Abstract Expressionism: The Persistent Women

Grace Hartigan

Hartigan found acclaim by fusing abstraction and figuration and for her noted sense of color. In 1954, Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, instructed the purchase of one of her works, becoming the first of the ‘second-generation’ accepted into any museum collection.

By 1952, Hartigan absorbed figuration into painting by including familiar images. Often considered a precursor to Pop Art, Hartigan deepens our understanding of the intersection of Pop, abstraction, and painting.

Mercedes Matter

Matter was both the first woman admitted to “The Club” of Abstract Expressionists and a founding member of the American Abstract Artists. Matter’s work defies easy categorization. Her energetic brushstrokes coalesce into careful studies of still lifes. What appears to be off-the-cuff, Matter spent months or years on a drawing or painting.

Her commitment to studio practice would bring about one of her lasting legacies, founding the New York Studio School which would produce artistic luminaries including Christopher Wool.

Yvonne Thomas

Yvonne Thomas’s career contains all of the hallmarks of the Abstract Expressionists. She attended Cooper Union where she studied under Buckminster Fuller. In 1948, Patricia Matta, wife of surrealist Roberto Matta, introduced Thomas to “Subjects of the Artist”, a cooperative art school run by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, and David Hare. It was this introduction that shifted Thomas’s trajectory.

Befriending artists including Elaine de Kooning and Philip Guston, Thomas fully embraced Abstract Expressionism. She would show in the landmark 9th Street Show in 1951 as well as all five of the “New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals” of the 1950s.

To dive into more of the legacies of some of these artists, visit the pages for our exhibitions, “Elaine and Willem de Kooning: Painting in the Light” and “Mercedes Matter: A Miraculous Quality”.