- Schedule -

Featured Artists

Mary Abbott

Louise Bourgeois

Nell Blaine

Dorothy Dehner

Elaine de Kooning

Perle Fine

Audrey Flack

Helen Frankenthaler

Jane Freilicher  

Grace Hartigan

 

Lee Krasner
Mercedes Matter

Joan Mitchell

Louise Nevelson

Charlotte Park 

Irene Rice Pereira

Hedda Sterne

Ethel Schwabacher

Michael (Corinne) West

Jane Wilson



 

The Abstract Expressionist movement is best known by its male superstars, but women were also pioneers of the genre. This exhibition, drawn from the Richard P. Friedman and Cindy Lou Wakefield Collection, showcases the work of artists such as Lee Krasner, Elaine DeKooning, Perle Fine, Joan Mitchell, and 16 others—women whose artwork is finding long overdue acclaim and new appreciation with a contemporary audience.

Organized by the Fenimore Art Museum, where it premiered in September 2019, the traveling exhibition features 43 works that are both visually mesmerizing and technically complex. It offers the widest breadth of any private assemblage of this genre, featuring the works of 19 women artists–possibly the most extensive museum survey to date on this topic. The artwork on display clearly demonstrates the various ways these artists were pushing themselves in new directions, as leaders and full participants, in the Abstract Expressionism movement.

The exhibition was curated by Chirs Rossi, Director of Exhibitions, Fenimore Art Museum, and Megan Holloway Fort, Ph.D.

Abstract Expressionism was the first specifically American style to achieve international influence, and, as a result, 1940s New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. The style was characterized by experimental, gestural, nonrepresentational painting, often on radically large canvases. For some of the artists associated with the movement, abstract art was a means of expressing ideas concerning nature, the spiritual, and the mind. For others, it was a way to explore formal and technical concerns.

From 1947 to 1951, a number of Abstract Expressionists, among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko, developed their signature painting styles. During the following years these artists, informally called the First Generation of the New York School, received growing recognition nationally and globally. Several groundbreaking women artists from this same period are featured in this exhibition including Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Hedda Sterne, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell. Heroines of Abstract Expressionism also includes works by painters such as Perle Fine, Mary Abbott, Dorothy Dehner, and Michael (Corinne) West and sculptors Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeois.

Helen Frankenthaler

Grace Hartigan

Audrey Flack

Elaine de Kooning

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Nevelson

Lee Krasner

For more than sixty years the contributions these women made to the movement were all but forgotten while works by men such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning have been canonized in the history of American art. It has taken the dedication of scholars and museum curators—and the commitment of a handful of prescient collectors like Friedman and Wakefield—to restore these women artists to their rightful place in the history of American art.

- Link To PDF of Catalog -

A forty page color catalog accompanies the exhibition with essays by Megan Holloway Fort, Ph.D. , New York; Helen A. Harrison, the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, and Joan Marter, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of the Woman’s Art Journal, and distinguished professor emerita, Rutgers University, Co-organizer of the exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, at the Denver Art Museum in 2016, and collector, Richard Friedman.

The exhibition is available for presentation through 2022.

 

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- Current Article on ARTNET -

 


EXHIBITION SPECIFICATIONS

Components:         

43 works of art in total - paintings, works on paper, prints and sculpture


LINK TO LIST OF WORKS

Size:                            

200 linear feet; approx.

Text:                             

Title/intro text panels, extended labels; credits

Participation fee:   

Upon request

Shipping & Insurance

Exhibitor responsible

Publication:

Companion 40 page publication is available

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Schedule
as of 03/17/20

 

2020

 

July 1 - November 1
Nassau County Museum of Art
Roslyn, NY

 

November 14, 2020, January 10, 2021
Loveland Art Gallery
Loveland, CO


2021

 

March 5 - June 13
Biggs Museum of American Art
Dover, DE

 

July 4 - September 26
Huntsville Museum of Art
Huntsville, AL

 

November 18, 2021 - Februay 13, 2022
Trout Museum
Appleton, WI

 

2022

 

March 4 - May 30
OPEN


June 21 - September 7
OPEN

 

October 1, 2022 - January 7, 2023
Jundt Art Museum
Spokane, WA

 

2023


February 1 - May 15

Museum of the Shenandoah Valley
Winchester, VA

 

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Contact:

www.a-r-t.com

Tel: 310-397-3098 Email: info@a-r-t.com