Mary Abbott 1921-2019

Mary Abbott was an inventive artist known for her ambitious contributions to Abstract Expressionism. A descendent of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams born in New York in 1921, Abbott grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side destined to become a debutante and magazine cover girl. Her passion for art fueled her, and she studied at the Corcoran Museum School of Art and the Art Students League of New York under George Grosz, and later enrolled in the experimental art school Subjects of the Artist, studying under Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. In April 1953, she was one of few women artists invited to join The Club, a group of artists dedicated to shaping the course of Abstract Expressionism.

 

Her large-scale oil on canvas and collage paintings and works on paper feature all-over compositions and a broad range of materials and tools including oil, oil stick, charcoal, pastel, and paw and handprints, testifying to her relentless dedication to artistic exploration. Abbott earned important exhibitions in the 1950s and 60s in New York and Paris, showing throughout her lifetime. Institutional attention in Abbott has risen significantly in recent years: her work was included in Women of Abstraction Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum in 2016; The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction After 1945 organized by the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany; and Action | Gesture | Paint, organized by Whitechapel Gallery in London, which traveled to the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France, and the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany.