

Morris Louis

Conrad Marca-Relli

Nicholas Marsicano

Mercedes Matter

Joan Mitchell

Robert Motherwell

Louise Nevelson

Barnett Newman

Isamu Noguchi

Kenzo Okada

Stephen Pace

Ray Parker

Jackson Pollock

Fuller Potter

Richard Pousette-Dart

Ad Reinhardt

Milton Resnick

George Rickey

Jean Paul Riopelle

William Ronald

Theodore Roszak

Mark Rothko

Anne Ryan

Louis Schanker

Jon Schueler

Charles Seliger

Harold Shapinsky

David Smith

Theodoros Stamos

Richard Stankiewicz

Joe Stefanelli

Hedda Sterne

Clyfford Still

Alma Thomas

Mark Tobey

Bradley Walker Tomlin

Cy Twombly

Jack Tworkov

Esteban Vicente

Peter Voulkos

Hale Woodruff

Emerson Woelffer

Taro Yamamoto

Manouchehr Yektai

Other artists

Significant artists whose mature work relates to American Abstract Expressionism:

Karel Appel

James Bohary

William Brice

Charles Ragland Bunnell

Mary Callery

Edward Clark

Donald Cole

Alfred L. Copley aka (L. Alcopley)

Edward Corbett

Jean Dubuffet

Lynne Drexler

Lucio Fontana

Herbert Gentry

Sam Gilliam

John D. Graham

Elaine Hamilton

Hans Hartung

Gino Hollander

Jasper Johns

Karl Kasten

Michael Loew

John Levee

Knox Martin

Georges Mathieu

Herbert Matter

Edward Meneeley

Ludwig Merwart

Jan Müller

Robert Natkin

Jules Olitski

Irene Rice-Pereira

Robert Rauschenberg

Larry Rivers

Jack Roth

Pablo Serrano

Aaron Siskind

Pierre Soulages

Nicolas de Staël

Frank Stella

Stuart Sutcliffe

Augustus Vincent Tack

Antoni Tàpies

Nína Tryggvadóttir

Don Van Vliet

Ulfert Wilke

Zao Wou Ki

See also

Related styles, trends, schools, or movements

Abstract Art

Abstract Imagists

Action painting

American Abstract Artists

Color field painting

History of painting

Lyrical Abstraction

New York School

Post-painterly abstraction

Tachisme

CoBrA

Other related topics

''Bluebeard'' - Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut is a fictional autobiography written by fictional Abstract Expressionist Rabo Karebekian.

Ismail Gulgee (artist whose work reflects abstract expressionist influence in South Asia during the Cold War, especially 'action painting')

Michel Tapié (critic and exhibition organizer important to the dissemination of abstract expressionism in Europe, Japan, and Latin America)

References

Books

Anfam, David. '' Abstract Expressionism'' (New York & London: Thames & Hudson, 1990). ISBN 0-500-20243-5

Craven, David, ''Abstract expressionism as cultural critique: dissent during the McCarthy period'' (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.) ISBN 0-521-43415-7

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless'' (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4

Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6

Serge Guilbaut. ''How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art'', University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Bibliography

Anfam, David. ''Abstract Expressionism—A World Elsewhere''. New York: Haunch of Venison, 2008, Haunchofvenison.com

Greenberg, Clement. "'American-Type' Painting". In ''Art and Culture: Critical Essays''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. 208-29.

Jachec, Nancy. ''The Philosophy and Politics of Abstract Expressionism 1940-1960.'' Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000 ISBN 0-521-65154-9

O'Connor, Francis V. ''Jackson Pollock'' [exhibition catalogue] (New York, Museum of Modern Art, [1967]) OCLC 165852

Saunders, Frances Stonor, ''The cultural cold war: the CIA and the world of arts and letters'' (New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 2000) ISBN 1-56584-596-X

Tapié, Michel. ''Hans Hofmann: peintures 1962 : 23 avril-18 mai 1963.'' (Paris: Galerie Anderson-Mayer, 1963.) [exhibition catalogue and commentary] OCLC: 62515192

Tapié, Michel. ''Pollock'' (Paris, P. Facchetti, 1952) OCLC: 30601793

Quotations about abstract expressionism

Abstract Expressionist value expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, the unknown over the known, the veiled over the clear, the individual over society and the inner over the outer.

*''William C. Seitz,American artist and art historian''

External links

Jackson Pollock

Louis Schanker

Philip Guston

Perle Fine

''Perle Fine Abstract Expressionism-1950s New York action painter'- video from youtube.com

Albert Kotin

''Albert Kotin Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s action painting''— video from youtube.com

''James Brooks Abstract Expressionist painter 1906-1992''

''James Brooks Abstract Expressionsim-New York School 1950s''-video from youtube.com

American Abstract Artists

''Beginning of the New York School 1950s-Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s''— video from youtube.com 13:06

Clyfford Still Museum

''Abstract expressionism 1950s-New York School Artists of the 9th St Show Reminisce''—video from youtube.com 13:34

''9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce''—video from youtube.com 9:27

''Nicolas Carone-Abstract Expressionism-Artist of the 9th St. Show''—video from youtube.com

''Conrad Marca-Relli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School collage-painter''— video from youtube.com

''Robert Richenburg Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s''— video from youtube.com

''Joe Stefanelli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s''— video from youtube.com

Category:Abstract art Category:Avant-garde art Category:Contemporary art Category:Modern art Category:Modernism Category:American art Category:Art movements

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bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Conrad Marca-Relli
birth name	Corrado Marcarelli
birth date	June 05, 1913
birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, USA
death date	August 29, 2000
death place	Parma, Italy
nationality	United States
field	Painting
training	New York School
movement	Abstract expressionism}}

Conrad Marca-Relli (born Corrado Marcarelli; June 5, 1913 Boston – August 29, 2000 Parma) was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, Marca-Relli and others became a leading art movement of the postwar era.

Biography

Marcarelli (he changed the spelling later in life) and his parents moved to New York City when he was 13 years old. In 1930 he studied at the Cooper Union for a year. He later supported himself by working for the Works Progress Administration, first as a teacher and then with mural painting divisions of the Federal Art Project during this period he won the Logan Medal of the arts. He served in the US Army military service during World War II (1941–1945).

Marca-Relli taught at Yale University from 1954 to 1955 and from 1959 to 1960, and at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1953, he bought a house near Jackson Pollock's home in Springs, East Hampton. As his career progressed, he increasingly distanced himself from the New York School.

He lived and worked in many countries around the world, moving to Parma, Italy with his wife, Anita Gibson, whom he married in 1951. Conrad Marca-Relli died on August 29, 2000 in Parma, at the age of 87.

Career

After the war Marca-Relli joined the "Downtown Group" which represented group of artists who found studios in lower Manhattan in the area bounded by 8th and 12th street between First and Sixth Avenues during the late 1940s and early 1950s. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was actively involved in the avant-garde art world in Greenwich Village. These artists were called the "Downtown Group" as opposed to the "Uptown Group" established during the war at The Art of This Century Gallery.

His first one-man show was in New York City in 1948. In 1949 Marca-Relli was among the founders of the "Artists' Club" located at 39 East 8th Street. He was selected by his fellow artists to show in the Ninth Street Show held on May 21-June 10, 1951. The show was located at 60 East 9th Street on the first floor and the basement of a building which was about to be demolished.

The artists celebrated not only the appearance of the dealers, collectors and museum people on the 9th Street, and the consequent exposure of their work but they celebrated the creation and the strength of a living community of significant dimensions.

Conrad Marca-Relli was among the 24 out of a total 256 New York School artists included in the Ninth Street Show and in all the following New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals from 1953 to 1957.,,, These Annuals were important because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves.

Marca-Relli's early cityscapes, still lifes, circus themes and architectural motifs are reminiscent of Italian surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico. Throughout his career, Marca-Relli created monumental-scale collages. He combined oil painting and collage, employing intense colors, broken surfaces and expressionistic spattering. He also experimented with metal and vinyl materials. Over the years the collages developed an abstract simplicity, evidenced by black or somber colors and rectangular shapes isolated against a neutral backdrop.

In 1967, the Whitney Museum of American Art gave him a retrospective show.

Exhibitions

1947, 1949, 1951: Niveau Gallery, New York City

1948-1949: Galleria Il Cortile, Rome

1953, 1956, 1958: Stable Gallery, New York City

1956: Frank Perls Gallery, Los Angeles & Hollywood

1957: Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome

1957, 1962:Galleria del Naviglio, Milan

1959, 1960-1964: Kootz Gallery, New York City

1960: Sharon Playhouse Gallery, Sharon, Connecticut

1961: Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf; Bolles Gallery, San Francisco; Joan Peterson Gallery, Boston; Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo, Lima

1962: Galerie de France, Paris;

1963: Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zürich; Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo

1965: Galería Bonino, Buenos Aires

1967: James David Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida; Makler Gallery, Philadelphia; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

1968: University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Alpha Gallery, Boston; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

1969: Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Reed College, Portland, Oregon

1970: University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, Maryland; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida

1970, 1975, 1979: Marlborough Gallery, New York City

1971: Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf; Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Lowe Art Museum at University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida

1972, 1975: Galería Carl Van der Voort, Ibiza

1973: Galería Ynguanzo, Madrid; Galerie Numaga, Auvernier, Neuchâtel; Galerie Bahlsen, Berlin

1974, Marlborough Galerie, Zürich; Makler Gallery, Philadelphia

1975, Marlborough-Goddard Gallery, Toronto and Montréal

1977, Galería Lanzenberg, Ibiza; Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York City

1978, Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona

1978-1979: Carone Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

1979: Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. Fort Lauderdale, Florida

1979-1980: John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida

1981: Hokin Gallery, Chicago

1982: Phoenix Gallery, Washington, D.C.; G.M.B. Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan

1983: Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City

1985-1987, 1989, 1991: Marisa del Re Gallery, New York City

1986: R.H. Love Gallery, Chicago

1990: Riva Yares Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona

1990: 2002: Galleria d’Arte Niccoli, Parma

1996: Vered Gallery, East Hampton, New York

1998:Fondazione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice

2000: Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt

2004: Joan T. Washburn Gallery, New York City; Galleria Open Art, Prato

2006: Lagorio Arte Contemporanea, Brescia

2008: Rotonda della Besana, Milan

2009: Knoedler & Company Gallery, New York City

Works in Museums and Public Collections

James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania

Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania

The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan

High Museum of Art, Atlanta,

Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Museu d'Art Contemporani MACBA, Barcelona

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California

Sammlung Reinhard Onnasch, Berlin

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland

Museum of Art & Archaeology, Columbia, Missouri

University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri

Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida

Denver Art Museum, Denver

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit

Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

The Empire State Collection, New York City

Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City

Collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, New York City

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, Oklahoma

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia

Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh

Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida

Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri

St. Paul Gallery of Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York

Fondazione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice

Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine

See also

Art movement

Abstract expressionism

New York School

Action painting

Collage

Collagist

Ninth Street Show

References

Catalogs

Corrado di Marca-Relli. oils; Text by H. Elkin; Exhibition: Niveau Gallery New York, 1947

Corrado di Marca-Relli, New Paintings; Exhibition: The New Gallery, New York, 1951

Marca-Relli: Pastes a painting; Parker Tyler in "ArtNews", November New York, 1955

Marca-Relli; Text by Gillo Dorfles; Exhibition: Galleria del Naviglio, Milano, 1957

Marca-Relli - Kootz; Text by W.Rubin; Exhibition: Kootz Gallery, New York, 1959

William C Agee, ''Conrad Marca-Relli'' (New York, Published in the occasion of the personal exhibition at Whitney Museum of American Art by F.A. Praeger, 1967.) OCLC: 1555599

Conrad Marca-Relli; Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, ''Marca-Relli Feb. 1970'' (New York : Marlborough-Gerson Gallery; Associated galleries: Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd., Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, 1970) OCLC: 56224536

Conrad Marca-Relli; Cordier & Ekstrom, ''Marca-Relli, new constructions & collages on paper : March 23 to April 23, 1977'' (New York : Cordier & Ekstrom, 1977) OCLC: 47714830

Conrad Marca-Relli; Santiago Amón; Galeria Joan Prats, ''Marca-Relli 1976-1978''(Barcelona : Ediciones Polígrafa, [1978?]) ISBN 8434302659 9788434302655; OCLC: 6284061

Conrad Marca-Relli, ''Conrad Marca Relli : the early years, 1955-1962: February 3-27, 1979'' (New York : Marlborough Gallery, 1979.) OCLC: 6059559

Conrad Marca-Relli; Alex Rosenberg Gallery, ''Conrad Marca-Relli, homage to la belle epoque : new works : October 5-31, 1983'' (New York, N.Y. : Alex Rosenberg Gallery, [1983]) OCLC: 47715196

Marca-Relli; Text by Dore Ashton; Galleria d'Arte Niccoli, Parma, Italy 1990. Exhibition: October 6-November 26, 1990

''Reclaiming Artists of the New York School Toward a More Inclusive view of the 1950s'', Exhibition: March 18-April 22, Baruch College CUNY, New York City, 1994 Mishkin Gallery

Marca-Relli:Tensioni Composte/Composite Tensions; Works from 1939 to 1997; Text by Bruno Corà; Pacini Editore and Galleria Open Art, Prato; 2004 [anthological exhibition, October 14, 2004-January 8, 2005, Prato, Galleria Open Art] ISBN 8877816287

Conrad Marca-Relli; The New York Years 1945 - 1967; Text by Jasper Sharp; Knoedler & Company Publisher, New York, 2009; Exhibition: September 12 - November 14, 2009, New York, Knoedler & Company Gallery ISBN 978-0-9820749-4-7

Books

Marca-Relli, Arnason, H.H., 1963, Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc

Conrad Marca-Relli; Daniel Giralt-Miracle, (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 1976); ISBN 8434302284 9788434302280; OCLC 2304947

Marca-Relli 1976-1978, Santiago Amon, 1978. Publisher: Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona.

Conrad Marca-Relli; Luca Massimo Barbero ed.; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, ''Conrad Marca-Relli'' (Milano: Electa, ©1998) ISBN 0295978023/ISBN 9780295978024; OCLC 40848684

Marca-Relli, Klaus Wolbert and Anja Hespelt,Mathildenhőhe Darmstadt, 2000 ISBN 3-9804553-8-6

Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. pp. 8,12,16,25,37,234-37

Marca-Relli, l'amico americano - sintonie e dissonanze con Afro e Burri, Marco Vallora 2002, Parma, Publisher: Galleria d'Arte Niccoli

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. pp. 218–221

''Conrad Marca-Relli'', first monograph and catalogue raisonné, essays by David Anfam, Magdalena Dabrowski and Marco Vallora, Museum S.r.l./Bruno Alfieri editore, Milano, 2008; ISBN 8890280425

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless'' (New York School Press, 2009); ISBN 9780967799421, pp. 156–59

External links

Conrad Marca-Relli Biography and Images: Hollis Taggart Galleries

''Selected works by Conrad Marca-Relli'' from knoedlergallery.com

''9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce''—video from youtube.com

''Conrad Marca Relli Abstract Expressionism'' video from youtube.com

Category:1913 births Category:2000 deaths Category:Abstract expressionist artists Category:American expatriates in Italy Category:American painters Category:Artists from New York Category:Federal Art Project Category:Modern painters Category:People from Boston, Massachusetts Category:People from New York City Category:Yale University faculty Category:Works Progress Administration workers Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:Rome Prize winners

de:Conrad Marca-Relli es:Conrad Marca-Relli it:Conrad Marca-Relli ru:Марка-Релли, Конрад

bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Perle Fine
birth date	1908
birth place	Boston, Massachusetts
death date	1988
death place	East Hampton, New York
nationality	American
field	Painting
movement	Abstract expressionism
awards	}}

Perle Fine (1908–1988) was among the most prominent female artists associated with American Abstract Expressionism.

Biography

Perle Fine was born in Boston, MA, in 1908. Her interest in art started at early age. In her early twenties she moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League with Kimon Nicolades. In the late 1930s she began to study with Hans Hofmann in New York City as well as in Provincetown, MA. In 1950 she was nominated by Willem de Kooning and then admitted to the 8th Street “Artists’ Club”, located at 39 East 8th Street.

Perle Fine was chosen by her fellow artists to show in the Ninth Street Show held on May 21-June 10, 1951. The show was located at 60 East 9th Street on the first floor and the basement of a building which was about to be demolished. According to Bruce Altshuler: :"The artists celebrated not only the appearance of the dealers, collectors and museum people on the 9th Street, and the consequent exposure of their work but they celebrated the creation and the strength of a living community of significant dimensions."

Perle Fine participated from 1951 to 1957 in the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals,,,, including the Ninth Street Show., She was among the 24 out of a total 256 New York School artists who was included in all the Annuals. These Annuals were important because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves.

In the 1950s Fine moved to the Springs, section of East Hampton on the eastern end of Long Island where Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner. Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli and other members of the New York School found permanent residence.

Perle Fine stated the following:

: " I never thought of myself as a student or teacher, but as a painter. When I paint something I am very much aware of the future. If I feel something will not stand up 40 years from now, I am not interested in doing that kind of thing."

Perle Fine died of pneumonia on May 31, 1988, at the age of 83 in East Hampton, New York.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1945: Marian Willard Gallery, NY;

1946-47: Nierendorf Gallery, NYC;

1947: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Ca;

1949, 1951-53: Betty Parsons Gallery, NY;

1955, 58: Tanager Gallery, NYC;

1961, 63, 64, 67: Graham Gallery, NY;

1972: Joan Washburn Gallery, NY;

1978: “Major Works: 1954-1978: A Selection of Drawings, Paintings, and Collages, ” Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY.

Selected Group Exhibitions

1945: The Art of This Century, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC;

1950: “American Painting Today 1950,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC;

1951, 1953-57: Ninth Street Exhibition, the first and subsequent 5 “New York Painting and Sculpture Annual,” Stable Gallery, NY;

1946, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58, 61, 72: Whitney Museum of American Art, An­nu­als and Bi­en­ni­als, NY;

1958: “Nature in Abstraction; The Relation of Abstract Painting and Sculpture to Nature in Twentieth-Century American Art,” circ., Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC;

1961-62: “The Art of Assemblage,” circ., Museum of Modern Art, NY;

1963-64: “Hans Hofmann and His Students,” circ., Museum of Modern Art, NYC;

1967: “Selection 1967: Recent Ac­qui­si­tions in Modern Art,” University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley;

1984: “The Return of Abstraction,” Ingber Gallery, NY;

1990: “East Hamp­ton Avant-Garde; A Salute to the Signa Gallery,” Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY;

1994: "Reclaiming Artists of the New York School. Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s", Baruch College City University, New York City; "New York-Provincetown: A 50s Connection", Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts;

2004: "Reuniting an Era Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s.", Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois.

References

Books

Harold Rosenberg, ''The anxious object; art today and its audience'' (New York, Horizon Press [1964]

Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, ''American Women Artists: from early Indian times to the present'' (New York, N.Y. : Avon ; Boston, Mass. : G.K. Hall, ©1982.) ISBN 0-380-61101-5

Paula Chiarmonte, ''Women artists in the United States : a selective bibliography and resource guide on the fine and decorative arts, 1750-1986'' (Boston, Mass. : G.K. Hall, 1990.) ISBN 0-8161-8917-X

Ann Eden Gibson, ''Issues in abstract expressionism : the artist-run periodicals'' (Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press, ©1990.) ISBN 0-8357-1944-8

Janet A. Anderson, ''Women in the fine arts : a bibliography and illustration guide'' (Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, 1991) ISBN 0-89950-541-4

Ann Eden Gibson, ''Abstract expressionism : other politics'' (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, ©1997.) ISBN 0-300-06339-3

Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 16; p. 37; p. 138-141

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 126-129

Kathleen L. Housley; Perle Fine ''Tranquil power : the art and life of Perle Fine'' (New York City : Midmarch Arts Press, 2005) ISBN 1-877675-54-7

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless'' (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1. p. 88-91

Kathleen L. Housley, ''The Tranquil Power of Perle Fine's Art'' (Woman's Art Journal, Spring - Summer, 2003, vol. 24, no. 1, p. 3-10

External links

''Perle Fine''

Perle Fine Abstract Expressionism-Artist of the 9th Street Art Exhibition- video from youtube.com

See also

Art movement

Abstract expressionism

Action painting

New York School

9th Street Art Exhibition

Category:1908 births Category:1988 deaths Category:Abstract expressionist artists Category:American painters Category:American artists Category:American printmakers Category:Modern painters Category:Artists from New York Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:People from New York City Category:Women painters

bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Albert Kotin
birth date	August 07, 1907
birth place	Minsk, Russia
death date	February 06, 1980
death place	New York City, New York, USA
nationality	American
field	Painting
movement	Abstract expressionism; New York Figurative Expressionism
awards	}}

Albert Kotin (August 7, 1907–1980) belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. The New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline and others became a leading art movement of the post-World War II era.

Biography

Albert Kotin was born August 7, 1907 in Minsk, Tsarist Russia and emigrated to the USA in 1908. He became a US citizen in 1923.

Albert Kotin studied: (1924–1929) at the National Academy of Design, New York City; with Charles Hawthorne, Provincetown, Massachusetts; (1929–32) at the Académie Julian, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and at the Atelier de Fresque and Colarossi, Paris, France; (1947–1951) at The Art Students League of New York, New York City; under the GI Bill he went to study with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown and in New York City.

He participated in the Federal Art Project: Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) (1933–34) and Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) (1935–40). Albert Kotin won competitions that were funded through commissions under the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture (later known as The Section of Fine Arts) in Ada, Ohio, and in Arlington, New Jersey.

Albert Kotin served in the U.S. Army military service during World War II (1941–1945).

After the war Albert Kotin found a studio on 10th Street. He soon joined the "Downtown Group" which represented a group of artists who found studios in lower Manhattan in the area bounded by 8th and 12th street between First and Sixth Avenues during the late 1940s and early 1950s. These artists were called the "Downtown Group" as opposed to the "Uptown Group" established during the war at The Art of This Century Gallery. In 1949 Albert Kotin joined the "Artists' Club" located at 39 East 8th Street. Albert Kotin was chosen by his fellow artists to show in the Ninth Street Show held on May 21-June 10, 1951. The show was located at 60 East 9th Street on the first floor and the basement of a building which was about to be demolished. "The artists celebrated not only the appearance of the dealers, collectors and museum people on the 9th Street, and the consequent exposure of their work but they celebrated the creation and the strength of a living community of significant dimensions."

Albert Kotin participated in all the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals. The first annual in 1951 was called the Ninth Street Show. From 1953 to 1957 the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals were held in the Stable Gallery on West 58th Street in New York City. He was among the 24 out of a total 256 New York School artists who was included in all the Annuals. These Annuals were important because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves. Harold Rosenberg, New York art critic listed Albert Kotin among the "Tenth Street Artists: Individuals Prevail over the Group:"

Albert Kotin was also a poet who inspired his fellow artists.

Alexander Calder wrote in 1968, "As long as there are people such as Al Kotin, there is no danger to art."

Albert Kotin died on February 6, 1980 in New York City from lung cancer.

Selected solo exhibitions

1951: (first) Hacker Gallery, New York City;

1958: Grand Central Moderns Gallery, New York City;

1959: Tanager Gallery, New York City;

1960: Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, France; Pollock Gallery, Toronto, Canada;

1961: Mili-Jay Gallery, Woodstock, New York;

1964, 1965 : Byron Gallery, New York City;

1968: "Ten Year Retrospective of Albert Kotin's Work", Long Island University; Brooklyn, New York; "Kotin and Carton", Art Faculty two man show, Long Island University, Brooklyn;

1982: "Albert Kotin, 1907-1980", Memorial Exhibition, Barron Arts Center, Woodbridge, New Jersey.

Selected group exhibitions

1935: "Exhibition of Oil Paintings", WPA Federal Art Project, Federal Art Gallery, New York City;

1936: An American Group, Inc., New York City;

1946: "First National Print Competition Exhibit", Associated American Artists, New York City;

1947: "J & E.R. Pennell Exhibition of Prints", Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.;

1948: "46th Annual Exhibition", The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia;

1949: "8 & 2 Exhibition" The New School for Social Research, New York City;

1951: ‘’’Ninth Street Show’’’, the first "New York Painting and Sculpture Annual", New York City;

1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957: "New York Painting and Sculpture Annual", Stable Gallery, New York City;

1956: "Painters and Sculptors on 10th Street", Tanager Gallery, New York City;

1957: "First Spring Annual Exhibition", March Gallery, New York City;

1958: "A to Z in American Arts", Provincetown Arts Festival, M. Knoedler & Co., New York City; Camino Gallery, New York City;

1959: "10th Street", Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas;

1960: "New York Artists: A Drawing Show", Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois; Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, France; Pollock Gallery, Toronto, Canada;

1960-61: Mili-Jay Gallery, Woodstock, New York;

1961: Allyn Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri;

1962, 1972: Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York;

1963: "Multiples", Graham Gallery, New York City, New York; Key Gallery, New York City;

1963-64: "Hans Hofmann and His Students", circ. by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City;

1963, 1964: Aegis Gallery, New York City;

1965: "79 painters who paint", held simultaneously in: Grace Borgenicht, Graham, Martha Jackson, Kornblee and Poindexter Galleries, New York City;

1966: "New York '66", College Museum, Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia;

1971: Roko Gallery, New York City;

1994: "Reclaiming Artists of the New York School. Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s", Baruch College City University, New York City; "New York-Provincetown: A 50s Connection", Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts;

2004: "Reuniting an Era Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s.", Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois.

See also

Art movement

Ninth Street Show

New York School

Action painting

Abstract expressionism

Expressionism

American Figurative Expressionism

References

''Abstract expressionist art movement in America video documentation project, 1991-1992.''

''Smithsonian Institution Research Information System; Archival, Manuscript and Photographic Collections, Albert Kotin''

Catalogs which include Albert Kotin

''It is; a magazine for abstract art'' No. 4, Autumn 1959, New York City

''10th Street'' The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas October 15 - November 8, 1959

''Albert Kotin'' Byron Gallery, Inc. New York City, April 7–25, 1964

''Albert Kotin 1907-1980 Memorial Exhibition'' Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn, New York. October 6–29, 1982

''Albert Kotin Retrospective: Paintings, Drawings, Prints'' Artfull Eye Exhibition Gallery, Lambertville, New Jersey. October 30 - November 20, 1988

Mishkin Gallery ''Reclaiming Artists of the New York School Toward a More Inclusive view of the 1950s'' Baruch College CUNY March 18 - April 22, 1994

Provicetown Art Association ''Hans Hofmann, New York-Provincetown: A 50s Connection'' Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts July 8 - August 1, 1994

Rockford Art Museum ''Reuniting an Era abstract expressionists of the 1950s'' Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois November 12, 2004 - January 25, 2005

Books

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless'' (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1. pp. 140–143

Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. pp. 190–193

Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 16; p. 37; pp. 206–209

External links

Albert Kotin paintings from albertkotin.com

''Albert Kotin abstract expressionsim''—4:57min video from youtube.com

''Albert Kotin Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York action painting''—14:14min video from youtube.com

Category:1907 births Category:1980 deaths Category:Abstract expressionist artists Category:Expressionist painters Category:American painters Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American artists Category:American printmakers Category:Federal Art Project Category:Modern painters Category:Artists from New York Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:People from New York City Category:Public Works of Art Project Category:Works Progress Administration workers Category:People of the New Deal arts projects Category:Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière

bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Helen Frankenthaler
birth date	December 12, 1928
birth place	New York City
nationality	American
field	Abstract painting
training	Dalton School.Bennington College.
movement	Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction
works	Mountains and Sea
influenced by	Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann
influenced	Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland
awards	}}

Helen Frankenthaler (born December 12, 1928) is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. She began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 ''Post-Painterly Abstraction'' exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as Color Field. Born in New York City, she was influenced by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock's paintings and by Clement Greenberg. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions; including a 1989 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Her work has been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Frankenthaler has a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut.

Early life and education

Helen Frankenthaler comes from a Jewish family. She is the youngest daughter of Alfred Frankenthaler, who was a justice on the New York State Supreme Court. Her nephew is the artist/photographer Clifford Ross

She studied at the Dalton School under Rufino Tamayo and also at Bennington College in Vermont. She was later married to fellow artist Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), from 1958 until they divorced in 1971.

Frankenthaler has been on the faculty of Hunter College.

Style and technique

Initially associated with abstract expressionism her career was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of ''Mountains and Sea''. This painting is large - measuring seven feet by ten feet - and has the effect of a watercolor, though it is painted in oils. In it, she introduced the technique of painting directly onto an unprepared canvas so that the material absorbs the colors. She heavily diluted the oil paint with turpentine so that the color would soak into the canvas. This technique, known as "soak stain" was used by Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), and others; and was adopted by other artists notably Morris Louis (1912–1962), and Kenneth Noland (1924–2010), and launched the second generation of the Color Field school of painting. This method would sometimes leave the canvas with a halo effect around each area to which the paint was applied but has a disadvantage in that the oil in the paints will eventually cause the canvas to discolor and rot away.

Influences

One of her most important influences was Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), an influential art and literary critic with whom she had a personal friendship and who included her in the ''Post-Painterly Abstraction'' exhibition that he curated in 1964. Through Greenberg she was introduced to the New York art scene. Under his guidance she spent the summer of 1950 studying with Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), catalyst of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

The first Jackson Pollock show Frankenthaler saw was at the Betty Parson's Gallery in 1950. She had this to say about seeing Pollock's paintings ''Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950'' (1950), ''Number One,1950 (Lavender Mist)'' (1950):

"It was all there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language."

In 1960 the term Color Field painting was used to describe the work of Frankenthaler. This style was characterized by large areas of a more or less flat single color. The Color Field artists set themselves apart from the Abstract Expressionists because they eliminated the emotional, mythic or the religious content and the highly personal and gestural and painterly application.

Some of her thoughts on painting:

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." (In Barbara Rose, ''Frankenthaler'' (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)

See also

Post-painterly abstraction

Lyrical abstraction

Wash (painting)

Notes

Additional reading

Elderfield, John. ''Helen Frankenthaler'', 1989, Harry N. Abrams ISBN 0-8109-0916-2

Helen Frankenthaler, ''After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956-1959'' (New York : Guggenheim Museum, ©1998.) ISBN 0-8109-6911-4 9780810969117 0892071974 9780892071975

Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 16; p. 37; pp. 142–145, York 1986. ISBN 0-87099-477-8

Pollock, Griselda, "Killing Men and Dying Women". In: Orton, Fred and Pollock, Griselda (eds), ''Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed''. London: Redwood Books, 1996. ISBN 0-7190-4398-0

Wilkin, Karen. ''Frankenthaler: Works on Paper 1949-1984'', George Braziller (February 1985), ISBN 978-0-8076-1103-6

Bibliography

Alison Rowley, ''Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing painting''. I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2007.

Helen Frankenthaler in Interview with Henry Geldzahler, in ''Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art'', edited by Kristine Stiles and peter Selz, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 28–30. ISBN 0-520-20253-8

External links

Biography from the ''Jewish Women's Archive''

Jacob's Ladder at MoMA

Helen Frankenthaler Artwork Examples on AskART.

Frankenthaler's New Way of Making Art, The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2008

Helen Frankenthaler represented by Knoedler & Company

Lush Spring (1975) Phoenix Art Museum

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:Abstract expressionist artists Category:American painters Category:American printmakers Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish painters Category:Jewish artists Category:Jewish American artists Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:Artists from New York Category:People from Manhattan Category:American women artists Category:Bennington College alumni Category:Dalton School alumni Category:Women painters

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