The Self-Taught Female Artist Whose Innovations Changed American Art
Move over Jackson Pollock…
Abstract Expressionism looms large over the history of 20th-century art.
Emanating from New York in the 1940s, it produced some of the most monumental nonobjective images that have ever been seen. At its nucleus was Jackson Pollock, who made furious abstract paintings with dripped, flicked, spilt and sloshed paint, all achieved with a gestural freedom that recast modern art and turned Pollock into a household name.
Yet tucked away in the history of this movement is a little-known artist named Janet Sobel, whose influence on Abstract Expressionism — and on Pollock in particular — throws its origins into question.
Labelled a “housewife” by critics, she played an instrumental role in the advent of drip painting and should be considered a contender as the very first Abstract Expressionist.
Pollock’s Performance
A key year in the story of Abstract Expressionism was 1947, when Pollock first experimented with the “all-over painting” — that is, when the canvas is approached from all angles so that no section is considered more important than another — that took as its underpinning his unfettered dripping techniques.
