Ms. Abbott presents an altogether different kettle of fish. Born in New York in 1921, she began visiting the East End in her youth and has been living there part of the year since 1966. In that time she has refined her sweeping, energetic brushstrokes to capture brilliantly personal responses to the local landscape and the changing light.
Works showing here like “Bill’s Painting” (circa 1951), “Beginning” (1950) and “Untitled” (circa 1951) may not seem all that different from paintings by Ms. Egbert. But look closely and you will begin to notice the greater attention to brushwork, paint application and layering, along with the color combinations. These are seductive compositions.
This is no surprise, for Ms. Abbott studied with Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Robert Motherwell. She had great teachers. She also knew and was influenced by Willem de Kooning, to whom “Bill’s Painting” is dedicated. The painting’s mix of calligraphic marks and broadly lathered brushstrokes echoes de Kooning’s style.
But what I especially love about this painting is the color scheme — loosely brushed pinks in varying tones mixed with black, blue, white and a hint of orange and yellow at the top and sides. It is so unusual, with the layering hinting at some primal energy bubbling up beneath. The clash of surface colors also keeps your eyes jumping.
Other paintings are positively hyperactive. “Untitled (Haiti)” (1950), a mass of squiggly lines and biomorphic shapes, can put you in mind of the early work of Jackson Pollock, which makes sense given that Ms. Abbott socialized with him in the 1940s at the Cedar Tavern, the artists’ hangout in Greenwich Village.
To see this and other early works by Ms. Abbott together is a treat, for most come from private collections and have rarely been publicly shown. Few of her works are on permanent display in New York-area museums. That is a shame, for she is one of the last great Abstract Expressionist painters of her generation.