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ETHEL SCHWABACHER
Frieze Masters 2023
Booth S10
October 11 - 15, 2023
The Regent’s Park, London
In January 2023, Berry Campbell announced the representation of the estate of Abstract Expressionist, Ethel Schwabacher (1903-1984), adding to the gallery’s roster of underacknowledged women artists alongside Lynne Drexler, Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, and Yvonne Thomas. At Frieze Masters, Berry Campbell will present a solo booth in the Spotlight section, curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of FIne Arts. The presentation features seven key paintings from 1950 to 1959, including several works unseen since they were originally exhibited at Betty Parsons Gallery in the 1950s.
Ethel Schwabacher was a central figure in the “downtown” New York art scene starting in the 1940s. In the 1950s she was represented by the eponymous Betty Parsons Gallery where she had five solo shows and was included in fourteen group exhibitions. Between 1949 to 1963, Schwabacher was included in almost every Whitney Museum of American Art annual exhibition. In 1927, Schwabacher met her longtime friend and mentor, Arshile Gorky, whose philosophy of “freedom from the conscious” influenced her artistic journey. Schwabacher was an early proponent of this new Abstract Expressionist style–her paintings combine automatic drawing with dynamic brushwork in brilliant colors. Lloyd Goodrich, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, said that her work was, “capable of both lyric rapture and depths of tragic emotion.”
In recent years, Ethel Schwabacher has been gaining critical attention. She was included in the Denver Art Museum’s 2016, “Women of Abstract Expressionism.” Currently Schwabacher is in “Action, Gesture, Paint” at the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, organized by Whitechapel Gallery, London, featuring 91 international women artists. Berry Campbell’s presentation aims to bring increased awareness to Ethel Schwabacher’s artistic legacy.