Tom McNease

Abstract Expressionism

As both a movement and a style, Abstract Expressionism has proved enduring. If we took an analogy from biology class, Abstract Expressionism would be a class falling within the greater phylum of Abstraction. Not all Abstraction is Abstract Expressionism. The first completely non-objective abstract paintings have typically been credited to Wassily Kandinsky in 1910 — who became the leading figure of German Expressionism. However, several years earlier in Sweden, Hilma af Klint was creating non-objective paintings. Both had a deeply spiritual approach to the creation of art. After World War II ended in 1945, another war was won: New York artists — with their bold new approaches to the non-objective and spearheaded by Pollock’s drip action style — wrested away from the School of Paris the title of capitol of the art world.

Aage Hogfeldt

1925 - 2014
American

Anonymous Anomaly: This teenage artist risked it all in World War II as a teenage B-24 machine gunner — and miraculously survived crashing behind enemy lines. Returning home, he got his master’s — and broke from the norm again, founding an avant colony with an artist-run gallery and...

Iria Leino

1932 - 2022
Finnish

Iria was the first Finnish woman pioneer of abstract painting in America. Prolific but reclusive, her bold abstract paintings are a uniquely vibrant cultural fusion of Finland and America. Her loft in SoHo became a virtual time capsule preserving five decades of paintings.

Igor Gorsky

1936 - 2021

An epiphany led him to discard his career, become wholly dedicated to painting, and succeed in creating a new technique and style of pure pouring. Some paintings drive toward the sublime as sacred shafts of light. Others emit the hallucinatory energy of his inner mind.

Linus Coraggio

1962
American

During the 1980s he invented sculpture-as-graffiti and was a driving force in the Rivington School. He bolted his welded sculptures to the city’s signposts — calling them “outstallations.” The title of one says it all: “I’m No Gallery Whore.” His recent paintings — AbEx Graffiti —...

Francis Hines

1920 - 2016
American

This master of the energy of tension created wrappings that are unique in American art — from the famous Washington Square Arch to his extensive body of paintings.

Harry Bertschmann

1931
American

Finally revealed is this extraordinary double life: Walk into any drugstore and you’ll see his commercial packaging designs that have become iconic in American culture. But for more than 60 years he was also pushing the boundaries of abstract expressionist painting.

Beverly Brodsky

1941
American

In 1960 Beverly Brodsky studied under Ad Reinhardt at Brooklyn College. On the first day she was simply told to paint a large canvas. Reinhardt returned a few hours later, paused by her easel and asked, “Who taught you how to paint?” Before she could find a reply Reinhardt answered his own...

Reid Stowe

1952
American

Jimmy Buffet wrote lyrics with him in mind. Basquiat painted his portrait. He built a 70-foot schooner and left the touch of solid earth for a record 1,152 days without touching shore, without resupply of food or water, and without fuel. This shaman created a large body of extraordinary abstract...

Tom McNease

1947 - 2012
American

McNease was a self-proclaimed “feral artist” of the bayou — a true self-taught Outsider who lived alone at the edge of Honey Island Swamp, Louisiana. Early on he gained serious critical recognition for his abstract natural photography. He then invented an entirely new technique of pigment...

Stewart Hitch

1940 - 2002
American

The story of Stewart Hitch ranks as one of the most tragic in our contemporary art history. He was charismatic as James Dean, and as hard a drinker as Jackson Pollock. He developed a signature abstract style but most of his art disappeared.

Fuller Potter

1910 - 1990
American

“Were I to have more faith in and familiarity with the Eternal Muses, might I not find that there is an intergalactic aesthetic reality to be espoused? Not the latest artist arrival on the current of popularity & esteem, but the spaceman of all time. Great comfort would be in...

Tom Blodgett

1940 - 2012
American

Rare is the artist who could claim to have dived as deep into the unconscious and survived the journey — bringing back images of intense imagination and technical brilliance. As proof, this recluse kept his life’s works buried in a dilapidated shack in the hills of Eugene, Oregon. The...

Simon Samsonian

1912 - 2003
American

This survivor of the Armenian genocide wound up in a Cairo orphanage in 1927. He rose to fame as one of Egypt’s great modernists, but after moving to Long Island late in life he withdrew into anonymity. Now his compelling story is being told.

Gil Cuatrecasas

1935 - 2004
Spanish-American

Before he disappeared he was on the perfect path: studying under Josef Albers at Yale; a solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1966; internationally, several museums of modern art showed his paintings. But in his spiritual exploration he became reclusive and shunned galleries. In his...

Joan Thorne

1943

A New Image painter whose exuberance of color and brushwork weaves spatial depths, creating an optical energy.