News

Syd Solomon (1917–2004), who described himself as an ‘Abstract Impressionist’, made the city of Sarasota in Florida his home from 1946 until his death, establishing the Institute of Fine Art at New College, which brought artists such as Philip Guston and Larry Rivers to teach in Sarasota. He was also the first living artist to have work in the collection of the Ringling Museum. Find out more from the Ringling’s website.

Navigating the complex paths presented to visitors at Art Miami is no small feat. Faced with the mountain of galleries on view, we’ve pulled together a handy reference guide for must-see presentations at this year’s Art Miami. Located at One Herald Plaza in Miami (NE 14th Street and Biscayne Bay,) the fair shares the grounds with its sister fair, Context.

From secondary market prospects to mid-career artists, Art Miami marks a diverse cross-section of modern and contemporary art reflecting a wide assembly of tastes. From the merging of digital and material to the large-scale mid-century modernists, no other fair holds quite the range of gems on display at Art Miami.

Make sure to survey the show, and keep an eye out for the following art galleries.

Berry Campbell (AM122) – Frank Wimberley and Syd Solomon steal the show at Berry Campbell gallery’s presentation, while stunning pieces by Nancy Graves, Elaine de Kooning and others round out an impressive survey of painters and mixed-media artists spanning from the post-war period to the present day. Wimberley’s ruminations on texture and minimalism alone feel shockingly contemporary. Syd Solomon’s work will be featured in an upcoming solo show at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, so take a peek at his works on view here to familiarize yourself with his style and deft mastery of color tones.

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.

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.

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.

"Painter, camouflage artist, and cultural connector Syd Solomon is emerging as an important figure in Abstract Expressionism." 

Art & Antiques

Designer Laura Santos transformed a light-filled, full-floor apartment in a former parking garage into a cozy backdrop for her impressive collection.

Artist Snapshot: Jill Nathanson
Exploring the mind and habits of an artist in twenty-five questions

At what age did you decide to become an artist?
When I was a tiny girl I loved horses, pretending I was a horse and also drawing horses. When I first started kindergarten, my horse drawing skill was rewarded: I was honored with the position of glue monitor. I had heard of horses being killed and sent to the glue factory, so I was nervous about a possible connection. I thought of myself as an artist in some way from that early time.

How did your parents react when you told them you anted to become an artist?
My mother was enthusiastic. She was a classical pianist with the highest level of training but a truncated career. She liked the idea of me being an artist even if she didn’t have a clear sense of what that might really mean, and I guess my father didn’t think much about his little girl’s future in terms of career in any case. From my earliest days I heard my mother practicing the classical repertoire without explanations, so I assumed she was making up the music as she went along — creating the great piano works of Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann. Why did she make the song go in that way. Why did the nice calm part become the loud stormy part? When I was a teen, my mother wanted me to go to Bennington College because that was where Helen Frankenthaler, a famous woman artist, had gone. So I went to Bennington early, after my junior year at the High School of Music and Art (now known as LaGuardia High School), thinking of myself as a professional from the start, knowing next to nothing. Bennington College, a key site of American modernism in the 1970s, was very good for me.