The Postwar Period Saw an Explosion of Female Painters at the Art Students League. A New Exhibition Celebrates Their Achievements

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.

Among those in the latter category are the unsung Ab Ex greats
Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, who were also spotlighted in the
Denver Art Museum’s 2016 show, “Women of Abstract
Expressionism.”

There’s also the Puerto Rican artist Olga Albizu, who studied at
the league under the legendary Hans Hofmann. “It was an adventure
getting hold of one of her works, because there aren’t many of her
pieces in this region,” Corwin said.

Corwin was especially thrilled to include a piece from his own
collection by Lenita Manry, who was Hofmann’s assistant in the
1940s. “She died in 1969, and her best friend gave her work away to
all of the people who knew her, including her downstairs neighbors,
who were my parents,” Corwin said. “I grew up with this painting
and it’s amazing to put Lenita’s work on the wall with these famous
artists, like Krasner and Hartigan, who she clearly knew.”

Sadly, in the past few months alone, four of the women in the
show have died: Mary Abbott, Mavis Pusey, Joyce Pensato, and
Farmanfarmaian.

“I particularly remember a lot of the people who are no longer
here, but who I knew well,” said the artist Regina Bogart, a close
friend of de Kooning’s, at the show’s opening.

The painter, who just turned 91, studied at the league while in
high school and college. “I did my first oil painting in Will
Barnet’s class, and I am still making work today,” she told Artnet
News, crediting the school with having a formative influence on her
career. She has an exhibition on view now at the
Zürcher gallery.

She was joined by other artists, who came to the opening in full
force. “I’m so happy to be back here,” Lynn Umlauf, another Zürcher
artist, told Artnet News. “I worked full-time at a paint store just
to go to the Art Students League and paint at night. It was
nostalgic to walk in and recognize the entrance. I was looking up
the address because I forgot the piece of paper where I had written
it down. But then I realized that I still knew where I was
going!”

See works from the show below.

“Postwar Women” is on view at the Art Students League of New
York’s Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, November 2–December 1,
2019.

The post The Postwar Period Saw an Explosion of Female
Painters at the Art Students League. A New Exhibition Celebrates
Their Achievements appeared first on artnet News.