Yvonne Thomas

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

In the early 1960s, Yvonne Thomas (1913-2009) was one of many painters seeking a more rational, methodical alternative to the untethered, intuitive and often outsize gestures of Abstract Expressionism. The French-born Ms. Thomas — who came to the United States as a child and was a regular on the New York art scene after 1950 — made a series of modest but radiant proto-Minimalist works that, as seen in this moving show, “Windows and Variations: Paintings From 1963-65,” may be the best of her career.

Until around 1960, Ms. Thomas’s loose patches of color had been relatively generic, a de Kooning-infused form of Abstract Expressionism, albeit sensitive in its paint-handling and palette. But gradually she simplified: reducing the numbers of colors and limiting her shapes to a repeating pattern of lozenges or, often, fat, short brush strokes that suggest a form of counting.

Leaning this way and that, these elements floated in horizontal rows before fields of related hues. In “Transition” (1963), for example, yellow ocher, green and black repeatedly change places, defining shiny strokes and then matte background areas, almost in a kind of dance. In “Variations,” also from 1963, shades of red prevail fore and aft, but additions of white and black create shifting lights, shadows and shimmers. The repetition of identical elements would be foundational to Minimalism, but Ms. Thomas was less strict and more expressive. She kept her hand in, adding a fresh directness of touch, and the results give her a place in the still-emerging saga of postwar American abstraction.

ROBERTA SMITH

New York City Gallery Openings video. Christine Berry introduced Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations

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. 

Berry Campbell is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by Yvonne Thomas (1913-2009). The gallery will present nineteen paintings from 1950-1962. Berry Campbell is now representing the Estate of Yvonne Thomas. Throughout a career lasting over fifty years, Yvonne Thomas blended the intuitive freedom of Abstract Expressionism with the symbolic language of form and color.