On September 27th, 2026, a special talk was held during Independent 20th Century that explored the history and legacy of the women of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Long overlooked, these artists have become subject to a reassessment spurred on in part by dealers. Panelists included Martha Campbell, co-founder of Berry Campbell, who presented work at the fair by some of the many women artists championed by Eleanor Ward at Stable Gallery; Nick Olney, co-founder of Olney Gleason, who had a display dedicated to the Bacchus series of Elaine de Kooning; and art market columnist, Marion Maneker, of Wall Power and Puck. The conversation was moderated by Kathleen Hart, Specialist, Contemporary Art, at Sotheby’s. Below are highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.
Photo by Leandro Justen.
Kathleen Hart: We are here to discuss the female artists of Abstract Expressionism who helped define one of the most significant artistic movements of the 20th century, yet whose influence was overshadowed within the traditional narratives of this period. When you all began working with these artists and their legacies, what aspects of their stories did you think were unappreciated or undervalued?
Martha Campbell: I think one of the biggest misconceptions for these women is that a lot of people feel they were muses or acolytes to these genius men. The wives were providing a steady source of income so these genius male figures could go out and paint without having to work. But people forget, for instance, Mercedes Matter, in the 1930s when she was 20-something years old, was one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists, the group that really set the stage for what Abstract Expressionism was, how it evolved. And then she was the founder of the New York Studio School in the 1960s.
Perle Fine was another early member of the American Abstract Artists. The Guggenheim Museum, I believe, bought 26 of her paintings under Hilla Rebay, who is being profiled here at the fair. During the 1940s and ‘50s, Peggy Guggenheim showed Fine and recommended that Betty Parsons show her work. Then you have Elaine de Kooning, one of the inventors of gestural portraiture. And beyond that, she was an incredible critic that really helped define what Abstract Expressionism was through her writing during the 1950s. So, they were artists first and foremost in their own rights and they were brilliant minds and contributors.
Nick Olney: Given a lot of the structural impediments that these women had in their own careers, it is important to think about the major achievements they made. Elaine did an incredible job of connecting writers to curators, curators to artists and to gallerists. Both Elaine and Lee Krasner, too—because her contributions were many, both with her own work, but also in terms of helping to create the market for Abstract Expressionism.
Kathleen Hart: And what surprised you most when engaging with their work?
Martha Campbell: When we started the gallery 13 years ago and were forming our program, it was the depth of the bodies of work within these estates. A lot of these women were showing at Parsons, but their work was not selling because people were buying the men during that time. So, you have these beautiful bodies of work, fully intact from that period.
But also because they weren't selling, they didn't have people telling them what to do. So they were painting on their own terms. You have Elaine de Kooning, for instance, who has these beautiful gestures and brush strokes in her portraiture, and later on with this Bacchus series. Then you have Janice Biala, who's combining Abstract Expressionism with the School of Paris. You have Perle Fine with the Prescience series, which it's almost color field painting before color field painting.
Elaine de Kooning, Bacchus #80, 1983, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 66 inches.
Courtesy of Olney Gleason.
Nick Olney: With Krasner, specifically, one of the things that we discovered working deeply with the work and understanding the full scope of it was that not only was she experimental and pushed boundaries and made major shifts in her practice decade over decade, but she applied a consistency and rigor to her work throughout her career. Looking back to the 1930s charcoals that she made when working with Hans Hoffman, some of these Cubist ways of dividing the picture plane and creating triangles and ovoid shapes that move you around the canvas and shift the picture plane on you—you can see that throughout her entire career. Diving deeply lets you understand the variety, but also where all those strong threads and through lines are, and how clear the artists’ visions were.
Kathleen Hart: It is unquestioned that there was a high level of quality and technical mastery from this group of women that you are representing. What factors do you think allow certain figures to be canonical while others remain somewhat in the margins? Do you think it is institutional support, critical reception, dealer advocacy?
Martha Campbell: At the gallery, we often say there are a few factors or reasons why artists do not make it. Gender is one—we are talking about that right now—and race. Geography is another big reason that artists can fall out of the spotlight. You think about Alma Thomas—she had three things going against her: she was Black, she was a woman, she lived in Washington, DC. Grace Hartigan was a second-generation Abstract Expressionist bought by MoMA, and she was the only woman who was included in an exhibition that MoMA put together in 1957–58 that toured around the world to talk about freedom in America through painting. She moves to Baltimore and then you start to hear less and less and less from her.
The fourth thing is personality. If you were not at the Cedar Tavern, hobnobbing with the men, you were not going to the openings, meeting the critics, dropping your portfolios off with galleries—you weren't going to be part of the conversation. And then, as with everything, it is a little bit of luck, too.
Photo by Leandro Justen.
There has clearly been this great wave over the last six or eight years of more representation, more interest in shows, certainly with market interest going back even before that. There were big numbers for [Helen] Frankenthaler at auction and this great show of Frankenthaler's work in Basel. There was a big show here in New York and privately there have been some big sales.
But we have also had a whole generation in the last several years of young women abstract painters who have been very popular. People talked about their shows, sales, and so forth, and that naturally leads you back through the wrong end of the telescope.
To your question, with the exception of Joan Mitchell, most of these artists have had good moments and then sort of disappeared. We were all very familiar with Lynne Drexler’s story in recent years. She was part of the Abstract Expressionist group, but her best work happened out of the spotlight and it took a series of museum shows and concentrated efforts by Berry Campbell to make that happen again.
Nick Olney: That is a good point about contemporary artists providing a lens. I think a painter like Cecily Brown gives me a lens to understand these artists, for example. It is so much more straightforward to reintroduce something if it is directly relevant to another artist’s work.
Kathleen Hart: Speaking of lenses, I would love to ask Martha a little bit about the lens through your presentation of the Stable Gallery and Eleanor Ward's groundbreaking vision. Why do you think it is important for viewers and audiences to be viewing this presentation through the lens of the Stable Gallery instead of individual artists?
Martha Campbell: If you look through it at a gallery level, you get a little slice of what was happening in the art world at that time. Looking at the Stable Gallery during the 1950s, you see Eleanor Ward being the first to show Joan Mitchell. She was showing Elaine de Kooning in 1954, ‘56. She did successive shows of Janice Biala. She was the reason that the heralded 1951 Ninth Street Show was able to continue annually, because she offered up her space to de Kooning and Kline and the other organizers and said, "You can use my gallery space to continue promoting Abstract Expressionism." And then, within the Stable annuals, you get women artists and visibility for them. There would be a Mary Abbott hung next to a Willem de Kooning, a Janice Biala hung next to a Jackson Pollock.
Down the street, Betty Parsons was giving solo shows to Hedda Sterne, Perle Fine, Ethel Schwabacher, Agnes Martin, Judith Godwin. You have Martha Jackson giving solo shows to Louise Bourgeois. If you look at it on a small level, you can expand that and realize that women really were a huge part of Abstract Expressionism. But as we wrote art history, we talked about several men artists and it got rewritten as a man's movement. It was not a man's movement. Women were a huge part of it.
Kathleen Hart: What role do you think Eleanor Ward played that history has not fully acknowledged?
Martha Campbell: She was such a tastemaker. She followed her instincts. She showed Robert Rauschenberg in 1954 and Cy Twombly around then. At the same time, she was showing Joan Mitchell and Elaine de Kooning and Janice Biala. She was putting women on an equal ground as men and saying, "Look, these are artists who need to be taken seriously."
Grace Hartigan, Sunbathers, 1966, oil on canvas, 70 x 50 inches.
© Grace Hartigan Estate. Courtesy of Berry Campbell
Kathleen Hart: Nick, Elaine de Kooning, obviously, was known and discussed in relation to her incredibly famous husband, Willem. Her practice was profoundly her own. How do you think the works that you are showing and her broader practice are especially relevant to audiences today?
Nick Olney: She was an important figure because her art criticism is really quite important, as is her advocacy, her involvement in clubs, her connecting people together. She was really a linchpin figure for Abstract Expressionism. Looking at the contemporary world, that kind of multi-hyphenate career, when we picture what a New York artist is, there is a lot of what goes into that which comes from Elaine.
Kathleen Hart: Marion, in recent years there has obviously been a great number of surveys and interest and focus on this period. Do you believe it is the scholarly reassessment that comes first or the market reassessment?
Marion Maneker: It is a chicken-and-egg thing and this is where the chance of necessity comes from. Why does this artist stay in the limelight? Some of it is the choices they make.
There was a huge moment in 1949–50 when Life magazine does the story about Jackson Pollock [“Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?,” published in Life on August 8, 1949]. At the time, Jackson Pollock was not selling any art. He was one of a number of different artists. It was something that the magazine created and then we ended up with these two-fisted heavy-drinking artists and we had this very masculine fame around Willem de Kooning and Pollock. They end up sharing a girlfriend later. All this stuff that ends up being the kind of stuff that you want to make heroic, troubled figures out of—and some of that is how we ended up with these images rather than what really went on, because there were just too many people. That great Ninth Street Women book [by Mary Gabriel] allowed several of these artists—most of whom were not forgotten, they just were not as prominent—to come to the fore.
Martha Campbell: I would add, too, that is one of the reasons why these women's markets have continued to endure. The interest is there, the stories are there, the work is really good, but we are not rewriting history. The scholarship was already done, these women had extensive CVs, their work is in all the major museum collections. You open a book written 50 years ago on Abstract Expressionism and Mercedes Matter’s name is on every 15th page.
Kathleen Hart: Do you feel that we are currently in a moment? Are we witnessing a correction, a recalibration, rediscovery, or is it something entirely else?
Nick Olney: In terms of a correction upward to where these markets should be, I think we are definitely seeing that, and with scholarship, too. By delving deeper, you can start to show the nuance in all of these people's lives and the work and be able to tell a fuller story.
Marion Maneker: That is incredibly important. Everyone wants to talk about the best, or who is the biggest name or the most valuable, but all artists work within a constellation of other artists.
We call them minor artists, but they are fascinating. They might not be as enshrined in the canon but they are still well worth engaging with.
Martha Campbell: That is why this legacy of Abstract Expressionism continues to endure and why it remains the most looked-at period in American art. It was so robust, there were so many different figures contributing to it, and there were so many different styles—figures both well known and lesser known.
Kathleen Hart: Marion, what distinguishes the lasting power for some of these artists?
Ethel Schwabacher, Return No. 3, 1957, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 inches.
Courtesy of Berry Campbell.
Marion Maneker: Ultimately, it comes down to the artworks and standing in front of a work and thinking it is exciting to be there. But I also think that all of these things go through cycles. Markets are conversations between buyers and sellers. And part of what makes the art market so interesting is that it is a market for things that no one absolutely needs. It is something that we all choose to want.
We are currently living in a political environment that is actively opposed to the “wokeness” of the last few years. But we have not seen that in the art markets at all, either in the galleries that are showing primary artists who are making work in their studios or in the secondary markets or in the auctions. There is still tremendous demand for artists who previously were not represented. Sometimes, the same people who voted for the counterrevolution or funded it are also buying these works, which is an important tell. And I think it has been very satisfying to see that there is still demand and interest in discovering or rediscovering the work of these artists.
Martha Campbell: I think that it is hard to argue with seeing paintings that are really, really good and then looking at their CVs and saying, "Hey, MoMA endorsed us back in 1952. The Met had this artist in their show seven times between 1948 and 1975." How do you argue with good paintings and museum recognition behind that? That's what we are seeing happen year over year, and the markets for women artists continue to grow, when traditional markets have been flat.
Marion Maneker: The broader art market seems to go in long cycles, oscillating between new young artists and what they are making, and things that are connected to history and have a demonstrated persistence, reputation, authority. We happen to be in one of those cycles where history is winning out. You are looking at things that people have not seen before, but there is plenty of evidence in the historical record that people thought that these were artists to be reckoned with. The most important thing about buying art is knowing that it is going to be meaningful in five years, 10, or 15 years. And that is part of what people look to the galleries and to auction houses to help provide that assurance.
Kathleen Hart: How do you think the market is engaging with artists that have long been historically accessible but undervalued?
Marion Maneker: It depends on who is managing them. Look at the Frankenthaler estate. It is not like Helen Frankenthaler has not been top of mind and her prices have not been good. Then this last season, they sold a number of paintings for very large numbers— to my knowledge, $15 million or more, which is a big number for any artist. And that is because there is an active foundation and a very aggressive dealer who knows how to push those paintings. More importantly, one of the things we learned from that Kunstmuseum Basel show is that one of the collectors is Ken Griffin. So, when he is not buying huge paintings for $150 or $200 million dollars, he is buying Helen Frankenthaler paintings. That is as important as any of these other things because almost all art collecting is socially driven. Having a validation of very important collectors creates a halo that brings more into it.
Nick Olney: As a gallery, you are doing that work in all of these different sections of the ecosystem, from curators to writers to other artists to collectors, basically building those spheres of influence and deeper understanding. With Lee Krasner, when we did our exhibition about her collage paintings, that required a lot of loans and a lot of storytelling using finite resources.
Kathleen Hart: How has that responsibility of stewardship of an artist’s estate changed in the last 10 or 15 years?
Martha Campbell: As stewards of these estates, we have got to get back to publishing catalogs and doing this research. Teaming up with another gallery has worked really well for us. We have had the women of Abstract Expressionism shown at the Whitechapel in London in 2023 [in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70]. There was a show at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam that then toured throughout Europe [The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945 in 2022]. Right now Christine [Berry] and I are sponsoring a show that is touring throughout the United States, curated by Ellen Landau, on Abstract Expressionists: The Women.
Nick Olney: One other aspect is in the ways that you partner with estates and foundations so that they can support that scholarship. Thinking back to Lee Krasner again, another thing that she was really innovative about is creating the Pollock-Krasner Foundation before she passed away. Their grant and gift-giving over the years has totaled many tens of millions of dollars directly to artists. For us, it is about not just being agents or the people bringing the works to market, but real partners in strategy and executing that strategy.
Photo by Leandro Justen.
Marion Maneker: Being able to keep the artist in the conversation is part of it, to be a vector between the previous owners and new ones, to find the right balance between institutional representation and private ownership. We tend to denigrate private collectors, but they are the thing that keeps all of this going. A lot of times, a work living in someone's home is probably doing a better job than being in storage at an institution, no matter how prestigious.
Nick Olney: That is a big part of stewardship, being good partners with the collectors who are buying work and not just creating heat in the market, but keeping something from being overheated and not trying to make a quick buck. You want to have the ability to borrow back from a collection, to have those conversations over the long term. It is really critical to have a long-term strategy for an artist’s legacy.
Martha Campbell: I think responsible selling is very key in stewardship.