Abstract Expressionism Mary Abbott

Mary Abbott (born July 27, 1921) is an American artist known as a member of the New York School of abstract expressionists in the late 1940s and 50s. Her abstract and figurative work were also influenced by her time spent in St. Croix and Haiti, where she lived off and on throughout the 1950s.( Wikipedia )

Among the early exponents of Abstract Expressionism, Mary Abbott creates powerful oil paintings in which she combines spontaneous, gestural brushwork with a highly creative use of color. Lauded for its energy and vital feeling of immediacy, her work reflects her desire to translate sensations into paint; as she puts it, “I like the process of painting. The intensity of Living Nature through myself––using the medium, paint, color and line defining the poetry of living space; that is my aim, life and work.”

Born in New York on 27 July 1921, Mary Abbott boasts an impressive pedigree: a descendent of such luminaries as President John Adams and General Robert E. Lee, she is the daughter of Naval Commander and military adviser Henry Abbott and his wife, Elizabeth Grinnell, a poet and writer. Abbott grew up primarily in Manhattan, where she attended Miss Chapin’s School, graduating in 1939. She also spent time in Washington, D.C., Concord, Massachusetts and Southampton, Long Island. At the age of twelve she enrolled in Saturday classes at the Art Students League of New York; by the late 1930s, she was taking advanced courses there, working under the painter George Grosz, who was impressed by her serious demeanor. Throughout this period, she also became acquainted with the work of master painters, ranging from Cimabue and Tintoretto to Eugene Delacroix, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, all of whom came to influence her art. On her summer trips to the nation’s capital, Abbott also studied with Eugene Weiss at the Corcoran Museum School.( spanierman modern )