• Out of Town

The Art Students League is pleased to host a virtual panel discussion on the life and art of Perle Fine, featuring Maddy Berezov, stewards of the artist’s legacy, Kathleen L. Housley, author of Tranquil Power: The Art and Life of Perle Fine, and Susan W. Knowles, art historian and curator of the Hofstra University Museum of Art traveling retrospective of Fine’s work. Perle Fine, who studied at The Art Students League with Kimon Nicolaides in the 1930s, was a renowned and highly influential member of the inner circle of Abstract Expressionists that became the New York School. Fine’s early solo exhibitions at the Betty Parsons Gallery, and her inclusion in the legendary Ninth Street Show, in addition to other New York Annuals and group exhibitions, were instrumental in helping shape the direction of the Abstract Expressionist movement. In the 1950s, Fine’s Tenth Street studio was located behind the Tanager Gallery; its centrality was a constant source of inspiration because of the numerous artists who dropped in to exchange ideas, among them Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. Later, Fine was disturbed by the increasing competitiveness and undercurrent of violence in Abstract Expressionism. Tired of battling an art world culture that sidelined women, Fine made the decision to go into a highly creative exile in East Hampton, where she hoped to find the space to conquer painting itself. Join us, for this illuminating discussion of an artist who was always “suspicious” when painting felt too easy, who believed in “fighting it out with the canvas,” and whose efforts, according to critics of her time, created “gentle paintings of near unspeakable beauty.”