Sale 2525 - Contemporary Art, November 21, 2019

artists. Throughout her early career, Dorothy Dehner’s (1901–1994) work was stifled by her husband, the Abstract Expressionist sculptor David Smith. A turning point came in 1950 when Skidmore College held her first solo exhibition of drawings. After her divorce that year, Dehner was able to focus on sculpture and developed a Cubist style that experimented with media and scale. Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) was another artist who found inspiration in Cubism as well as Russian Constructivism and developed her own distinctive style. Nevelson studied under Hans Hofmann and had her first solo exhibition at New York’s Nierendorf Gallery in 1941. Her monochromatic 1950s sculptures utilizing wood and found objects propelled Nevelson to international recognition. Artist Lee Bontecou (born 1931) found her stride after—and was perhaps inspired by—the 1951 Castelli exhibition. She studied in New York at the Art Students League from 1953 to 1958 and in Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1956 to 1957. Bontecou was committed to her vision of three-dimensional drawing; and her welded, unconventional wall hangings using found and recycled materials were well received at her first solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in the winter of 1960. The Whitney Museum of American Art purchased her work in 1961. Each of these formidable women challenged the androcentric conventions of the art world up to this point, and in doing so redefined what is now considered the twentieth century American art canon. These women who are today remembered as pioneers and significant proponents of midcentury Abstract Expressionism(the first specificallyAmericanmovement to achieve international influence) faced personal and professional challenges unique from their male counterparts. In their commitment to their work, their steadfastness to their artistic careers and their incontrovertible adherence to their individual creativity, they upended the art world, radiating from the United States and soon thereafter internationally, and in doing so established a standard for artists, more focused on the work itself than gender. Frankenthaler commented, reflecting on her career as an artist, “What has made it work, or what makes certain paintings successful or not, has to do with my being a painter and a thinking, feeling person, more than my sex, color, height or origin,” epitomizing the sentiment of many of the female artists who pioneered a new model for artists during the Abstract Expressionist movement.