Judith Godwin

Perle Fine, Painting No. 56, c. 1954, Oil on canvas, 60 x 56 in 

Action, Gesture, Paint, Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70
Whitechapel Gallery, London
February 9 - May 7, 2023

"Perhaps the most dramatic was at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, where the curators of Action, Gesture, Paint defenestrated the aggressively white American male domain of Abstract Expressionism to champion an entire generation of 81 international artist women. We’re not talking second-rate copycats: painters like Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Perle Fine and Judith Godwin were a respected part of the New York scene, promoted alongside Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock by the painter and gallerist Betty Parsons." - continue reading 

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/female-artists-take-centre-stage-in-2023/

Ethel Schwabacher, Woman: Red Sea, Dead Sea, 1951, oil on canvas, 31x37 in

Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940 - 1970
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
December 2, 2023 - March 3, 2024

Kunsthalle Bielefeld presents an extensive global show that for the first time in Europe focuses on the work of female artists and their role in the development of abstraction after 1945. The movement we now describe as “Abstract Expressionism” officially began in the mid-20th century in the United States. But around the world, artists* explored parallel approaches to abstraction through materiality, expressivity, and gesture, from Informel to Arte Povera, from calligraphic abstraction and Gutai in East Asia to experimental, deeply political practices in Central and South America, North Africa, and the Middle East.

New York gallery Berry Campbell had a standout booth, a curated presentation of 12 postwar women artists. The gallery has a distinct focus on re-examining underrepresented women artists of the 20th-century. Gallery owner Christine Berry called it “an incredible day,” noting high demand for artists including Alice Baber, Bernice Bing, and Lynne Drexler.

Works by Drexler sold for $885,000 and $200,000; the artist, who has been drawing intense interest, will likely be the subject of a traveling institutional retrospective at some point in the near future. A work by Baber went for $200,000—Berry Campbell hopes to mount a solo show of the artist next year.

Later on in the day, the gallery let Artnet News know that a painting by Ethel Schwabacher had been sold for $195,000.  

Pioneering non-figurative work by women from all over the world gets its due in an exuberant London exhibition.

Judith Godwin Included in WE FANCY: A Legacy of LGBTQIA+ Artists at the League
Curated by Eric Shiner
Art Students League of New York
October 27 - November 27, 2022
View Works by Judith Godwin

Judith Godwin
Seated Figure, 1955
Oil on canvas
83 x 47 inches
Collection of National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

View Works by Judith Godwin

Visit Viewing Room

Berry Campbell at Intersect Aspen:
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Booth A15

Visit Viewing Room

WHEN THE ARTIST Judith Godwin died on May 29 in her ninety-second year, the art world lost the last living member of a generation of women Abstract Expressionists, a group of artists largely overlooked in favor of their male peers. I lost a dear friend. 

My connection with Judith came about through our mutual friend Julie Lawson, a London art-world personality and assistant to Sir Roland Penrose, one of the founders of the city’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. Years later, when I was living in New York, Julie introduced me to Judith, who struck me as a delightful and irreverent Southern lady. What I didn’t recognize at first was how strong a character she was under that lighthearted gentility. At the time, she was celebrating her victory in a court case against a restaurant that was encroaching on her Greenwich Village property. There, in her beautifully tended garden, resplendent with plants she had known and loved in Virginia—including fine camellias and an extraordinary Lady Banks climbing rose—Franz Kline and Ruth Kligman’s cat was a constant presence (they lived nearby). Judith said she was in the habit of giving Kligman a sandwich whenever she stopped by to fetch the animal. Judith also said she had learned a great deal from Kline, especially his late works in color.

Judith was born in 1930 in Suffolk, Virginia, into a distinguished family tracing ancestors back to the state’s first colonial settlers. This was a background she mostly rejected, leaving Virginia after graduating from Mary Baldwin College and what is now Virginia Commonwealth University to become an artist.

With the reluctant blessing of her parents, she moved to New York, where she studied at the Art Students League and later with Hans Hoffmann at his School of Fine Arts and struggled to establish herself. In addition to being a dedicated painter, Judith, to earn a living, had to learn carpentry, stonemasonry, plastering, interior decoration, and landscaping. She was always a welcome and helpful guest in my home, walking around, tools in hand, checking fittings and hinges. In her studio on West Thirteenth Street, she stretched her own canvases and made the frames for her paintings, which were stacked in partitions she constructed and installed. Independence, improvisation, and self-reliance were fundamental to her character.

Judith often spoke to me of the opportunities she had missed as a woman in New York’s 1950s and ’60s art world. She never felt welcome at the Cedar Tavern, that fabled AbEx stomping ground. Once, at a gallery opening early in her career, she was abruptly sidelined by Ellsworth Kelly while trying to speak to Betty Parsons. However, in 1957, she was in the inaugural Betty Parsons Section Eleven Gallery show, and a year later in a group show at Stable Gallery. She went on to be represented by Marisa del Re Gallery, Spanierman Gallery, and, most recently, Berry Campbell Gallery. Her powerful gestural abstractions are in many private collections and have been acquired by the nation’s leading contemporary-art museums.

Still, it always rankled her that her paintings weren’t more widely known or appreciated, especially in comparison to those of her male contemporaries. But she gained recognition for her place in the canon in 2016 with the Denver Art Museum’s groundbreaking “Women of Abstract Expressionism,” which highlighted twelve women artists, Judith among them. It pleased her to know that a major reassessment of her work and life had begun—and now it will be ongoing.

Anthony Korner is publisher of Artforum.

We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Judith Godwin (1930 - 2021). Godwin was an innovative artist, who fought hard for her well-deserved place in the male dominated world of Abstract Expressionism. A painter for over seventy years, collectors, curators, and museums increasingly have acknowledged Godwin’s achievements in the past five years. She was among twelve artists included in the groundbreaking exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, held at the Denver Art Museum, curated by University of Denver professor Gwen F. Chanzit. Included in numerous major museum collections, recently her works have been acquired by countless museums such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Mougins Museum of Classical Art, France; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; and the Sheldon Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska, among many others. Godwin was a playful raconteur and a passionate advocate for women in the arts. We feel fortunate to have worked closely with Judith Godwin for over ten years, and we will miss her sharp wit, her friendship, and her boundless energy and creativity.

Artist's Choice: Interconnected
May 7 - June 7, 2020
View Exhibition

Berry Campbell is pleased to announce Artist’s Choice: Interconnected, an exclusive online exhibition of works from gallery’s inventory chosen by Berry Campbell’s represented contemporary artists. Eric Dever, Judith Godwin, Ken Greenleaf, Jill Nathanson, Ann Purcell, Mike Solomon, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, Joyce Weinstein, and Frank Wimberley have thoughtfully selected one work from our gallery inventory that they associate with their own creative process and artistic journey. This artist-curated exhibition is an inquiry into the lines of influence and connections within our Berry Campbell artist community. Artist’s Choice: Interconnected launches digitally May 7, 2020.

The choices are sometimes expected, and at other times, surprising.  Some artists were inspired by a painting from an artist they had never met, and others paid tribute to old friends or mentors.  Judith Godwin recalls good times with her old friend and art dealer, Betty Parsons.  James Walsh remembers a painting by Walter Darby Bannard from a 1981 show at Knoedler Gallery.  Mike Solomon pays homage to the perseverance of abstract painter and dear friend, Frank Wimberley saying: “The quiet intermingling of his experience, with the purity of painting, gives his abstractions an authenticity and delicacy that is profound to witness.”  Ken Greenleaf favorite is Cloistered #5 (1968) by Ida Kohlmeyer, delighting in the pure abstraction.  Jill Nathanson picked a color-field forerunner, Dan Christensen.  Ann Purcell admitted to being picky but found true inspiration after visiting our Yvonne Thomas show repeatedly.  Eric Dever ruminates about Charlotte Park: “Like a favorite poem, novel or even film, a painting can be a touchstone, something one returns to with certain regularity; perhaps a gauge of some kind, beginning with personal happiness on the occasion of discovery and new revelation as our lives unfold.”  Joyce Weinstein finds parallels with John Opper.  Susan Vecsey loves the “stillness and movement” of Elaine de Kooning’s Six Horses, Blue Wall (1987).  No coincidence that Vecsey lives down the road from the Elaine de Kooning house in the Hamptons. Frank Wimberley recalls of Herman Cherry: “He was one of the East End artists who wished to me to succeed.”

ABOUT BERRY CAMPBELL
Christine Berry and Martha Campbell have many parallels in their backgrounds and interests. Both studied art history in college, began their careers in the museum world, and later worked together at a major gallery in midtown Manhattan. Most importantly, however, Berry and Campbell share a curatorial vision.

Both art dealers developed a strong emphasis on research and networking with artists and scholars during their art world years. They decided to work together, opening Berry Campbell Gallery in 2013 in the heart of New York's Chelsea art district, at 530 West 24th Street on the ground floor. In 2015, the gallery expanded, doubling its size with an additional 2,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Highlighting a selection of postwar and contemporary artists, the gallery fulfills an important gap in the art world, revealing a depth within American modernism that is just beginning to be understood, encompassing the many artists who were left behind due to race, gender, or geography-beyond such legendary figures as Pollock and de Kooning. Since its inception, the gallery has been especially instrumental in giving women artists long overdue consideration, an effort that museums have only just begun to take up, such as in the 2016 traveling exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, curated by University of Denver professor Gwen F. Chanzit. This show featured work by Perle Fine and Judith Godwin, both represented by Berry Campbell, along with that of Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell. In 2019, Berry Campbell's exhibition, Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations (Paintings 1963 - 1965) was reviewed by Roberta Smith for the New York Times, in which Smith wrote that Thomas, "... kept her hand in, adding a fresh directness of touch, and the results give her a place in the still-emerging saga of postwar American abstraction.”

In addition to Perle Fine and Judith Godwin, artists whose work is represented by the gallery include Edward Avedisian, Walter Darby Bannard, Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, John Goodyear, Ken Greenleaf, Raymond Hendler, Ida Kohlmeyer, Jill Nathanson, John Opper, Stephen Pace, Charlotte Park, William Perehudoff, Ann Purcell, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Albert Stadler, Yvonne Thomas, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, Joyce Weinstein, Frank Wimberley, Larry Zox, and Edward Zutrau. The gallery has helped promote many of these artists' careers in museum shows including that of Bannard at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2018-19); Syd Solomon, in a traveling museum show which culminates at the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota and has been extended through 2021; Stephen Pace at The McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries at the University of Southern Indiana (2018) and at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2019); and Vecsey and Mike Solomon at the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina (2017 and 2019, respectively); and Eric Dever at the Suffolk Community College, Riverhead, New York (2020). In an April 3, 2020 New York Times review of Berry Campbell's exhibition of Ida Kohlmeyer's Cloistered paintings, Roberta Smith stated: “These paintings stunningly sum up a moment when Minimalism was giving way to or being complicated by something more emotionally challenging and implicitly feminine and feminist. They could hang in any museum.”

Collaboration is an important aspect of the gallery. With the widened inquiries and understandings that have resulted from their ongoing discussions about the art world canon, the dealers feel a continual sense of excitement in the discoveries of artists and research still to be made.

Berry Campbell is located in the heart of the Chelsea Arts District at 530 West 24th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY 10011.  For further information, contact us at 212.924.2178, info@berrycampbell.com or www.berrycampbell.com.

Berry Campbell Celebrates Women's History Month

Ida Kohlmeyer
VIDEO: Virtual Exhibition Walkthrough

Women of Abstract Expressionism 
Inventory Highlights
View Exhibition

Ann Purcell
Upcoming Exhibition: Kali Poems
View Works by Ann Purcell

Judith Godwin
Forbes Magazine: Add to Your list of '5 Women Artists' at These Museums Around The United States
by Chadd Scott

Charlotte Park
Client Testimonial: 
"Extremely gratifying to see Paul Kasmin Gallery's eye-opening summer show, Painters of the East End reviewed by Erin Kimmel in this month's Art in America . And smiled extra wide that AbEx talent Charlotte Park is written up in the same paragraph as — and holds her own with— Joan Mitchell. 'Park's virtuosic oil and crayon compositions (ca. 1965 and 1967) feature dendrite-like configurations in a palette of bright pinks, yellows and blues that appear frozen mid twist.' Ten years ago Christine Berry, owner of one of the most engaging and provocative galleries in Chelsea, Berry Campbell, thankfully introduced me to the work of Charlotte Park, who died in 2010 at age 92 in Montauk, where she lived and painted. She was the wife of artist James Brooks, supporting his career at the expense of her own, and dear friends and neighbors of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner." 
-Adam Beckerman
View Works by Charlotte Park 

Yvonne Thomas
Eazel Interactive Exhibition | Yvonne Thomas: Windows and Variations (1963-1965) 

Susan Vecsey
blue. 
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
View Works by Susan Vecsey

Jill Nathanson
LINEA: Studio Notes from the Art Students League of New York
Artist Snapshot: Jill Nathanson 

Perle Fine
What We See, How We See
Through April 2021
Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
View Works by Perle Fine

Joyce Weinstein
Postwar Women
Curated by William Corwin
The Art Students League, New York
View Works by Joyce Weinstein

What do Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, and Faith Ringgold have in common? They all studied at the Art Students League of New York—and they are all featured in a new show at the school highlighting the accomplishments of its many women students.

Titled “Postwar Women,” the exhibition, curated by Will Corwin, features more than 40 women who studied at the school between 1945 and 1965. “It seemed like the obvious choice because before the war, most of the women students here were wealthy or had family who supported them as artists,” Corwin told Artnet News at the exhibition’s opening. “During this period, you actually get working-class women becoming artists. And of course, you get the Abstract Expressionists.”

Corwin has put together an impressive selection of works by well-known alumna—Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Louise Nevelson are also among the big names—alongside examples by an intriguing array of artists who haven’t yet been widely recognized for their talents.

“The league’s list of famous graduates is like everybody you’ve ever heard of,” Corwin said. For him, the curatorial challenge was balancing expectations: ensuring that all the major names were in place while still creating opportunities for viewers to discover new artists.

Judith Godwin, Seated Figure, 1955
oil on canvas
210.82 x 119.38 cm (83 x 47 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Artist

A generous gift to the Gallery from American artist Judith Godwin (b. 1930), Seated Figure (1955) is the first work by her to enter the collection. Seated Figure is a striking arrangement of pale blue, royal blue, and black planes outlined in white and gray that evoke a figure's head, back, knee, and leg folded into a chair. Angular lines, extravagant drips, and vigorous brushwork energize the composition and transform the static motif of a seated figure into a dynamic image. The work shows both Godwin's mastery of the gestural style of abstract expressionists like Franz Kline and the influence of Martha Graham's expressive bodily gesture. Completed when Godwin was 25 years old, Seated Figure is a powerful example of second-generation abstract expressionism by one of the movement's female practitioners.

November 2 − December 1
Art Students League: The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery

Postwar Women is The Art Students League’s first exhibition to explore the vital contributions of these alumnae on the international stage. On view at The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery from November 2 to December 1, 2019, Postwar Women challenges the misperception that great art produced by women artists is somehow an exception rather than the rule. Curator Will Corwin investigates the history of innovative art academies like The League that promoted democratic ideologies, which in turn created artistic opportunities for women of all social classes. This ground-breaking exhibition features over forty artists active between 1945-65, tracing the complex networks these professional women formed to support one another and their newfound access to art education. Postwar Women presents work by some of the prominent artists of the 20th Century like Louise Bourgeois and Helen Frankenthaler, but more importantly it calls out the women who were not credited enough: Mavis Pusey, Kazuko Miyamoto, Olga Albizu and Helena Vieira da Silva – challenging a new generation of visitors and art students to KNOW YOUR FOREMOTHERS.

Featured Artists:
Berenice Abbott, Mary Abbott, Olga Albizu, Janice Biala, Isabel Bishop, Nell Blaine, Regina Bogat, Louise Bourgeois, Vivian Browne, Elizabeth Catlett, Dorothy Dehner, Elaine de Kooning, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Judith Godwin, Terry Haass, Grace Hartigan, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Faith Hubley, Lenore Jaffee, Gwendolyn Knight, Lee Krasner, Blanche Lazzell, Marguerite Louppe, Lenita Manry, Marisol, Mercedes Matter, Kazuko Miyamoto, Louise Nevelson, Charlotte Park, Joyce Pensato, Irene Rice Pereira, Mavis Pusey, Faith Ringgold, Edith Schloss, May Stevens,  Yvonne Thomas, Lynn Umlauf, Maria Vieira da Silva, Merrill Wagner, Joyce Weinstein, Michael West

That history has so often obscured and overwritten the creative and intellectual output of women is by now a very well-known observation that, nevertheless, continues to sting. “The men simply said, ‘Women can’t paint,’” recalls Judith Godwin, who began her artistic career in the 1950s in New York—Abstract Expressionism’s heyday—alongside contemporaries including Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan. The men, simply put, were wrong. This exhibition of Godwin’s paintings across the last half-century situates the artist’s early works alongside later pieces, demonstrating her consistent penchant for experimenting with figure, ground, and color, as well as her persistent dedication to playfulness.

Please read our online catalogue to learn more about the artist and her career.

Judith Godwin: An Act of Freedom
January 10 - February 9, 2019

NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell Gallery opened an important exhibition of paintings by legendary Abstract Expressionist painter, Judith Godwin. This historic exhibition is a survey of sixteen paintings, including several large-scale examples from the 1950s originally shown at the Betty Parsons Gallery. This exhibition is accompanied by a sixteen-page catalogue with an essay written by Gwen Chanzit, Ph.D., Curator Emerita of Modern Art and Curator of Women of Abstract Expressionism (2016) originated by the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition continues through March 16, 2019. 

From 1950, when she first exhibited her work to the present, Godwin has held to her convictions, using a language of abstract form to respond with unbowed directness and passion to life and nature. For Judith Godwin, painting “is an act of freedom and a realization that images generated by the female experience can be a powerful and creative expression for all humanity.” Through her studies with Hans Hofmann, her long association with Martha Graham and Graham’s expressive dance movements, her participation in the early burgeoning of Abstract Expressionism, and her love for Zen Buddhism and gardening, Godwin has forged a personal and unique career path. 

In 2016, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) unveiled “From the Collection: 1960-1969,” a chronologically organized capsule of its world-renowned permanent collection that went beyond the expected paintings, drawings and sculptures to include books, design objects and archival materials in immersive environments that conjured stylized time capsules. Reporting on that inspired reconfiguration, the New York Times pointed out that “treasures long secreted in departmental galleries have come to the center ring, like the Jaguar E-Type Roadster that dominates, perhaps a little too completely, the 1961 gallery.” 

Borrowing creative direction from MoMA’s 1961 gallery, the McNay takes a similarly unorthodox approach to its new era-focused exhibition “American Dreams: Classic Cars and Postwar Paintings.” Organized by the McNay’s René Paul Barilleaux, head of curatorial affairs; Kate Carey, head of education; and Jackie Edwards, assistant curator, it reconstructs a vivid slice of what’s been called “America’s Golden Age” by parking 10 painstakingly restored vintage automobiles inside the museum to engage in “unique visual conversations” with paintings that exemplify artistic movements that emerged from the economic expansion following WWII — specifically abstract expressionism, pop art and op art. 

In addition to paintings by such heavy hitters as Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and Ed Ruscha, “American Dreams” strives for “strong representation of women artists” by highlighting works by Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Judith Godwin and Dorothy Hood. It also celebrates the contributions of women in the male-dominated auto industry with complementary programs including a lecture by author, Girls Auto Clinic owner and self-professed “sheCANic” Patrice Bank (save the date for April 4). 

Amar Singh’s eponymous Islington gallery has a simple but laudable ethos, specializing in exhibitions of LGBTQ and female artists with diverse, progressive narratives. Raised in London but a member of the royal Kapurthala family of Punjab, Singh was one of many political campaigners who made up a global coalition that last month recorded a landmark legal victory in India, overturning the country’s 2013 criminalization of gay sex. Now, Amar Gallery is turning to one of the lesser-known histories of art, with an exhibition of the women behind Abstract Expressionism in 1950s and 60s America. Lynne Mapp Drexler, Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan and myriad others take pride of place in Hiding in Plain Sight, which explores the female painters who have been neglected in favour of their more barnstorming counterparts—the Rothkos, the Pollocks and the Newmans. There’s a pioneering spirit to the paintings, be they the natural blooms Drexler cultivated on her canvases, or the liquid colour-field stains of Helen Frankenthaler, made all the more engrossing by the fact that many of these artists have never been exhibited in the U.K. before.

This list of 20 Includes exhibitions in Lincoln, Omaha, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. I saw the latter three when I was one of 12 American fellows in the International Arts Journalism Institute in Visual Art in 2009.

“Now’s The Time,” Sheldon Museum of Art, 2017

There were multiple Sheldon shows drawn from its collection that I considered for this list. I ended up choosing the one that is most in my wheelhouse — "Now’s The Time,” an exhibition of Sheldon’s abstract expressionist works conceived by director and chief curator Wally Mason after “Yellow Band,” the museum’s Mark Rothko masterwork was exhibited in an AE survey in London and Bilbao, Spain.

A who’s who of mid-century artists, the smartly hung show included works by Barnett Newman, Han Hoffman, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Willem deKooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner along with newly acquired works by Judith Godwin and Perle Fine. That’s an impressive lineup for any museum, particularly a university museum in the middle of the country.

This painting was exhibited in the Denver Art Museum's remarkably successful 2016 exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism.

Judith Godwin | Solo Exhibition
Berry Campbell
February 2019  

Judith Loves Martha, a short film about Judith Godwin and Martha Graham, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Anna Gaskell.

The role of female artists in the development of Abstract Expressionism has historically been underplayed and the consequent value of their work in the marketplace diminished. But women played a key role in the articulation of the movement: as early as 1942, Lee Krasner’s work was exhibited alongside that of Jackson Pollock, her future husband; Joan Mitchell, Perle Fine, and Mary Abbott were regularly invited to the members-only Eighth Street Club, founded in 1949 by Willem de Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and others; and Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler (who later married Robert Motherwell) were included in the seminal ‘Ninth Street Exhibition’ alongside Krasner and Mitchell, organised by Leo Castelli in 1951. Women also participated in the museum shows of the day; Grace Hartigan took part in the 1956 MoMA exhibition ‘Twelve Americans’, which also featured paintings by Philip Guston and Franz Kline.