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Bookmark: https://collection.sdmart.org/objects-1/info/17253

Untitled

Janet Sobel (AKA Jennie Llyzhowosky; Janet Wilson), American (born Ukraine), (1894–1968)

Creation date: ca. 1946-1948

Creation place: United States

Other Information

Type: Oil Painting

Medium and Support: Oil and enamel on canvas

Credit Line: Museum purchase with funds provided by Suzanne Figi and Mrs. Norton S. Walbridge

Accession Number: 2002.1

State/Province: New York

Dimensions: 18 in. x 14 1/2 in. (45.72 cm x 36.83 cm)

Provenance

Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York, New York ( - January 25, 2002)

Mr. and Mrs. Sol Sobel, New York, New York ( - )

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California (January 25, 2002 - )

Label Copy

March 2003
American Installation
D. Scott Atkinson

The Ukrainian-born Sobel immigrated to New York, where she married and had five children before becoming a painter at the age of forty-three. Her first paintings of the late 1930s depicted figures rendered in a primitive style. By the early 1940s she had begun to combine figures in a field composed of skeins of color dripped onto the canvas to create an all-over, abstract pattern. In the years immediately following the war, Sobel dropped the figure from her paintings altogether and produced completely abstract works such as Untitled. Anticipating the paintings of Jackson Pollock by several years, Sobel’s all-over drip paintings were considered part of the subconscious gestures referred to by the Surrealists as “automatism.”

Peggy Guggenheim included Sobel in a group show in 1944 at her Art of This Century gallery in New York and gave her a one-person exhibition in 1946, attended by Pollock. As Pollock would do later, Sobel painted with the surplus enamel that was readily available after the war and worked with her paintings laid flat on the floor. Sobel’s small, untitled canvas is part of her groundbreaking body of work, which ranks among the very first Abstract Expressionist paintings.
Last Updated: 2/13/2023

Exhibition

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Abstract Expressionism: Other Dimensions, An Introdcution to Small Scale The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum , 10/26/1989 - 6/13/1990

Janet Sobel (1894–1968): Selected Works from the Artist's Estate Gary Snyder Fine Art , 1/25/2002 - 3/9/2002

Modern Art: Selected Highlights San Diego Museum of Art , 10/20/2012 - 6/30/2013

Ortra vez Modern and Contemporary The San Diego Museum of Art , 3/30/2013 - 7/14/2013

American: Art of the 20th Century San Diego Museum of Art , 1/18/2014 - 8/26/2014

American Art The San Diego Museum of Art , 11/26/2016 - 8/15/2021

Bibliography

This object has the following bibliographic references:

Ann Eden Gibson. Abstract Expressionism: Yale University Press. New haven, Connecticut, 1997
Page Number: 32, 33, Figure Number: 20

Abstract Expressionism: Other Dimensions, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1989
Page Number: 56, 57 no. 132, Figure Number: 41

Roberta Smith. The New York Times The New York Times. New York, New York, February 15, 2002
Page Number: B42, Figure Number: B42

Alexi Worth. Artforum Artforum. New York, New York, April 2002
Page Number: 138, Figure Number: 138

Mr. D. Scott Atkinson. San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art. San Diego, California, 2003
Page Number: 213, Figure Number: 213

Mr. Edward Gomez. Raw Vision, Raw Vision Ltd.. New York, New York, Fall 2003
Page Number: 48, Figure Number: 48

Ms. Caroline A. Jones. Action/Abstraction: The Jewish Museum. New York, New York, 2008
Page Number: 190, Figure Number: 190

Paloma. Monet Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Caja Madrid Fundacion. 2010
Page Number: 34, Figure Number: 17

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