About
Four Artists: Moving Through Abstraction showcased the avant-garde work of Gertrude St. Michel Freinek, Esther Levy, Virginia Ochs, and Missy Weems, four women who lived and painted in Annapolis, Maryland during the period 1950-1990.
Moving through abstraction
Exhibited at Maryland Hall from September 3 to October 26, 2019.
These four women, while keeping their individual painting styles, influenced and supported each other during a time of great social change. Their work expresses a new world view by breaking with traditional painting approaches and techniques, consciously drawing on New York, European, and primitive art influences.
In this exhibit, each of these artists confronts non-traditional space considerations — they are flattening picture planes, emphasizing negative space, demonstrating depth through color and tone. They begin with subjects that are often chopped into cubist pieces, each space relating equally. Then, in later paintings, we begin to see the subject disappear into a unified statement, as the artists confidently march toward — and through — abstraction.
The paintings of Levy, Ochs, St. Michel Freinek and Weems are edgy, cosmopolitan and experimental: expressions of their time that speak directly to our own.
Missy Weems, Woman with Chicken, circa 1950. Oil on masonite, 15 3/4 in. x 20 in. Collection of Thackray Seznec.
“She paints constantly. Painting is as natural to her as breathing. Her home is filled with her works; many are stacked in piles that she has forgotten. ”
Purchase the Four Artists Catalog
A high-quality, full-color art catalog reproducing a selection of the paintings appearing in the exhibit Four Artists: Moving Through Abstraction, Annapolis 1950s to 1990s, along with biographical information for the four featured Annapolis artists and an exhibit statement.
24 pages, 8.5"x8.5", softcover, 2019.
