Perle Fine - Abstract Critical

Perle Fine
A

Perle Fine in her studio, Springs, New York, 1962.
Front cover: Cool Series, (Blue over Red), p. 22.
Opposite: Cool Series, (Plum over Pink), p. 31.
All photographs of the artist by
Maurice Berezov © A. E. Artworks, unless otherwise noted.
Published in the United States of America in 2011 by
Spanierman Modern, 53 East 58th Street, New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2011 Spanierman Modern
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without prior permission of the publishers.
isbn 978-1-935617-13-6
Photography: Roz Akin
Design: Amy Pyle, Light Blue Studio
B

The Cool Series

Perle Fine in her studio, Springs, New York, 1962.

Perle Fine The Cool Series
curated by christine berry
essay by lisa n. peters
november 10 to december 10, 2011
SPANIERMAN MODERN
53 EAST 58TH STREET new york 10022 tel (212) 832-1400
christineberry@spanierman.com
www.spaniermanmodern.com

Perle Fine The Cool Series
Out of revelation, which came
about through endless probing,
came revolution. All irrelevancies
in my painting are eliminated to
exact an explicit image resulting
in a clarity that rings a bell-like
awakening. There is more than
meets the eye here. These
simplified works do not intend
to be hard-edge or soft-edge;
the expression is more than
merely chemical or optical—it is
metaphysical. The economy of
means somehow seemed necessary
to secure the sensation of the
expression of the existentialist
in art.
—Perle Fine 1
Perle Fine in her studio, New York City, 1965.
4

From the time she began to exhibit her paintings
in the 1940s, Perle Fine (1905–1988) was in the
midst of the maelstrom that characterized the
New York art world, as radical aesthetic innovations and
reversals occurred in rapid succession. 2 While joining in
the dynamic spirit of the time, throughout the period that
followed, Fine maintained a calm and steady objective: she
was driven simply to keep painting and to meet the high
standards she set for herself. She viewed every shift in her
art as arising from “a deep-rooted need, a pictorial need,”
which led to her diVerent stylistic phases. 3 Among these,
her “Cool” series of 1961–63, featured in this exhibition,
seem to stand apart from her career trajectory, representing
a break from the Abstract Expressionist idiom of her earlier
work. Nonetheless, she stated that the paintings were a
“growth” rather than a “departure,” developing from “a
need within the painting to express more.” 4 In this respect,
they reveal an intriguing connection with the zeitgeist.
Although she created them while living in relative isolation
in the Springs, East Hampton, they can be associated with
contemporary Color Field painting, in which artists stepped
back from the soul-baring of action painting to let their
images speak for themselves, representing what the critic
Clement Greenberg described as a “new openness and
clarity.” 5 This approach was well suited to Fine, who had
an innate proclivity for reXection and analysis. At the same
time, the name she gave to the series suggests her awareness,
whether it was conscious at the time or not, that the word
“cool” had come to characterize a new type of art, free
from psychological self-examination, that could involve the
viewer in a direct emotional and intellectual experience
of a work of art purely through its color and space, which
were vehicles of visceral, spiritual experience. 6
Born in Boston, Fine grew up in nearby Malden,
Massachusetts. Before Wnishing high school, she had
decided on an art career, attending the School of Practical
Art, Boston, where she studied illustration and graphic
design. In about 1927–28, she moved to New York City,
and in 1929, she enrolled at the Grand Central School of
Art, taking classes in illustration and painting with Pruett
Carter. Living in Greenwich Village, she absorbed the new
art of the day, for which there were many opportunities at
the time, including the Gallery of Living Art at Washington
Square, Downtown Gallery, the American Contemporary
Gallery, the Whitney Studio Gallery, the Whitney Studio
Club, and the Museum of Modern Art—Fine was among
those in attendance at the museum’s inaugural exhibition in
November 1929. She sojourned in the following summer
in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she would return
annually in the years ahead, joining the town’s lively art
community. It was in Provincetown that her fellow student
at the Grand Central School of Art, Maurice Berezov,
proposed to her. They were married in September, and
both then transferred to the Art Students League, where
Fine focused her energies on Wne art. “What I found out
very quickly was you can only be a painter and nothing else
if you’re going to be a painter,” she recalled of this time. 7
Thomas Hart Benton was a leading instructor at the
league when Fine entered, but disliking his realist methods,
she chose to work instead with Kimon Nicolaides, adhering
to the approach of the author of the classic, posthumously
published, The Natural Way to Draw (1941), who encouraged
spontaneity and an academic approach to modeling the
Wgure. Fellow Nicolaides student, James Brooks, developed
a friendship with Fine that lasted in the years ahead. At
the time, the art of Cézanne was compelling to Fine, and
through studying his canvases, she gained an appreciation
for the way he created a kind of order from nature and
took control of the canvas, forming images which were at
one with their space. 8
As the Depression descended, Fine, like so many of
her artist-cohort, found it diYcult to aVord art school
tuition, but she was less impacted than most because she
was able to work independently in her studio on the
aesthetic challenges she set for herself. In 1933, when
Hans Hofmann moved his hugely popular Munich art
school to New York, Fine and Berezov became part of
it. Operating his classes like those of a Parisian atelier,
Hofmann taught by example, and Fine and her fellow
students were enthralled by his teachings and personality.
“No teacher I have ever known engendered as much love
and loyalty from his students,” Fine recalled, noting how
her classmates hung on his every word, even when his
thick accent made it diYcult to understand him. 9 Among
those at the school when Fine attended were Larry
Rivers, Robert De Niro, and Lee Krasner, who became a
5

Perle Fine (center) and Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1940s.
lifelong friend. Fine and Berezov also attended Hofmann’s
summer school in Provincetown.
Because Hofmann’s school in New York was across
the street from Fine’s studio, she was able to drop in at will
when she needed direction. What she valued in Hofmann’s
instruction was that “he combined the Xat two-dimensional
with a strong feeling for the three-dimensional in volume,
with movement, and a great deal of expression.” 10 However,
for Fine, Hofmann’s role was primarily that of an “opening
wedge,” providing a means by which she was able to form
her own artistic identity. She later stated that Hofmann
might have enjoyed her nonobjective work, but she could
not have done it in his class. 11
Fine applied to the Works Progress Administration
for a job, but was turned down, according to her, because
she “had a telephone.” Quietly creating abstract works on
her own while Regionalism and Social Realism prevailed,
she seems to have only participated in one exhibition
during the 1930s, a show held in August 1938 at the
Municipal Art Galleries, where her “prismatic still-life”
was given recognition by the New York Times. 12
After the war, the climate of the art world changed
direction, as abstract art gained prominence once again,
inXuenced by the arrival in New York of many European
artist-émigrés escaping the horrors abroad. In 1943, Fine
began to earn recognition when she received a grant
from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and
participated in exhibitions at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of
this Century Gallery and the Museum of Nonobjective
Painting (now, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York), which was under the directorship of Hilla Rebay.
Fine’s contributions to the museum show were singled out
by the press. Related in their movement to the mobiles
of Alexander Calder, they were described as “precise and
delicate” by a reviewer for Artnews, while Edward Alden
Jewell commented in the New York Times that they were
“much more original” than those of other artists who were
under the spell of Kandinsky and “quite charming, too.” 13
In 1945, Fine joined American Abstract Artists, a
context in which she came to know many leading abstract
artists of the day including Josef Albers, Fannie Hillsmith,
Ibram Lassaw, I. Rice Pereira, and Ad Reinhardt—she
had a particular admiration for Reinhardt, whose bravery
she found inspiring. 14 In the same year, Fine’s Wrst solo
exhibition took place; it was held at the Willard Gallery
on East 57th Street in February–March and was widely
reviewed in the press. Many saw a connection between
her work and that of Joan Miró, due to her depiction
of organic forms in motion that expressed a variety of
moods. 15 Within the year, Fine moved her aYliation
across the street to the gallery of Karl Nierendorf, who
had specialized in the Blaue Reiter group in Germany. 16
Nierendorf provided Fine with a stipend and held shows
of her art in 1946 and 1947. The New York Times called
Fine’s work, on view in 1946, “inventive and eclectic,”
noting that it demonstrated inXuences as disparate as
Léger, Mondrian, Duchamp, Klee, and Miró while
revealing a personal style that “promises less divisible
triumphs to come.” 17 In an article in Arts & Architecture
in 1947, Benjamin Baldwin stated:
6

To Perle Fine, modern art is a conscious art and a very complicated
phenomenon. It demands that the artist have erudition and at the
same time ease of execution. This can come about only with a
thorough knowledge and constant practice of the laws of painting,
enriched by experiencing the beauty and drama in nature, the
poetry and magic of color. . . . The canvas dictates what is wanted
here, needed there. From then on the artist explores, builds, destroys,
builds anew. Finally the image—strange, mysterious—emerges,
oVering us new and delightful passage into another world. 18
In 1947, Fine was given an unusual assignment. She
was asked by the collector Emily Hall Tremaine, who
had acquired works by Fine, to make an exact copy of
Piet Mondrian’s diamond-shaped Victory Boogie-Woogie,
then in Tremaine’s collection (now in the collection of
the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) as well as to prepare
a complete analysis of the painting, on which the artist
had been working when he died three years earlier. Fine,
who had come to know Mondrian after he emigrated
to America in 1940, found him personally sweet and felt
a deep reverence for his achievement. She later stated:
“I don’t think we’ll ever realize how important was
Mondrian’s inXuence and what he had to say in the
history of art.” 19 Fine executed her copy under the same
conditions in which Mondrian had painted his original,
working in a pure white room and using brushes and
paints identical to his. Although in most of Fine’s work,
Mondrian’s inXuence is not obviously apparent, due to
him, she felt enduringly conscious of the vertical and
horizontal and their universal implications; in her oeuvre,
this awareness emerged most fully in her Cool series.
After Nierendorf’s sudden death due to a heart attack
in 1947, Fine began to be represented by Betty Parsons,
whose gallery (opened in September of the year), had
become the leading showplace in New York for the newest
art of the day. 20 As such, the gallery played a critical role
in the rise of the New York School and the Abstract
Expressionist movement. From 1947 through 1953, when
Fine was represented by Parsons, the gallery exhibited
the work of Hofmann, Barnett Newman, Pollock,
Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, ClyVord Still, and many other
prominent artists. Fine befriended Rothko and Newman
in the context of Parsons’s gallery. She recalled having a
drink with Rothko on the occasion of his Wrst show in
Willem de Kooning and Perle Fine at Wilfrid Zogbaum’s studio,
Springs, New York, 1950s.
1948, at which she helped to calm his “nervousness and
excitement.” 21 Parsons, who was more willing than many
other mid-century dealers to give shows to women artists,
exhibited Fine’s work three times: in 1949, 1951, and
1952–53. In his article in the New York Times reviewing
Fine’s Wrst Parsons show in 1949, Howard Devree chose to
illustrate her painting Summer Studio and stated that Fine
organized “her canvases well, using color and form in a
nice blend and achieving a spatial sense that is distinctive
and convincing.” 22 Of Fine’s last show at the gallery,
Devree waxed:
In her recent paintings at the Betty Parsons Gallery, Perle Fine
carries further her “pure” painting. An exact and sensitive colorist,
she employs color shapes rather than forms in engaging and
persuasive tonal eVects which sometimes seem to employ almost
impalpable planes of color and hinted at rather than realized spatial
arrangements. An English critic once said that prose was heard
and poetry overheard; and Miss Fine’s “Prescience” and “Tyranny
of Space” leaves this reporter feeling as if he had dropped in on a
pensive soliloquy translated in terms of color. In that experimental
world of the non-Wgurative, her statements are all sensitive, sure,
and highly personal. 23
7

Fine was aYliated with Parsons when the artists’
organization, known simply as The Club, came into being.
It was formed in the fall of 1949 in the studio of Ibram
Lassaw, and Fine was among few women to become part
of it, joining it at its inception. Fine was invited to be a
member by Willem de Kooning. She recalled: “I met Bill
on the street. He started to talk about the beginning of
The Club, and would I join I said I’d be delighted to. You
know, we all wanted a place to go to. It wasn’t always the
best thing to go to someone’s studio for one reason
or another. So they started The Club.” 24 Fine solidiWed
Perle Fine and Ad Reinhardt during a photo shoot for an exhibition, 1951.
her friendships with Reinhardt, Franz Kline, and Elaine
and Willem de Kooning through her participation in
The Club.
In 1954, Fine and Berezov built a one-room studio
house in the woods in Springs, East Hampton, an area
where they had often spent time previously while visiting
with Krasner and Pollock. Due to his advertising job in
the city on Madison Avenue, Berezov could only visit on
weekends, but Fine remained in Springs throughout the
year, although she traveled into the city on occasion to
see art and to hang her works in exhibitions. In Springs,
Fine enjoyed her solitude and being able to work steadily
on her own. Nonetheless, she also associated with artists
who were part of the growing artists’ community, such
as the de Koonings, Ernestine and Ibram Lassaw, Ad and
Rita Reinhardt, Rae and John Ferren, and Krasner and
Pollock (until his death in 1956). One visit from Willem de
Kooning stood out for Fine. She remembered a day when
he came into her studio: “He made some nice remarks
about the paintings and said: ‘But this is all out of doors.
It’s what you see out here, isn’t it You know, through a
big studio window.’ And I said, ‘Well, yes, I guess so if you
say so.’ Of course it wasn’t . . . . But to what extent that
had impressed itself upon me I don’t know. You know,
sometimes the very black trunks of trees against the white
snow and horizon lines. Certainly there is something very
exciting about the country.” 25 This encounter was the
point at which, unknowingly, Fine had begun what would
be her Cool series.
It had no doubt been just a short time before this that
Fine, in preparation for her second exhibition at Graham
Gallery (scheduled for April of 1963), took the radical
step of destroying a show’s worth of her work. Yet, Fine
retained the purely black and white painting observed
by de Kooning, deciding to forgo the color and diagonal
lines she had been planning to add to it. She recalled:
“what remained was the rectangle that I used immediately
in the next several paintings that I made and one that
I made in black and white which is sort of an inverted
rectangle like that I call the Big U.” 26 Fine was not in full
agreement with de Kooning’s suggestion that the painting
he observed reXected the landscape around her in Springs,
but she felt that the Cool series that emerged did relate
8

to her new life in the country. “The things in the city
tend to be more cerebral,” she noted, “and in the country
freer in color somehow and in form as well.” She found
the country “more open and more relaxed,” by contrast
with the city where “you become more introverted.” She
explained that she called her new paintings, the Cool series
because they did not impose feeling on the viewer, but
were instead a pure expression of color and space. 27
From 1961, until the opening of her show at Graham,
Fine devoted her attention exclusively to the Cool series,
in which she limited her imagery to rectangles and squares
placed oV center on mostly monochromatic grounds.
Of the change in her art, she declared: “Out of revelation,
which came about through endless probing, came
revolution.” She stated: “The economy of means somehow
seemed necessary to secure the sensation of the expression
of the existentialist in art.” 28
While her paintings were on view at Graham, Fine
was interviewed on the radio by Irving Sandler, the
noted art historian, art reviewer then for the New York
Post, and chronicler of the Abstract Expressionist era. 29
Fine stated to Sandler that the compositions of her new
work had been “many years in the making,” as there had
always been a strong horizontal-vertical basis in her art,
despite her earlier stylistic adherence to action painting.
She went on to note that her Cool series could be seen
as an extension of the Neoplastic approach of Mondrian
that she had long revered; in her use of straight lines, she
observed that she sought to express constants in nature
and a dynamic equilibrium that was universal. By avoiding
the forty-Wve degree angle, she aYrmed her concurrence
with Mondrian as to its instability and lack of repose and
conveyed her view that the diagonal was unnecessary
because the square and rectangle already implied its
movement. Fine acknowledged that she was opposed to
“simply painting air,” and further observed: “I don’t think
that’s enough. I think the form that you limit yourself with
finally oVers such an inWnite variety of expressions.” 30
However, Fine moved away from Mondrian in the
emotional range in her work, achieved through color and
the variation in the edges of her lines. Sandler observed
that she had departed from Mondrian’s unwavering
primaries, using a palette that was “mixed, highly unstable,
Above: Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Perle Fine at Tanager Gallery, New York,
for Fine show opening, 1958. Below: Mark Rothko and Perle Fine at Tanager Gallery,
New York, for Fine show opening, 1958.
9

East Hampton artists at a beach picnic, 1962. Standing, left to right: Buffie Johnson, Lester Johnson, Howard Kanovitz, Fairfield Porter, Syd Solomon, Frederick Kiesler,
Norman Bluhm, Emanuel Navaretta, and Perle Fine (with hand on hip). Seated, left to right: unidentified, Lee Krasner (back to camera), Al Held, Mary Kanovitz, Balcomb
Greene; middle row: John Little, Elaine de Kooning, James Brooks, Rae Ferren, Charlotte Park, Louis Schanker, Sylvia Stone, Ibram Lassaw, Theodoros Stamos, Jane Wilson,
Jane Freilicher, Robert Dash; left from front center: David Porter, Adolph Gottlieb, John Ferren, Lucia Wilcox. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative
Photography, University of Arizona © Hans Namuth Estate.
volatile, and at times atmospheric.” 31 Fine concurred,
stating her opinion that Americans had contributed to
art in the previous Wfteen years “through this churning
and this violent kind of thing.” To Fine, color was
necessary to the expression of emotion and pointed out
that her paintings at Graham included some that that were
muted and introverted and others that were the opposite.
Indeed, despite the structural similarities, each painting,
through both color and form, reveals diVerent spatial and
emotional qualities. In one, a yellow rectangle pushes
forward from a rich russet ground, while in another, the
deep brown rectangle sits back and the dusky orangered
ground pulsates toward us. Fine also aVected mood
through the subtleties in her brushwork. At times, the
edges are crisp, creating a clear diVerentiation between
shape and background, and bringing one or the other
forward. At other times, the edge is softened, allowing a
square to Xoat in the space. In some of the images, the
ground tone varies, seeming to bleed out from the edges.
Lawrence Campbell observed this aspect of the works in
a review of the Graham exhibition in Artnews, writing:
“Since each painting developed as it went along, [Fine] has
loosely Xaked oV certain edges, allowing other planes to
collide at Wrmly deWned limits, and allowed other colors to
lap as though they were at sea at some eternal doorway.” 32
In the Cool series, the position of the rectangles and
squares in the compositions impact the way we read the
space. Placed toward the lower edge of the canvas, the
angular shape can seem to cut the picture plane, as in one
of Barnett Newman’s zips, while the movement is at once
centripetal, into the open window, and decentered,
extend ing into the world beyond. As a result, the images
10

create a sense of the meditative and peripheral at once.
They are thus emotionally and spiritually absorbing, in
the manner of a work by Rothko, yet analytical in their
spatial ambiguity.
Although Fine linked her viewpoint to that of
Mondrian, the Cool series parallels the era’s gestalt, as the
pendulum swung from the intense exposés of the artists’
psyche that constituted Abstract Expressionist art to a
type of painting in which the artist stepped back, letting
the painting engage the viewer directly. Championing
the new approach, Clement Greenberg named it “Post-
Painterly Abstraction,” so as to align it with the classical
tradition; he was alluding to the recurring alternating
pattern throughout art history of the classical (nonpainterly)
and the baroque-romantic (painterly). The
name Color Field is the one, however, that has come
most commonly to describe this stylistic mode, present in
works created from the 1950s until about 1970. 33 Cool, a
word whose usage has shifted throughout the ages, was a
concept Wtting to the new era and the new painting. In
Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975 (2007), Karen
Wilkin described this phenomena. She observed that
although there are commonalities in Color Field works
by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis,
Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski (such as a “primacy
of color, frontality, spatial and emotional ambiguity, and a
paradoxical ‘signature’ anonymity, with the deployment of
surprising hues made to assume the burden of associative
meaning”), they
In his review of Fine’s Graham show in the New
York Post, Sandler gave credence to the way Fine had
gone forward from the art of the previous era to the new
paradigm, stating:
Perle Fine, showing at the Graham Gallery, has gathered up
the “action” in her painting and concretized it into large and
peaceful rectangles that Xoat upon evocative backgrounds of
blue-violet, brown, green, and rose. It would seem that she has
absorbed the ambiance of Kline and Rothko without assuming
the former’s violent thrusts or the latter’s glowing suspensions.
What emerges, instead, is an altogether surprising delicacy, a kind
of poetic equilibrium—and this, despite the inherent energy
characteristic of boldly painted squares or rectangles, or the stark
economy of color. 35
When Fine showed additional Cool series paintings at
Graham in March of 1964, John Gruen wrote in the New
York Herald Tribune:
Miss Fine continues to explore the geometric shape as it occurs
on a Xatly painted background—the colors creating tensions—the
shapes assuming the function of expressive dividing lines that give
way to other shapes, forming other sequences of expression. There
is a vibrant light that emanates from these works, not blinding or
jarring or dizzying. It is an arresting light that remains constant,
lending purity—even dignity, to essentially emotional statements. 36
are more distinguished by their “cool”—in Marshall McLuhan’s
sense of the word—than by any obvious relation to Abstract
Expressionism. Louis’s, Noland’s, Olitski’s, and, to a degree,
Frankenthaler’s otherwise diverse paintings, with their insubstantial
surfaces and deliberately suppressed “handwriting,” all appear
strikingly reticent, not only physically but also psychologically. . . .
While scrupulously avoiding anything resembling psychological
symbolism, the “post-painterly” conception of “cool” included
the belief that a painting, no matter how apparently restrained,
could address the viewer’s whole being—emotions, intellect, and
all—through the eye, just as music did through the ear. . . What sets
Color Field paintings apart is the extraordinary economy of means
with which they manage not only to engage our feelings but also
to ravish the eye. 34
Lee Krasner and Perle Fine at Ashawagh Hall Fair, Springs, New York, mid-1960s.
11

Despite such perceptive commentaries and obvious
respect from the critics, Graham was able to sell few of
Fine’s Cool series paintings. Looking back, Fine was aware
that this might have been because the paintings were
ahead of their time. She stated in 1968 that they “preceded
the things that are done today in this limited motif, so
that some people were rather shocked that I should have
arrived.” 36 Indeed, they predated Robert Motherwell’s
“Open” series, begun in the late 1960s, and other
similar subtly toned Color Field works by artists such as
Larry Poons and Olitski of mid-decade. In their poetic
equilibrium, their combination of restraint and emotional
expressiveness, and their uniting of the classical and the
romantic, Fine’s Cool series paintings are timeless and
yet also seemingly relevant to today’s desire for a broader,
calmer vision of the world.
Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D.
1. Perle Fine, artist’s statement in Klaus Jurgen-Fischer, “Neue
Abstraktion,” Das Kunstwerk 18 (April–June 1965). I would like to
express gratitude to Maddy and David Berezov for providing materials
from the Berezov Archives cited in this essay.
2. For an extensive treatment of Fine’s career and context, see
Kathleen L. Housley, Tranquil Power: The Art and Life of Perle Fine (New
York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2005).
3. Transcript of Tape-Recording of an Interview with Perle Fine by Irving
Sandler, Casper Citron Program, Station wrfm, New York, April 8,
1963, Berezov Archives.
4. Sandler interview.
5. Clement Greenberg, Post Painterly Abstraction, exh. cat. (Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, 1964), cited in Karen Wilkin, Color as Field:
American Painting, 1950–1975 (New Haven and London: American
Federation of Arts in association with Yale University Press, 2007), 11.
6. See Wilkin, 17.
7. Oral History Interview with Perle Fine, Conducted by Dorothy Seckler
at the Artist’s Studio in New York, NY, January 19, 1968, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
8. Seckler interview.
9. Seckler interview.
10. Perle Fine and Maurice Berezov, The Teaching of Hans Hofmann,
unpublished manuscript, Berezov Archives. Cited in Housley, 33.
11. Seckler interview.
12. Howard Devree, “Along Outward Trails,” New York Times,
August 7, 1938.
13. “The Passing Shows,” Artnews (August–September 1943);
Edward Alden Jewell, “Melange of New Shows,” New York Times,
October 24, 1943.
14. Seckler interview.
15. Maude Riley, “Perle Fine,” Art Digest (March 1, 1945); Edward
Alden Jewell, “Abstract Artists Open Display Here,” New York Times,
March 14, 1945.
16. The Guggenheim Foundation purchased Nierendorf’s estate in
1948. Housed at the Guggenheim Museum, it includes works by Max
Ernst, Adolph Gottlieb, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Oscar Kokoschka, and
Joan Miró. See: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/
about-the-collection/new-york/karl-nierendorf-estate/1650, retrieved
September 2011. Information on Nierendorf may be found in Housley,
88–93.
17. Edward Alden Jewell, “Glances Backward and About,” New York
Times, April 7, 1946.
18. Benjamin Baldwin, “Perle Fine,” Arts & Architecture (May 1947).
19. Seckler interview.
20. For Parsons, see Lee Hall, Betty Parsons: Artist, Dealer, Collector
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991).
21. Seckler interview.
22. Howard Devree, “Vital and Diverse: New Current Group
Exhibitions Stress Work by Contemporary Americans,” New York Times,
June 5, 1949.
23. Howard Devree, “In Various Veins,” New York Times, December 21,
1952.
24. Seckler interview.
25. Seckler interview.
26. Seckler interview.
27. Seckler interview.
28. Fine, artist’s statement, 1965.
29. Sandler interview. Sandler went to write The Triumph of American
Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (New York: Praeger, 1970)
and The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (New
York: Harper & Row, 1978).
30. Sandler interview.
31. Sandler interview.
32. L[awrence] C[ampbell], “Reviews and Previews: Perle Fine
[Graham; April 2–20],” Artnews (April 1963).
33. See Wilkin, Color as Field.
34. Wilkin, 17.
35. Irving Sandler, “Perle Fine,” New York Post, April 7, 1963.
36. John Gruen, “In the Galleries: Perle Fine,” New York Herald Tribune,
March 7, 1964.
37. Seckler interview.
12

Perle Fine (1905–1988)
museum collections
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock
Ball State Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art,
Nashville, Tennessee
Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York
Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
New York University Art Collection
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
Principia College, Saint Louis, Missouri
Provincetown Art Association Museum, Massachusetts
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton,
Massachusetts
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
University of California, Berkeley
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina,
Greensboro
Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts
selected solo exhibitions
Marian Willard Gallery, New York, 1945
Nierendorf Gallery, New York, 1946, 1947
M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1947
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1949, 1951, 1952-3
Tanager Gallery, New York, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960
Franklin Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1961
Robert Keene Gallery, Southampton, New York, 1961
Graham Gallery, New York, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1967
Joan Washburn Gallery, New York, 1972
Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, 1973, 1976, 1977
Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York, 1974
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, Major
Works, 1954–1978: A Selection of Drawings, Paintings, and
Collages, 1978.
Ingber Gallery, New York, 1982, 1984
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, Perle Fine: Works on
Paper, 1997
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton,
New York, Perle Fine Collages, 1957–1966, 2005
McCormick Gallery, Chicago, Perle Fine: The Storm
Departs, 2007
Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York,
Tranquil Power: The Art of Perle Fine, 2009 (traveling
exhibition)
selected group exhibitions
Municipal Art Galleries, New York, 1938
Art of this Century, New York, Spring Salon, 1943, 1944
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum), 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947
Puma Gallery, New York, 1944
Wittenborn Gallery, New York, 1944
American Abstract Artists (AAA), 1945–1970s
Art of this Century Gallery, New York, The Women, 1945
Alumnae Hall Gallery, Western College, Oxford, Ohio,
The Women: An Exhibition of Paintings by Contemporary
Women, 1945
Provincetown Art Association, Massachusetts, 1945–51
Society of American Etchers, Thirty-First Annual
Exhibition, 1946
13

Whitney Museum of American Art, Annuals and Biennials,
1946, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961, 1972
Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris, Salon des Réalités Nouvelles,
1947, 1950
Stanhope Gallery, Boston, Works on Paper, 1947
Watkins Gallery, American University, Washington, D.C.,
Spring Annual, 1947
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, Painting
Toward Architecture, 1947
Salon des Réalitiés Nouvelles, Paris, 1947, 1950
Art Institute of Chicago, Abstract and Surrealist American
Art, 1948
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Biennial, 1948
(purchase prize)
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, New England
Painting and Sculpture, 1949
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (traveling
exhibition to European museums), 1949
Gallery 200, Provincetown, Massachusetts, Group
Exhibition, 1949
Tryon Gallery, Smith College, Northampton,
Massachusetts, Ten Women Who Paint, 1949
Hawthorn Memorial Gallery and the Provincetown Art
Association, Massachusetts, Post-Abstract Painting 1950:
France, America, 1950
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, American Painting
Today—1950, 1950
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California,
Contemporary Painting in the U.S., 1951
Stable Gallery, 9th Street Show, 1951
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, 1954, 1955,
1957, 1958, 1962, 1964
Stable Gallery, New York Annuals, 1953, 1954, 1955,
1956, 1957
Wittenborn, One-Wall Gallery, New York, Lithographs,
1952
Bennington College Gallery, Vermont, Nine Women Artists,
1953
New School for Social Research, New York, Painting and
Sculpture, 1953
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Selections of
Painting and Sculpture, 1953
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, Eleven
New Artists of the Region, 1955
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Ninth Annual Print
Exhibition, 1955 (purchase award)
American Federation of Arts, Contemporary Trends, 1955
(traveling exhibition)
Tanager Gallery, New York, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959,
1960, 1961, 1962
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, Annuals, beginning
1955
Center Gallery, New York, 1956
Kraushaar Galleries and the Brooklyn Museum, New York,
14 Painter-Printmakers, 1957
Signa Gallery, East Hampton, New York, A Review of the
Season, 1957
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Nature in
Abstraction: The Relation of Abstract Painting and Sculpture to
Nature in Twentieth-Century American Art, 1958 (traveling
exhibition)
Zabriskie Gallery, New York, Collage in America, 1958
(in cooperation with the American Federation of Arts)
Center Gallery, New York, 1958
Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
International Exhibitions of Contemporary Painting and
Sculpture, 1958, 1961
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, Painters,
Sculptors, Architects of the Region, 1959
The Contemporary Arts Association of Houston, Texas,
10th Street, 1959
Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, Modern Drawing:
European and American, 1959
Signa Gallery, East Hampton, New York, A Review of the
Season, 1959
McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas, 1960
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Second Annual Art
Exhibit, 1960
Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexican
Biennial, 1960
Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee, Art
Today, 1960
Silvermine Annual Exhibitions, New Canaan, Connecticut,
1960s
14

Brooklyn Museum, New York, International Watercolor
Biennial, 1961
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Geometric
Abstraction in America, 1961
Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art of Assemblage,
1961 (traveling exhibition)
American Federation of Arts, Provincetown: A Painter’s Place,
1962
American Federation of Arts, Lyricism in Abstract Art, 1962
Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, Women
Artists in America Today, 1962
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Hans Hofmann and his
Students, 1963 (traveling exhibition)
Newark Museum, New Jersey, Women Artists in America,
1707–1964, 1965
Long Island University, Southampton, New York, 1965
University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley,
Selection 1967: Recent Acquisitions in Modern Art, 1967
Washburn Gallery, New York, Museum of Non-Objective
Painting, 1972
State University of New York at Binghamton,
8 Contemporary American Artists, 1973
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York,
Recipients of Honors Exhibition, 1974
Pratt Institute, New York, Recent Abstract Paintings, 1974
Freedman Art Gallery, Albright College, Reading,
Pennsylvania, Perspective, 1977
Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York, Artists of
SuVolk County, 1978
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, Women
Artists of Eastern Long Island, 1979
Ashawagh Hall, East Hampton, New York, The Springs
Artists Exhibition, 1979
Cultural Center, Paris, 15 Abstract Expressionists, 1979
Phoenix Gallery, Gallery I, Maryland, Artists of East
Hampton, 1979
Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York, Geometric Tradition in
American Painting: 1920–1980, 1980
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, 17 Abstract
Artists of East Hampton: The Pollock Years 1946–56, 1980
Summit Art Center, New Jersey, American Artists: The Early
Years, 1981
Phoenix Gallery, Gallery II, Washington, D.C., Drawings,
1981
Mabel Smith Douglas Library, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, New Jersey, Modern Masters: Woman of the
First Generation, 1982
Ingber Gallery, New York, The Return of Abstraction, 1984
Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York,
Some Major Artists of the Hamptons, Then and Now:
1960s–1980s, 1984
Ingber Gallery, New York, A Colorful Retrospective: Works
on Paper, 1986
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, East
Hampton Avant-Garde: A Salute to the Signa Gallery, 1990
Baruch College Gallery, City University of New York,
Reclaiming Artists of the New York School: Toward a More
Inclusive View of the 1950s, 1994
Baruch College Gallery, City University of New York,
Women and Abstract Expressionism: Painting and Sculpture,
1945–1959, 1994
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Massachusetts,
New York—Provincetown: A 50’s Connection, 1994
Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, Abstract
Expressionism: Second to None, 2001
Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, Abstract
Expressionism: Second to None, Revised and Expanded, 2004
Rockford Art Museum, Illinois, Reuniting an Era—Abstract
Expressionists of the 1950s, 2005
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Paper Works by Abstract
Masters, 2006
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Suitcase Paintings: Small
Scale Abstract Expressionism, 2007 (traveling exhibition)
Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SoWa, Spain,
Be-Bomb: The Transatlantic War of Images and all that
Jazz, 1946–1956, 2007
15

16
Cool Series, No. 35, Shape-Up ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 70 x 80 in.

Cool Series, No. 29, Cool Blue Cold Green ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 60 x 70 in.
17

18
Cool Series, No. 2, (Yellow over Tan) ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 in.

Cool Series, No. 1, (Red over White) ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 in.
19

20
Cool Series, No. 26, FirST Love ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 47 x 59 in.

Cool Series, No. 36, Rough-Hewn ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 68 x 84 in.
21

Cool Series, (Blue over Red) ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 40 x 36 in.
(COver illustration)
22

Cool Series, No. 15, The Very End ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 84 x 68 in.
23

24
Cool Series, (red over Yellow) ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 22 x 24 in.

Cool Series, No. 44, Double-Square ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 50 x 60 in.
25

26
Cool Series, No. 34, Ensign ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 68 x 84 in.

Cool Series, No. 7, Square Shooter ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 39 1 ⁄2 x 39 1 ⁄2 in.
27

28
Cool Series, No. 80, Impatient Spring ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 84 x 68 in.

Cool Series, No. 22, Wide U ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 50 x 60 in.
29

30
Cool Series, No. 9, Gibraltar ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 68 x 84 in.

Cool Series, (Orange over Yellow)
ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 14 x 16 in.
Cool Series, (Plum over pink)
ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 12 x 12 in.
31

32
Cool Series, No. 46, Spanking Fresh ca. 1961–1963 Oil on canvas 50 x 60 in.

Perle Fine in her studio, New York City, 1962.
Back cover: Perle Fine in her studio, Springs, New York, 1962.

SPANIERMAN MODERN
53 EAST 58TH STREET new york, ny 10022-1617 SPANIERMANMODERN.com