Perle Fine

Perle Fine News: ARTICLE | What Sold at Frieze Seoul and The Armory Show 2024, September  9, 2024 - Maxwell Rabb for Artsy

ARTICLE | What Sold at Frieze Seoul and The Armory Show 2024

September 9, 2024 - Maxwell Rabb for Artsy

Installation view of Mendes Wood DM’s booth at Frieze Seoul, 2024. Photo by Lets Studio. Courtesy of Lets Studio and Frieze.
 
What Sold at Frieze Seoul and The Armory Show 2024

Maxwell Rabb
September 9, 2024

The art world’s summer break is over. Last week, two major art fairs returned on opposite sides of the globe: The Armory Show at the Javits Center in New York (September 6th–8th) and Frieze Seoul at the COEX Center in Gangnam (September 5th–7th).

Both fairs are operated by Frieze, which launched its inaugural Seoul fair in 2022 and acquired The Armory Show last summer. This edition of The Armory Show—its 30th anniversary—marked its first under the full ownership of Frieze, as well as new director Kyla McMillan, who described the fair as taking place in an “exciting and transformative year for us.”

The fair takes place alongside several fairs in New York, including Independent 20th Century, VOLTA, and Art on Paper. In Seoul, Frieze takes place on the floor above the Korean International Art Fair (Kiaf) during a packed week of art world activity in the Korean capital.

Galleries at Frieze struck an optimistic tone towards the atmosphere at the fair, which saw more than 70,000 visitors throughout its run, including representatives from some 130 museums. “We’re continuing to see interest from great collectors, despite all the chatter about the ‘market,’” said Pace Gallery president Samantha Rubell. “We also noticed a considerably more international group of visitors this year.”

While Frieze Seoul saw a higher number of reported six-figure sales compared to The Armory Show, the range and transactions at the latter reflected solid demand for works in the high five-figure price ranges. Indeed, as the art market at large gears up for a busy and uncertain fall season ahead, dealers at both fairs were keen to strike a positive note. “A lot of chatter about the market, but no doom and gloom here,” said Anthony Spinello, founder of Spinello Projects, which sold out its solo booth at The Armory Show.

Here, we share a rundown of the key sales from Frieze Seoul 2024 and The Armory Show 2024.

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Perle Fine News: UPCOMING FAIR | Berry Campbell at the Armory Show 2024 , August 14, 2024

UPCOMING FAIR | Berry Campbell at the Armory Show 2024

August 14, 2024

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BERRY CAMPBELL TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ARMORY SHOW 2024 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, August 13, 2024–Berry Campbell is pleased to announce its participation in The Armory Show 2024. Located at booth 119 at the Javits Center, Berry Campbell Gallery will present a modern take on Women Choose Women (1973), the first large-scale museum exhibition devoted solely to women artists and curated by a committee of women artists at the New York Cultural Center, for The Armory Show 2024.

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Perle Fine News: ON VIEW| Perle Fine at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, July 23, 2024

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
Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Maine
August 1 - November 17, 2024
 
This focused exhibition sheds light on the often-overlooked early career of Lee Krasner (1908–1984) and places her work within the context of her peers. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Krasner rose to prominence as a dynamic voice within the vanguard circles of contemporary artists living and working in New York City.

 

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Perle Fine News: MUSEUM EXHIBITION | La Collegiale Notre Dame, July 18, 2024

MUSEUM EXHIBITION | La Collegiale Notre Dame

July 18, 2024

60s Synchronicities
Curated by William Corwin
La Collégiale Notre Dame, Ribérac, France
July 9 - August 28, 2024

Perle Fine News: ARTICLE | Four Overlooked Women Abstract Expressionists Are Spotlighted in London, June 14, 2024 - Jo Lawson-Tancred for Artnet

ARTICLE | Four Overlooked Women Abstract Expressionists Are Spotlighted in London

June 14, 2024 - Jo Lawson-Tancred for Artnet

 

a black and white photograph of a middle aged woman standing in front of a painting.
 
Four Overlooked Women Abstract Expressionists Are Spotlighted in London

The exhibition shows how the principles of Abstract Expression

Perle Fine 

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.

FULL ARTICLE LINK

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Perle Fine News: UPCOMING EXHIBITION | Montagne at Gazelli Art House, London, May  1, 2024

UPCOMING EXHIBITION | Montagne at Gazelli Art House, London

May 1, 2024

Montagne
Gazelli Art House gathers innovative collage work from venerated artists Helen Frankenthaler, Nancy Grossman, Grace Hartigan, Lilly Fenichel, Perle Fine, Betty Parsons, Sonja Sekula, Yvonne Thomas, and Michael (Corinne) West in an exceptional survey of Abstract Expressionism.
 
Preview: May 16th, 6-8 pm
Exhibition: May 17 - July 13, 2024
Gazelli Art House, London 
 
Montage delivers a shrewd exploration of prominent Abstract Expressionist artists via a curatorial focus on assemblage, collage, and non-canvas artworks. Spotlighting Post-War artists long overlooked until recent decades, we invite audiences to experience an amalgamation of diverse artistic voices that defined an era. Amidst a notable surge of interest in twentieth-century female abstract artists, ignited by Mary Gabriel’s pivotal book Ninth Street WomenMontage offers a fresh perspective, delving into the diverse practices of women in abstraction, while also recognising Europe’s profound impact on the American Abstract Expressionist movement.
 
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Perle Fine News: ARTICLE | Item of the Week: Perle Fine Stretches a Canvas, April 11, 2024 - Julia Tyson for East Hampton Star

ARTICLE | Item of the Week: Perle Fine Stretches a Canvas

April 11, 2024 - Julia Tyson for East Hampton Star

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. 

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Perle Fine News: EXHIBITION | Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970, December 20, 2023

EXHIBITION | Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970

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.

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Perle Fine News: ARTICLE | Female artists take centre stage in 2023, December 20, 2023 - Florence Hallett for The New European

ARTICLE | Female artists take centre stage in 2023

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/

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Perle Fine News: The Armory Show's VIP Preview Opened With Brisk Sales and a Lot of Chatter About the Fair's Future, September  8, 2023 - Eileen Kinsella for Artnet News

The Armory Show's VIP Preview Opened With Brisk Sales and a Lot of Chatter About the Fair's Future

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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Perle Fine News: 'Women Choose Women' Exhibition at The Barn Celebrates Unstoppable Girl Power, August  2, 2023 - Rachel Feinblatt for Hamptons Magazine

'Women Choose Women' Exhibition at The Barn Celebrates Unstoppable Girl Power

August 2, 2023 - Rachel Feinblatt for Hamptons Magazine


Proving that no force is stronger than girl power, Frampton Co and Berry Campbell present Women Choose Women at Exhibition The Barn.

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Perle Fine News: Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, January 21, 2023

Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s at Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

January 21, 2023

Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s

JANUARY 21, 2023 - MAY 7, 2023

Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s features only women artists working during this unique decade in American history and the world. In the 1950s, the post-war economic boom was in full swing. Employment for women was on the rise, yet many women who had taken jobs left vacant by men fighting in World War II returned to their lives at home, and marriage rates increased. The 1950s were a complicated period of change for women. Their discontent and resulting actions contributed to the social tumultuousness of the 1960s. Leaning against social, racial, and economic barriers, women helped reshape our society in meaningful ways with lasting progress.
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Perle Fine News: East Hampton Star: Chelsea to Springs , August 11, 2022 - Mark Segal for East Hampton Star

East Hampton Star: Chelsea to Springs

August 11, 2022 - Mark Segal for East Hampton Star

Chelsea to Springs

Chelsea’s Berry Campbell Gallery takes over Ashawagh Hall in Springs from today through Sunday with a large group exhibition of artists, past and present, with strong East End connections.

The show includes works by Mary Abbott, Alice Baber, Nanette Carter, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Grace Hartigan, Raymond Hendler, John Opper, Charlotte Park, Betty Parsons, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Hedda Sterne, Susan Vecsey, Lucia Wilcox, Frank Wimberley, and Larry Zox.

Gallery hours are today through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and noon to 6 on Sunday.

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Perle Fine News: "Berry Campbell: Community" Opens at Ashawagh Hall, East Hampton, New York, August 11, 2022 - Berry Campbell

"Berry Campbell: Community" Opens at Ashawagh Hall, East Hampton, New York

August 11, 2022 - Berry Campbell

Berry Campbell: Community
August 11 - 14, 2022
Berry Campbell at Ashawagh hall
780 Springs Fireplace Road
 East Hampton, New York 11937

Preview Exhibiton

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Perle Fine News: Hyperallergic | The Biggest Lie About Abstract Expressionism, July 11, 2022 - Max Lunn for Hyperallergic

Hyperallergic | The Biggest Lie About Abstract Expressionism

July 11, 2022 - Max Lunn for Hyperallergic

The Biggest Lie About Abstract Expressionism
Max Lunn
July 11, 2022

We were told that women were on the peripheries of the artistic movement, while in fact they were driving it forward, energetically engaging in this radical pictorial language.

Abstract Expressionism is a storied movement continually re-told at blockbuster museums: We think we know it so well. The story, however, is still wrong. There are no women in it. The most recent show in the United Kingdom was at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2017. The exhibition projected an outdated image of the swaggering machismo the movement has come to be known for. Lee Krasner was the only woman exhibited. 

More recently, a bold exhibition at Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London entitled Women and the Void, hoped to correct this. It showed works from some of the better-known and under-appreciated women artists, including Jay Defoe, Mary Abbott, and Michael West.

Now is the time to examine this exclusion, given the work done by writers like Mary Gabriel to understand these artists; her 2018 book Ninth Street Women chronicled their art and lives.

There has been no major group show of women Abstract Expressionists in the UK, and only one elsewhere at the Denver Art Museum. Huxley Parlour’s exhibition demonstrated that women were not only present, but central, to the movement’s origins. By focusing on works on paper and including work from beyond the bigger names, the show affirmed the polyvalent output women have made — take Anne Ryan’s layered 1951 collage. Other highlights included striking work by Perle Fine and Alma Thomas, the latter of whose inclusion evidences another major absence: Black artists.

Both the 2019 Barbican Centre retrospective of Lee Krasner’s work and Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exhibition of Helen Frankenthaler’s printmaking career are further indicators of interest, as is the current Joan Mitchell retrospective currently at the Baltimore Museum of Art

These three women, however, are exceptions and still not valued to the extent their male equivalents are. Although a crude metric, the auction market gives some idea: Rothko’s record stands at $86.9 million, whilst leading the women is Lee Krasner at $11.7 million

Institutional recognition at a group level is arguably little better: The Whitney Museum’s recent show Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction is indicative of museums’ willingness to invest in these women. Or rather, lack of willingness: The exhibition was criticized for its small footprint and handful of works, despite the museum’s extensive archive holdings. This speaks of a wider tension between museum-as-artist-champion and museum-as-business. 

This exclusion matters because it is a lie. Women weren’t working on the peripheries, they were driving the movement forward, energetically engaging in this radical pictorial language.

Before Abstract Expressionism was cast as the familiar macho movement in the mid-1950s — guided by the vernacular of critics such as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg — a democratic spirit pervaded US abstraction. This was in part due to the withering attitude taken towards abstract art which meant artists were not competing, but collaborating. 

Out of this spirit, the collaborative organizations American Abstract Artists (AAA) and Atelier 17 emerged to champion abstraction, the latter with a focus on works on paper. A notable 40% of Atelier 17 members were women. Members included artists who became associated with Abstract Expressionism: Perle Fine, Jackson Pollock, and Willem De Kooning. Abstraction crucially offered women aesthetic liberty: Perle Fine commented it allowed her to escape from the “oppressive particularities” of realism. 

This is not to say it was all plain sailing. Some women artists changed their names to avoid bias: “Dorris” to “Dorr” Bothwell, and the oft-recounted comments from Hans Hofmann that Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner’s work being “so good that you would not know it was done by a woman” speak volumes. 

While factors such as the male-only requirement for “the club” — the East 8th Street spot in Manhattan where artists met — played a role, art historians have generally pinpointed the rise of the abstract art market as being the moment women were pushed out. As Mary Gabriel puts it: “When art became a ‘business’ in the turbocharged consumer economy of the late 1950s, work by women artists wasn’t considered as valuable … which meant dealers didn’t show it, collectors didn’t buy it, and art history courses failed to mention it.” The previous plurality of styles was replaced by a handful of male “masters,” befitting of the Cold War politics of the day. 

But we know these women were there: The now-famous 1951 Ninth Street Show, considered the debut of Abstract Expressionism, had three women on its committee: Fine, Mitchell, and Elaine de Kooning. Why are museums such as the Royal Academy still getting it wrong?

There are tedious reasons such as the need to guarantee ticket sales. But there are also relevant ideas about artistic value. The Denver exhibition and the Frankenthaler exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery argue that these women deserve attention because they were innovators: Jane Findlay, curator of the Dulwich exhibition, said she put innovation “front and centre.”

Huxley-Parlour hosted a panel talk, where the Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne questioned why so much emphasis is placed on innovation as a metric when valuing artists, and if this helps achieves parity. She commented it’s inherently market-driven: “If someone has a singular style, then they are uniquely identifiable for their imagery, and so we feel more comfortable championing them as a ‘master’”. She explained society has been more lenient allowing male artists to cycle through different styles before landing on a single identifiable one: Think of Rothko, whose biomorphs are seen as the preamble to his signature multiforms. 

Nairne broadened out the idea, considered innovation in conjunction with Hilma af Klint, who she says was only canonized because she created abstract work a year before Kandinsky — what would have happened if it was the next year? Maybe, therefore, we shouldn’t ask what these women were doing “differently,” but simply what they were doing. 

The scholarship has been tirelessly corrected, the books have been re-written: It’s clear that women were front and center of Abstract Expressionism. But the power of a simple narrative of a few great men still stands in the way of experiencing the richness of mid-century abstraction. It’s time to flesh the story out.



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Perle Fine News: ARTSEEN | Perle Fine: A Retrospective, July  7, 2022 - Tennae Maki for the Brooklyn Rail

ARTSEEN | Perle Fine: A Retrospective

July 7, 2022 - Tennae Maki for the Brooklyn Rail

Gazelli Gallery, London
Tennae Maki for The Brooklyn Rail
 
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Perle Fine News: In Conversation | Perle Fine: A Retrospective, Gazelli Art House, London, June 14, 2022 - Gazelli Art House

In Conversation | Perle Fine: A Retrospective, Gazelli Art House, London

June 14, 2022 - Gazelli Art House

In Conversation with Daniel Zamani and Jennifer Higgie
Perle Fine: A Retrospective | Rediscovery of Perle Fine
Gazelli Art House

Tuesday, July 21, 2022
6 - 8 pm (BST)
Register

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Perle Fine News: Artsy Viewing Room | Berry Campbell at Intersect Aspen: Women of Abstract Expressionism , July 21, 2021 - Artsy

Artsy Viewing Room | Berry Campbell at Intersect Aspen: Women of Abstract Expressionism

July 21, 2021 - Artsy

Berry Campbell at Intersect Aspen:
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Booth A15

Visit Viewing Room

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine | Small Abstractions: Highlights from Sheldon's Permanent Collection | Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska, October 20, 2020

Perle Fine | Small Abstractions: Highlights from Sheldon's Permanent Collection | Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska

October 20, 2020

Spinning Figure, 1949
Oil on canvas
42 3/4 × 13 7/8 inches
Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust

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Perle Fine News: Berry Campbell Celebrates Women's History Month, March 30, 2020 - Berry Campbell

Berry Campbell Celebrates Women's History Month

March 30, 2020 - Berry Campbell

Berry Campbell Celebrates Women's History Month

Ida Kohlmeyer
VIDEO: Virtual Exhibition Walkthrough

Women of Abstract Expressionism
 
Inventory Highlights
View Exhibition

Ann Purcell
Upcoming Exhibition: Kali Poems
View Works by Ann Purcell

Judith Godwin
Forbes Magazine: Add to Your list of '5 Women Artists' at These Museums Around The United States
by Chadd Scott

Charlotte Park
Client Testimonial: 
"Extremely gratifying to see Paul Kasmin Gallery's eye-opening summer show, Painters of the East End reviewed by Erin Kimmel in this month's Art in America . And smiled extra wide that AbEx talent Charlotte Park is written up in the same paragraph as — and holds her own with— Joan Mitchell. 'Park's virtuosic oil and crayon compositions (ca. 1965 and 1967) feature dendrite-like configurations in a palette of bright pinks, yellows and blues that appear frozen mid twist.' Ten years ago Christine Berry, owner of one of the most engaging and provocative galleries in Chelsea, Berry Campbell, thankfully introduced me to the work of Charlotte Park, who died in 2010 at age 92 in Montauk, where she lived and painted. She was the wife of artist James Brooks, supporting his career at the expense of her own, and dear friends and neighbors of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner." 
-Adam Beckerman
View Works by Charlotte Park 

Yvonne Thomas
Eazel Interactive Exhibition | Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations (1963-1965) 

Susan Vecsey
blue. 
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
View Works by Susan Vecsey

Jill Nathanson
LINEA: Studio Notes from the Art Students League of New York
Artist Snapshot: Jill Nathanson 

Perle Fine
What We See, How We See
Through April 2021
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
View Works by Perle Fine

Joyce Weinstein
Postwar Women
Curated by William Corwin
The Art Students League, New York
View Works by Joyce Weinstein

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Perle Fine News: Parrish Art Museum | TALK: THE CURATOR'S VIEW: Alicia Longwell on Women Artists in What We See, How We See, February 25, 2020 - Parrish Art Museum

Parrish Art Museum | TALK: THE CURATOR'S VIEW: Alicia Longwell on Women Artists in What We See, How We See

February 25, 2020 - Parrish Art Museum

TALK: THE CURATOR’S VIEW

Alicia Longwell on Women Artists in What We See, How We See 
February 28, 6 pm - 7:30 pm

Alicia Longwell, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, highlights women artists in this seven-part exhibition that contextualizes the artists’ work through the lens of how they see and interpret the world around them.

VENUE
Parrish Art Museum
279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, NY 11976 United States 

Order Tickets

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine: The Accordment Series featured on Artsy, February 18, 2020 - Artsy

Perle Fine: The Accordment Series featured on Artsy

February 18, 2020 - Artsy

Perle Fine | The Accordment Series 
February 13 - March 14, 2020

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine | Positively Ninth Street Women, December  4, 2019 - Tim Keane for Hyperallergic

Perle Fine | Positively Ninth Street Women

December 4, 2019 - Tim Keane for Hyperallergic

By the mid-1970s, critic Thomas Hess acknowledged the critical favoritism shown to postwar male artists when he singled out the women of the Ninth Street Show as “sparkling Amazons.”

KATONAH, New York — The Ninth Street Show in 1951 is among the more enduring of the origin stories about New York’s postwar art scene, uniting the theme of artist solidarity to the ideal that art can be a vocation unsullied by money and fame.

As the story goes, painter Jean Steubing, working on behalf of her obscure New York artist-peers, secured gallery space in a vacated storefront on East Ninth Street near Broadway. The resulting exhibition was curated by Leo Castelli with substantial input from artists, around 60 of whom were included in the hastily assembled roster. History — or legend — holds that the show was a breakthrough. Museum curators and uptown collectors attended and began to acquire this brave new art. Art reviewers noticed, too. And as the 1950s progressed, New York surpassed Paris as the art-making capital of the world.

In reality, the tale of the Ninth Street Show did not end quite happily ever after. Only a handful of the Ninth Street artists gained increased recognition from it. Even fewer saw any sales. Still, postwar New York accommodated these artists who, for the most part, operated without institutional affiliations. In the 1950s, a downtown loft could be rented for about $30 a month — the equivalent of about $400 in today’s money. So most Ninth Street artists soldiered on in obscurity, getting by through shitty day jobs or family money while finding morale boosts and genuine recognition through their own cooperative galleries. Many finally left the city. Some, like Steubing herself, abandoned art-making entirely.

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, Charlotte Park, Yvonne Thomas, Joyce Weinstein | The Postwar Period Saw an Explosion of Female Painters at the Art Students League. A New Exhibition Celebrates Their Achievements, December  4, 2019 - Sarah Cascone for Artnet News

Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, Charlotte Park, Yvonne Thomas, Joyce Weinstein | The Postwar Period Saw an Explosion of Female Painters at the Art Students League. A New Exhibition Celebrates Their Achievements

December 4, 2019 - Sarah Cascone for Artnet News

What do Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, and Faith Ringgold have in common? They all studied at the Art Students League of New York—and they are all featured in a new show at the school highlighting the accomplishments of its many women students.

Titled “Postwar Women,” the exhibition, curated by Will Corwin, features more than 40 women who studied at the school between 1945 and 1965. “It seemed like the obvious choice because before the war, most of the women students here were wealthy or had family who supported them as artists,” Corwin told Artnet News at the exhibition’s opening. “During this period, you actually get working-class women becoming artists. And of course, you get the Abstract Expressionists.”

Corwin has put together an impressive selection of works by well-known alumna—Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Louise Nevelson are also among the big names—alongside examples by an intriguing array of artists who haven’t yet been widely recognized for their talents.

“The league’s list of famous graduates is like everybody you’ve ever heard of,” Corwin said. For him, the curatorial challenge was balancing expectations: ensuring that all the major names were in place while still creating opportunities for viewers to discover new artists.

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine, Charlotte Park | The Cradle of Ab/Ex, November 30, 2019 - Jennifer Landes for the East Hampton Star

Perle Fine, Charlotte Park | The Cradle of Ab/Ex

November 30, 2019 - Jennifer Landes for the East Hampton Star

The essay for Joan Marter’s exhibition at Guild Hall, “Abstract Expressionism Revisited: Selections From the Guild Hall Permanent Collection,” is notable for reminding us about the people behind the pictures and sculptures. For her, the artists’ relationship to this environment and other factors affecting the work that ended up here are essential to understanding its relevance.

This makes sense in the context of the museum’s permanent collection, which exists only because so many of these artists lived and worked here and left some of their legacy behind as they rocketed to international recognition and acclaim.

Guild Hall, which has recently fully archived and digitized its collection, is celebrating just some of what it has with this exhibition. The show’s unfussy title takes us back to a simpler time, before stratospheric auction results in the tens and hundreds of millions, to when these artists might have been famous and well to do on a more modest scale, if at all.

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Perle Fine News: Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, Charlotte Park, Yvonne Thomas, Joyce Weinstein | Art Students League: Postwar Women, October 29, 2019 - Art Students League

Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, Charlotte Park, Yvonne Thomas, Joyce Weinstein | Art Students League: Postwar Women

October 29, 2019 - Art Students League

November 2 − December 1
Art Students League: The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery

Postwar Women is The Art Students League’s first exhibition to explore the vital contributions of these alumnae on the international stage. On view at The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery from November 2 to December 1, 2019, Postwar Women challenges the misperception that great art produced by women artists is somehow an exception rather than the rule. Curator Will Corwin investigates the history of innovative art academies like The League that promoted democratic ideologies, which in turn created artistic opportunities for women of all social classes. This ground-breaking exhibition features over forty artists active between 1945-65, tracing the complex networks these professional women formed to support one another and their newfound access to art education. Postwar Women presents work by some of the prominent artists of the 20th Century like Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler, but more importantly it calls out the women who were not credited enough: Mavis Pusey, Kazuko Miyamoto, Olga Albizu and Helena Vieira da Silva – challenging a new generation of visitors and art students to KNOW YOUR FOREMOTHERS.

Featured Artists:
Berenice Abbott, Mary Abbott, Olga Albizu, Janice Biala, Isabel Bishop, Nell Blaine, Regina Bogat, Louise Bourgeois, Vivian Browne, Elizabeth Catlett, Dorothy Dehner, Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Judith Godwin, Terry Haass, Grace Hartigan, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Faith Hubley, Lenore Jaffee, Gwendolyn Knight, Lee Krasner, Blanche Lazzell, Marguerite Louppe, Lenita Manry, Marisol, Mercedes Matter, Kazuko Miyamoto, Louise Nevelson, Charlotte Park, Joyce Pensato, Irene Rice Pereira, Mavis Pusey, Faith Ringgold, Edith Schloss, May Stevens,  Yvonne Thomas, Lynn Umlauf, Maria Vieira da Silva, Merrill Wagner, Joyce Weinstein, Michael West

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine | Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th Street Show, September  3, 2019 - Katonah Museum

Perle Fine | Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th Street Show

September 3, 2019 - Katonah Museum

Katonah Museum of Art
Katonah, New York
October 6, 2019 - January 26, 2020

Sparkling Amazons presents the often-overlooked contribution by women artists to the Abstract Expressionist movement and the significant role they played as bold innovators within the New York School during the 1940s and 50s. Through the presentation of some 30 works of art alongside documentary photography, the exhibition captures an important moment in the history of Abstract Expressionism.

The catalyst for this project is the groundbreaking 9th St. show arranged by avant-garde artists with the help of the fledgling gallerist, Leo Castelli in 1951. The show became a pivotal moment for the emergence and acceptance of Abstract Expressionism. The artists of the 9th St. show had struggled to gain critical recognition having been shut out by museums and galleries due to the radical nature of their work. Of the more than 60 artists in the show, including many who were to become prominent figures in Abstract Expressionism, only 11 were women. This is the first time works by these extraordinary women will be brought together since the 9th St. show took place 68 years ago.

In the early 1970s, the preeminent editor and art critic, Thomas Hess, would refer to them as “sparkling Amazons.” These women would neither have viewed themselves as “Amazons” nor as feminists; they simply worked and lived as artists, pursuing their professions with the same dedication as their male counterparts even though the social stakes were much higher for them at the time. Several of the artists, including Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler went on to have distinguished careers and have found their rightful place in the art historical canon. Others, including Grace Hartigan, Perle Fine and Anne Ryan, enjoyed critical success. The remainder, Sonia Sekula, Day Schnabel, Jean Steubing and Guitou Knoop are yet to be fully recognized by art history, a fact that this exhibition addresses.

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Perle Fine News: The Women of 9th Street, July  2, 2019 - Laura Joseph Mogil for WAG Lifestyle

The Women of 9th Street

July 2, 2019 - Laura Joseph Mogil for WAG Lifestyle

We are very exhibited about this amazing exhibition opening in September at the Katonah Museum. Perle Fine and Yvonne Thomas are included along with Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and so in.

Join us for the opening in September!


While it’s only July, some things are worth waiting a few months for. One such example is the upcoming exhibition, “Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th Street Show” at the Katonah Museum of Art.

Opening on Oct. 6 and continuing through Jan. 26, 2020, “Sparkling Amazons” will present the often overlooked contributions by female artists to the Abstract Expressionist movement and the significant role these women played as bold innovators within the New York School during the 1940s and ’50s. 

Michele Wije, the show’s curator and associate curator at the Katonah museum, says, “Our staff was looking at past exhibitions that changed the course of art history and one of the main ones in America was the ‘9th Street Show,’ which was a kind of ‘Salon des Refusés’ for New York artists who were being shut out of exhibition spaces in the uptown galleries and whose artwork was not being purchased by museums.” 

Wije said the museum decided to give their upcoming exhibition a unique spin by focusing on the 12 women featured in “9th Street Show,” which took place in 1951 and was organized by then fledgling gallerist Leo Castelli. 

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Perle Fine News: Berry Campbell Included in 47th Annual Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse, May  2, 2019 - Berry Campbell

Berry Campbell Included in 47th Annual Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse

May 2, 2019 - Berry Campbell

47th Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse
May 2nd - May 30th
More Information

Berry Campbell collaborated with Robert Passal Interior Design and Daniel Kahan of Smith and Moore Architects as well as Sarah Bartholomew Design in the Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse, supplying works by Eric DeverPerle Fine, and Stephen Pace.

Each year, celebrated interior designers transform a magnificent estate into an elegant exhibition of fine furnishings, art and technology. This all began in 1973 when several dedicated supporters of Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club launched the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan to raise critical funds for much needed after school and enrichment programs for New York City children. For more than four decades, the show house has been a must-see event for thousands of design enthusiasts, renowned for sparking interior design trends throughout the world. In 2017, the show house expanded with a second location in Palm Beach, in partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.

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Perle Fine News: Clara Eagle Gallery Features the Women of the American Abstract Artists Movement, October 22, 2018 - Tracy Ross & Melanie David for WKMS Murray State's NPR Station

Clara Eagle Gallery Features the Women of the American Abstract Artists Movement

October 22, 2018 - Tracy Ross & Melanie David for WKMS Murray State's NPR Station

The American Abstract Artist movement was founded in 1936 in New York City, at a time when abstract art was met with strong critical resistance. Women played an integral part in forming the AAA, and Murray State's Clara M. Eagle gallery is housing an exhibit that honors these groundbreaking female artists. Emily Berger, an abstract artist featured in the exhibit, and T. Michael Martin, director of university galleries, visit Sounds Good to discuss the traveling exhibit. 

The Murray State University Galleries and the department of art and design present Blurring Boundaries: Continuity to Change - The Women of AAA 1936-2018through the beginning of November. In the first exhibition dedicated exlusively to the intergenerational group of women artists of American Abstract Artists, Blurring Boundaries traces the history of AAA's female founding members through present-day artists. The exhibition highlights approximately 45 works, emphasizing each artist's approach to central tenents of abstraction - composition, color, content, and material. Well-known founders and early members of AAA, such as Perle Fine, Esphyr Slobodkina, Gertrude Greene, Alice Trumbull Mason (featured above), and I. Rice Pereira, are included in the exhibit. Their classic works will be displayed beside contemporary abstract artists such as Sharon Brant, Merrill Wagner, Cecily Kahn, Alice Adams, and Emily Berger.

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Perle Fine News: The State of Art: Ground Zero Looks Back at 2 Decades of Visual Art, August 21, 2018 - L. Kent Wolgamott for Lincoln Journal Star

The State of Art: Ground Zero Looks Back at 2 Decades of Visual Art

August 21, 2018 - L. Kent Wolgamott for Lincoln Journal Star

This list of 20 Includes exhibitions in Lincoln, Omaha, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. I saw the latter three when I was one of 12 American fellows in the International Arts Journalism Institute in Visual Art in 2009.

“Now’s The Time,” Sheldon Museum of Art, 2017

There were multiple Sheldon shows drawn from its collection that I considered for this list. I ended up choosing the one that is most in my wheelhouse — "Now’s The Time,” an exhibition of Sheldon’s abstract expressionist works conceived by director and chief curator Wally Mason after “Yellow Band,” the museum’s Mark Rothko masterwork was exhibited in an AE survey in London and Bilbao, Spain.

A who’s who of mid-century artists, the smartly hung show included works by Barnett Newman, Han Hoffman, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Willem deKooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner along with newly acquired works by Judith Godwin and Perle Fine. That’s an impressive lineup for any museum, particularly a university museum in the middle of the country.

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine/Margaret Louppe: New York/Paris, December 13, 2017 - Rose-Carol Washton Long for Delicious Line

Perle Fine/Margaret Louppe: New York/Paris

December 13, 2017 - Rose-Carol Washton Long for Delicious Line

The pairing of the painters Perle Fine and Marguerite Louppe opens corresponding windows on two vibrant art scenes of the 20th century: New York's AbEx, and Paris from the 1930s to the '60s. They were remarkable colorists, Louppe with her geometric, purist landscapes and still lifes in rich earth tones, and Fine with her luminous Prescience series.

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine/Marguerite Louppe: New York/Paris , October 26, 2017 - Curated by William Corwin

Perle Fine/Marguerite Louppe: New York/Paris

October 26, 2017 - Curated by William Corwin

The exhibition contrasts the lives of two women painters, one working in New York and the other across the Atlantic in Paris, who lived and were active for the same period of time, existing in the parallel art worlds of abstract painters and modernist Paris. Louppe lived from 1902-1988 and Fine from 1905-1988. The exhibition will place emphasis on the artists’ work; their style, use of material and aesthetic inspirations, accompanied by a consideration of the art scenes they emerged from and contributed to so vibrantly.

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Perle Fine News: When Artists Ran the Show: 'Inventing Downtown,' at N.Y.U., January 12, 2017 - Holland Cotter for the New York Times

When Artists Ran the Show: 'Inventing Downtown,' at N.Y.U.

January 12, 2017 - Holland Cotter for the New York Times

When a call went out online recently for an art world protest strike — “no work, no school, no business” — on Inauguration Day, more than 200 artists, most based in New York, many well known, quickly signed on. In numbers, they represent a mere fraction of the present art world, and there was reason to expect the list would grow. By contrast, in New York in the 1950s, 200 artists pretty much were that world, and one divided into several barely tangent circles.    

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Perle Fine Featured in The East Hampton Star

February 12, 2015 - Mark Segal

The Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea will hold an opening tonight from 6 to 8 of an exhibition of work by Perle Fine, an Abstract Expressionist painter who lived in Springs from 1954 until her death in 1988. The show will remain on view through March 14.

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Perle Fine News: Perle Fine featured on Hamptons Art Hub, February 12, 2015 - Sage Cotignola for Hamptons Art Hub

Perle Fine featured on Hamptons Art Hub

February 12, 2015 - Sage Cotignola for Hamptons Art Hub

“PERLE FINE” has a solo exhibition beginning February 12 at Berry Campbell in Chelsea. An Opening Reception takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition continues through March 14. Perle Fine was at the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist movement in NYC and East Hampton, NY.

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Berry Campbell to Feature Paintings of Perle Fine (1905-1988)

February 5, 2015 - ArtFix Daily

Berry Campbell is pleased to announce its first exhibition of the paintings of PERLE FINE (1905-1988). The exhibition will include eighteen important paintings and works on paper from the 1950s through the 1970s, including a several paintings from the “Cool Series,” 1961-1963.  Berry Campbell announced its representation of the artist last month.  The exhibition will be showcased at Berry Campbell on West 24th Street in Chelsea from February 12 through March 14, 2015.  

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