Ninth Street Women and Their Legacy - Exhibition Digital Catalogue

On the 70th anniversary of the 1951 9th Street Exhibition, Somerville Manning Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition, Ninth Street Women. This exhibition features original works by Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell hung alongside Marie Theres-Berger, Mary Page Evans, Cheryl Levin, Melissa Meyer, and Bill Scott.

The female Abstract Expressionist painters, featured in the 9th Street Exhibition of 1951 in New York City, were living and creating during one of the most turbulent social and political periods of modern times. Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting, not as muses, but as artists.

These women not only shaped the art of postwar America but

the entire future of the art world.

Also an in uence to the Somerville Manning exhibition is a book by the same title, Ninth Street Women, written

by Mary Gabriel, published in 2018. It is a richly detailed book starring, not only these ve heroic female painters, but a supporting cast that de nes the entire existential era - from Frank O'Hara to Billie Holiday to Samuel Beckett. It is a narrative told through the lives of these brilliant and courageous women who forged ahead creating their own individualism within the dynamic formation of postwar abstract expressionism.

Their paintings hang in museums throughout the world and have inspired many artists including the ve hanging alongside them in this exhibition, 70 years after the 9th Street Exhibition - some of whom had the

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opportunity to personally know them.

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner (1908 - 1984) Untitled (Abstract), 1979 oil on paper 22 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches signed and dated lower right ‘Lee Krasner 79’

On Loan from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York

Elaine de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) Bull, 1978 oil on masonite 15 1/2 x 17 7/8 inches signed "E. de Kooning" lower left

On Loan from Private Collection

Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) Portrait of Lee Hall, 1978 oil on canvas 50 x 36 inches signed lower right E de K

Literature Reproduced in Ealine and Bill: Portrait of a Marriage: The Lives of Willem and Elaine de Kooning by Lee Hall. Harper Collins, 1993

Lee Hall was an abstract painter who exhibited with the artists of the New York School during the height of its exciting and creative development in the 1940’s and 1950’s. She wrote the biography of her friends, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Elaine and Bill: Portrait of a Marriage.

Disenchanted with the advancing commercialism of art, she left New York City to serve as the president of the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970s and ’80s.

Lee Hall (1935-2017) Afternoon Storm Shore: Connecticut August, 1981 oil on canvas 40 1/2 x 30 3/4 inches

Lee Hall (1935-2017) New Mexico Horizon, 1983 oil on canvas 50 x 50 inches

Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) Celtic Saint, 1978 watercolor and collage 39 x 27 inches

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) Jonah and the Whale, 1975 watercolor and collage 22 x 27 inches

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) Frog and Lizard, 1971 acrylic, watercolor and collage 30 x 22 inches

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) Hawaiian Still Life, 1988 oil on canvas 78 x 42 inches

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) Untitled Diptych, c. 1986 oil on canvas 13 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches signed lower right ‘Joan Mitchell’

On Loan from Private Collection

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) Untitled, ca. 1989 oil on linen-covered book 11 x 11 inches

On Loan from Private Collection

70 years after the iconic 9th Street Exhibition, many artists work to renew the spirit of the abstract expressionist movement and build upon their legacy. Artists like Marie Theres Berger, Mary Page Evans, Cheryl Levin, Melissa Meyer, and Bill Scott expand

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upon these well-known in uences to create their own unique visual languages.

Marie Theres Berger

A native of Germany, Marie Theres studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and then at the Ecole du Louvre, in Paris. Her vivid oral paintings, inspired by her home in Provence, show a modern approach to traditional still life and landscape subject matter.

Berger has exhibited in Philadelphia, Germany, Japan, and across Europe. Her work is included in the collections of The Pennsylvania State Museum, Harrisburg, PA, The Bryn Mawr Collection, Bryn

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Mawr, PA, and The Arkansas State Museum, AR.

Marie Theres Berger Hommage à Ogata Korin, 2020 acrylic on canvas 27 1/2 x 55 inches

Marie Theres Berger L'heure Rose, 2020 acrylic on canvas 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches

Marie Theres Berger Parva Pictura 6, 2020 acrylic on canvas 16 x 32 inches

Marie Theres Berger Mars, 2020 acrylic on canvas 31 1/2 x 63 inches

Marie Theres Berger Kobaltblau, 2020 acrylic on canvas 35 1/2 x 71 inches

Marie Theres Berger Le Grand Bleu, 2020 acrylic on canvas 63 x 63 inches

Marie Theres Berger Parva Pictura 8, 2020 acrylic on canvas 16 x 32 inches

Marie Theres Berger Aprés La Pluie, 2020 acrylic on canvas 16 x 48 inches

Mary Page Evans

Mary Page Evans' painting in Claude Monet's Giverny in the early 1980s

Gene Davis described Mary Page Evans’ paintings as, “hymns of unadulterated joy.”

While Mary Page Evans paints still lifes and images of the human form, it is her Letter from Grace Hartigan, 1989

landscape and garden paintings created directly from nature that capture this sentiment. She has worked at Giverny, Claude Monet’s garden, and names Cézanne as a particular inspiration. Her artist-friends

Joan Mitchell and Mary Page Evans, 1986

include painters Grace Hartigan and Joan Mitchell.

Evans has artwork in numerous public and private collections such as: the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Delaware Art Museum, Brandywine River Museum of Art, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania. Several of her paintings are

Mary Page Evans, Grace Hartigan, and Representative Thomas Evans Jr.

currently on view at The White House.

Mary Page Evans L’Etang III, 1985/86 oil on paper 47 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches

Mary Page Evans Nymphea Series Diptych, 1985/86 oil on paper 30 x 44 inches

Mary Page Evans Rhythmic Trees pastel, charcoal, and ink on paper 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches

Mary Page Evans Rhythmic Figures pastel and charcoal on paper 25 1/4 x 19 1/4 inches

Mary Page Evans Arden Garden III oil on paper 28 1/4 x 63 1/2 inches

Cheryl Levin

Cheryl Levin's work uses repetition to bind herself to the creative process. Levin is in uenced by Lee Krasner’s link to the method of automatism. Like Krasner, she lets her hand and brain release subconsciously to relax into the work, creating a ngerprint of a shape - each line revealing its own path. The shapes are inspired by salvaged pieces of metal from her late husband, Robert Phillips', metalworking studio.

Levin has shown in many group and twoperson shows in the Philadelphia region and across the country and is part of many

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private collections.

Cheryl Levin Journey with Red Lines and Black Ink at the Top, 2020 ink on paper 19 x 20 inches

Cheryl Levin Three Shapes Made with Line with a Dot, 2020 ink on vellum 19 x 25 inches

Cheryl Levin Red Inked with Black Shapes, 2019 ink on paper 14 x 24 inches

Cheryl Levin Lines in the Shape of a Bowl Forged by Bob Phillips, 2020 ink on printmaking paper 30 x 22 1/4 inches

Cheryl Levin Maroon Shape, 2021 ink on rice paper 18 x 24 inches

Cheryl Levin Grief Journey with Two Mistakes, 2020 ink on rice paper 24 x 36 inches

Cheryl Levin Cherry Blossom Path, 2021 ink on rice paper 24 x 36 inches

Cheryl Levin Side Paths Lined with Cherry Blossom, 2021 ink on rice paper 24 x 36 inches

Melissa Meyer Self portrait reproduced in The New Yorker, February 1, 1993, p. 16

Melissa Meyer’s calligraphic abstract paintings fuse line and form with seamless, meandering elegance. Meyer spent her summers as a scholarship student at the Provincetown Workshop, working with Leo Manso and Victor Candell. Shortly thereafter, in 1974, Meyer made her rst visit to the prestigious artist colony, Yaddo, upon the recommendation of Helen Frankenthaler. Since that time, she has made countless visits to Yaddo and is Melissa Meyer and fellow resident artists at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, 1994

currently a board member, following in Frankenthaler’s footsteps. Meyer has been exploring the linear in nity of the picture plane for over thirty years.

Her work is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum and many other public and private collections across the United States. Meyer was awarded a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation and a fellowship from the

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Melissa Meyer in her studio in New York.

Melissa Meyer Raycie Series no. III, 2011 watercolor 38 x 25 inches

Melissa Meyer Raycie Series no. VIII, 2014 watercolor 38 x 25 inches

Melissa Meyer 9th Ave Quartet I Allegro, 2011 oil on canvas 42 x 40 inches

Bill Scott

Bill Scott’s paintings are radiant, with a quality of surface achieved through the thinnest applications of paint and the use of various techniques honed over decades. In 1980, while living in Paris on a travel prize, he met Joan Mitchell and formed a friendship with her. In subsequent years he stayed at her home in Vétheuil and painted in her studio. After Mitchell died, he wrote an appreciation of her published in Art in America.

Bill Scott’s watercolors and gouaches hanging on the east wall of Joan Mitchell’s studio, Vétheuil, France,1989

“I painted every day and at lunchtime walked around the village or down by the Seine. After we had dinner together, Joan usually walked the dogs up to her studio where she painted until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.”

— Bill on his time with Joan Major public collections with Scott’s work include Cleveland Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

Joan Mitchell’s garden, Vétheuil, France, 1981 photograph by Bill Scott

Museum of Art, and Woodmere Art Museum.

Bill Scott Hydrangea, 1993 acrylic on paper 39 1/4 x 31 1/4 inches

Bill Scott Lullaby, 2017 oil on canvas 32 x 42 inches

Bill Scott One Orange Left, 2014 oil on canvas 39 x 43 inches

Bill Scott The Turning of Water, 2009 oil on canvas 28 x 27 inches

Bill Scott Dulcimer, 2004 oil on linen 18 x 24 inches

Bill Scott Still Life, 2019 oil on canvas 42 x 63 inches

Contact Somerville Manning Gallery for inquires (302) 652-0271

info@somervillemanning.com