Lot 42
Janet Sobel(Ukrainian/American, 1893-1968)Untitled, 1948
13 November 2019, 17:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$12,575 inc. premium
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Janet Sobel (Ukrainian/American, 1893-1968)
Untitled, 1948
gouache on paper
16 x 12 in.
40.6 x 30.5 cm.
This work was executed circa 1948.
gouache on paper
16 x 12 in.
40.6 x 30.5 cm.
This work was executed circa 1948.
Footnotes
Provenance
Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York
James Barron Art, Connecticut
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Connecticut, James Barron Art, Janet Sobel: Revisiting the Drip, April 23 - June 19, 2016
Abstract in form and vibrant in palette, Janet Sobel's Untitled (1948) is a remarkable representation of the artist's overlooked and brief career. Born in Ukraine in 1893, Sobel and her family were forced to emigrate to the United Sates via Ellis Island after the death of her father during a period of religious persecution. It was here that the artist married her husband Max Sobel at the age of seventeen. Never receiving any formal artistic education, Sobel picked up a paintbrush in 1937, when she was already a mother of four. Her abstract style involved dripping, blowing and pouring paint on to a surface to create colorful patterns and shapes.
Sobel received a number of exhibitions in leading New York galleries, one of which attracted the attention of art critic Clement Greenberg. The essayist noted in 1944 that "Pollock (and I myself) admired these paintings rather furtively ... Pollock had admitted that these pictures had made an impact on him." (Clement Greenberg in 'American-Type Painting" in Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Beacon 1961, p. 218). Jackson Pollock went on to create his first 'all over' drip painting in 1947, which was to become his signature style.
Although never formally trained, Sobel sits at a crucial position in art history. The present work from 1948, executed in the artist's signature 'all over' composition, not only reveals Sobel's pioneering avant-garde practice, but also calls for the public's recognition of her as a significant figure in the evolution of abstract art in the United States.
