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.
Eclipsed by their male counterparts in the later years of the 20th century, the last decade or so has seen another shift in perception. In 2002 a retrospective of Joan Mitchell’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, established her critical status alongside Kline and de Kooning. More recently, in 2014 Helen Frankenthaler was celebrated in two museum shows (at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and Turner Contemporary, Margate). Significantly, the newly reopened and expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has placed two large, exuberant and vigorous works by Krasner and Mitchell right at the front of its ‘Approaching American Abstraction’ display. Most recently, the groundbreaking exhibition ‘Women of Abstract Expressionism’, which has just closed at Denver Art Museum, brought together more than 50 works by 12 female artists associated with the movement, inviting focused attention on their often neglected contribution. These shows have given the market a decisive boost.