ON VIEW| Perle Fine at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art
July 23, 2024
Museum Exhibition | Ogunquit Museum of American Art
Perle Fine (1905-1988)
Lee Krasner: Geometries of Expression
August 1 - November 17, 2024
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July 23, 2024
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July 18, 2024
60s Synchronicities
Curated by William Corwin
La Collégiale Notre Dame, Ribérac, France
July 9 - August 28, 2024
June 14, 2024 - Jo Lawson-Tancred for Artnet
The exhibition shows how the principles of Abstract Expression
Perle Fine in her New York studio in c. 1963. Photo: Maurice Berezov, courtesy of Perle Fine Estate and Gazelli Art House, © AE Artworks.
Born in Boston in 1905 to Russian immigrant parents, Fine showed an early interest in art and moved to New York in her early twenties to pursue an education at the Art Students League. There she opted to study under the renowned German-born artist Hans Hofmann, who was instrumental in developing the formal breakthroughs that defined European movements like Cubism into a more gestural, expressive style. Over time, Fine cultivated a number of high-profile collectors including Museum of Modern Art founding director Alfred Barr, art director and publisher Emily Hall Tremaine, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but also supported her practice by working as a gallerist.
By 1945, Fine had developed an interest in nonrepresentational art and joined the American Abstract Artists group. Five years later, Willem de Kooning nominated her to join “the Club,” a members-only meeting place on 8th Street where a tight-knit community of artists met to socialize, plan, and debate. The group selected her to participate in the historic Ninth Street Show, which featured artists like Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, and Barnett Newman; the show established Abstract Expressionism as a major American art movement. Fine exhibited in all six of the subsequent annual invite-only exhibitions until 1957.
In 1968, Fine noted that collage helped her learn how construct a composition. “When you do something to that white paper, when you put one or two forms on that white paper, that simple sheet of white paper can become one of the most beautiful things in the world if those forms are put in there in such a way as to involve every inch of that from top to bottom and from left to right,” she said. “Which is something I never was as aware of as when I worked this out in collage and later in painting. So that another great truth about art was revealed to me in this way!”
After many years living with Alzheimer’s, Fine died of pneumonia aged 83 on May 31, 1988.
Read More >>May 1, 2024
April 11, 2024 - Julia Tyson for East Hampton Star
By Julia Tyson
April 11, 2024
When you hear about the midcentury art scene in Springs, the first names that come to mind are likely Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. While they were two of the most recognizable figures to emerge from that milieu, they were not the only ones. Counted among their friends was Perle Fine (1908-1988), a well-respected Abstract Expressionist painter in her own right.
Here Fine split her time between painting and teaching. Between 1954 and 1988, she exhibited her paintings often, both in the city and in local galleries. One such show was at the Upstairs Gallery on Newtown Lane, and a photographer from The East Hampton Star captured Fine at work in her studio as she prepared for it. The photo seen here, part of The Star’s archive, shows the artist stretching a canvas that would appear at the gallery.
December 20, 2023
Ethel Schwabacher, Woman: Red Sea, Dead Sea, 1951, oil on canvas, 31x37 in
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
December 2, 2023 - March 3, 2024
Kunsthalle Bielefeld presents an extensive global show that for the first time in Europe focuses on the work of female artists and their role in the development of abstraction after 1945. The movement we now describe as “Abstract Expressionism” officially began in the mid-20th century in the United States. But around the world, artists* explored parallel approaches to abstraction through materiality, expressivity, and gesture, from Informel to Arte Povera, from calligraphic abstraction and Gutai in East Asia to experimental, deeply political practices in Central and South America, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Read More >>December 20, 2023 - Florence Hallett for The New European
Perle Fine, Painting No. 56, c. 1954, Oil on canvas, 60 x 56 in
Action, Gesture, Paint, Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70
Whitechapel Gallery, London
February 9 - May 7, 2023
"Perhaps the most dramatic was at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, where the curators of Action, Gesture, Paint defenestrated the aggressively white American male domain of Abstract Expressionism to champion an entire generation of 81 international artist women. We’re not talking second-rate copycats: painters like Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Perle Fine and Judith Godwin were a respected part of the New York scene, promoted alongside Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock by the painter and gallerist Betty Parsons." - continue reading
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/female-artists-take-centre-stage-in-2023/
Read More >>September 8, 2023 - Alex Greenberger for ARTnews
September 8, 2023 - Eileen Kinsella for Artnet News
New York gallery Berry Campbell had a standout booth, a curated presentation of 12 postwar women artists. The gallery has a distinct focus on re-examining underrepresented women artists of the 20th-century. Gallery owner Christine Berry called it “an incredible day,” noting high demand for artists including Alice Baber, Bernice Bing, and Lynne Drexler.
Works by Drexler sold for $885,000 and $200,000; the artist, who has been drawing intense interest, will likely be the subject of a traveling institutional retrospective at some point in the near future. A work by Baber went for $200,000—Berry Campbell hopes to mount a solo show of the artist next year.
Later on in the day, the gallery let Artnet News know that a painting by Ethel Schwabacher had been sold for $195,000.
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