https://www.ericfirestonegallery.com/exhibitions/women-across-america-1945-to-1979
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to present Women Across America: 1945–1979, an exhibition that showcases connections between women across the country in the post-World War II period. This exhibition highlights the rich tradition of abstraction within the period across various mediums. Taking inspiration from William Gerdts’s sprawling Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710–1920, the three-volume encyclopedia of art in the United States, this exhibition reimagines what an Americanist Art History of the postwar period might look like if told through women’s art. The show traces a transitional time for women within the art world, with figures such as Adaline Kent and Jeanne Reynal who forged their own paths in order to work as artists, painters like Pat Passlof and Helen Frankenthaler who fought for a place within the New York School, and artists who became outspoken in their feminism during the women’s movement like Miriam Schapiro and Nina Yankowitz. This exhibition furthers the gallery’s commitment to reexamining modern and contemporary art histories of the United States, especially championing underrecognized artists.
Over the last decade, women artists have increasingly achieved recognition for their role in post-war abstraction. This exhibition will present an expansive view of this art world: connecting now well-established names alongside reintroductions. The curation will create conversations between artists involved with Surrealism, the Studio Craft Movement, Abstract Expressionism, the Washington Color School, and Women’s Art Movement. The exhibition draws together work from artists’ estates, key paintings coming out of private collections for the first time in decades, and distinguished loans.
Taking place over the United States’s semiquincentennial, this exhibition tells various kinds of American stories: regional stories, immigrant stories, and exile stories. In the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War, many fled Europe for the United States. Among them were numerous artists, including Sari Dienes (1898–1992) and Hedda Sterne (1910–2011), both of whom trained at European academies, lived and became part of avant-garde circles prior to settling in New York. These artists, though fiercely independent in their respective studio practices, generated connections among artists. Leaving behind much of what they knew, they created channels for social interaction and artistic exchange in their new country. In New York, Dienes established the Ear Inn as an artists’ bar, which hosted performances and happenings.
Sari Dienes Psychadelic 1950 Plaster Print
Sari Dienes Central Park c. 1958