As with many female abstract expressionists, Anna Walinska’s 70-year career has been overlooked by many in the art world. But an exhibition of paintings created in the 1950s and 60s, opening 15 August at Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton, New York, should go some way to redressing the balance.
The works, many of which were shown in her solo exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1957, are priced between $16,000 and $50,000. “I thought it was time to let people see these paintings again,” says Rosina Rubin, the artist’s niece and organiser of the show, “and what better place to show them than in East Hampton where the abstract expressionist movement flourished.”
Over the course of her career, the London-born Walinska (1906-97) created an impressive 2,000 works. Not content just to be behind the easel, she also founded the Guild Art Gallery in New York in 1935, where she gave Arshile Gorky his first New York one-man show. Four years later Walinska served as the assistant creative director of the contemporary art pavilion at the New York World’s Fair.
In 1954, the artist embarked on a six-month trip around the world, including a four-month stay in Burma, where she painted the portrait of prime minister U Nu. Walinska went onto to become a renowned portrait painter, with subjects including Eleanor Roosevelt, Louise Nevelson and Arshile Gorky.
