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Michael (Corinne) West

American, 1908-1991
West with her painting Creation, c. 1948 and two untitled drawings, c. 1948. The Michael (Corinne) West Estate Archives
West with her painting Creation, c. 1948 and two untitled drawings, c. 1948. The Michael (Corinne) West Estate Archives

West sought to convey “‘the Door to a Spiritual World’ through the ‘Creative fire’ of art.”

Born in 1908 as Corinne West, she spent most of her formative years in Ohio, first in Columbus and later in Cincinnati. There she attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before enrolling the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1925, after opting for a career in the fine arts.  Allured by the promise of the big city, West relocates to New York in 1932, continuing her art education the following year at the Art Students League. A member of Hans Hofmann’s first class at the League, West credits her instructor as a lasting influence on her art. Hofmann’s emphasis on the “inner eye,” the ability to apprehend the essence of things, guided the artist in her spiritual approach to abstraction, long after she had sought out other teachers and mentors.

Born in 1908 as Corinne West, she spent most of her formative years in Ohio, first in Columbus and later in Cincinnati. There she attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before enrolling the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1925, after opting for a career in the fine arts.  Allured by the promise of the big city, West relocates to New York in 1932, continuing her art education the following year at the Art Students League. A member of Hans Hofmann’s first class at the League, West credits her instructor as a lasting influence on her art. Hofmann’s emphasis on the “inner eye,” the ability to apprehend the essence of things, guided the artist in her spiritual approach to abstraction, long after she had sought out other teachers and mentors.

 

Another prominent figure in her life, and one with whom she would develop an intimate, romantic relationship, was the artist Arshile Gorky, whom she met through a class monitor at the League, Lorenzo Santillo. West and Gorky spent countless hours visiting local museums, in particular the Metropolitan, and discussing art.  Gorky introduced the younger artist to important sources for West’s work, such as European Surrealism. West avidly read the work of Surrealist writers such as André Breton and Isidore Ducasse, and drew on their celebration of the operations of the unconscious mind in her art.

 

In the mid-1930s, West, like her contemporaries Lee Krasner and George (Grace) Hartigan, adopted a masculine nom de brosse. Perhaps encouraged by Arshile Gorky’s name change, she initially chose the Russian-sounding, Mikael, but later anglicized the spelling. Fiercely independent and driven, West sought respect based on the merit of her work, free from the bias of gender.

 

Gorky’s emphasis on drawing remained an important model for West’s work. His study of the Old Masters encouraged West’s appreciation of the linear approach to painting (the disegno model of the Raphael tradition), and their visits to museums only furthered the development of West’s own art. A series of works she produced in the late 1940s revealed how she wielded the paint brush to translate the process of drawing to painting.

 

Following the dissolution of her marriage to her first husband Randolph Nelson, in 1935 West moved to Rochester, New York, where she participated in the Rochester Arts Club. Her Portrait of Manuella garnered critical praise when she exhibited it at the Rochester Memorial Art Gallery that same year. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, West exhibited repeatedly in solo and group exhibitions in Rochester; several of her works draw the favor of the press, among them a series of drawings on view at the Rochester Fingerlakes Exhibition in 1943.

 

In 1946 West moved back to Manhattan, and became active in the thriving postwar artistic culture of New York City. She married, in 1948, the avant-garde filmmaker and photographer Francis Lee, giving birth to her only child, Lionel Sardofontana Lee, the following year. As frequent host to a number of Surrealist exiles in New York, Lee forged connections to artists such as Joan Miró and Robert Motherwell, as well as to influential critics like Harold Rosenberg. Possibility as a result of such soirees, West made the acquaintance of fellow artists Jackson Pollock and Richard Poussette-Dart, with whom she shared an emphasis on the painterly process as well as the affirmation of a spiritual essence within the universal language of abstraction. Like Poussette-Dart, eight years her junior, West sought to convey “‘the Door to a Spiritual World’ through the ‘Creative fire’ of art.” (1) Her works from this period reveal pictographic grids and loosely abstracted forms with vague references to the outside world; often working directly from the tube, these paintings exhibit exquisitely wrought surfaces, built up with thick impasto and worked with a palette knife to create what Possette-Dart referred to as “a material awareness of spirit.” (2)

 

Inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson’s belief in the interconnected nature of all living things, West developed an aesthetic philosophy she termed “new mysticism in painting.” In a 1946 essay, she described her negotiation of the surface world of appearances and the immutable core essences of being: “The outer world changes as our thoughts change although our thought is usually ahead or in advance of the world viewed materially. To disintegrate visual unity…to break up and change outer appearance is necessary if the individual can penetrate the nature of our mystic universe.” (3)

 

West’s move to New York also brought the artist increased opportunities for exhibiting her work. She showed at the Rose Fried Gallery in 1948 and three years later at the Stable Gallery. In the late 1950s, West received a solo exhibition at the Uptown Gallery, New York, and also at the Domino Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her one-person show at the Uptown Gallery received praise for its energy and vitality, drawing comparisons to Pollock’s work.

 

In 1976 West suffered a stroke, although this did not prevent her from continuing painting; instead, she seemed to appreciate the release from the pressures of exhibiting it afforded her. In 1981, she expressed her commitment to her art: “No more shows—I just want to paint in peace—As this drive to paint forces me on.” (4) Five years after her death in 1991, the Pollock-Krasner House Foundation mounted an acclaimed retrospective of the artist’s work, entitled “Michael West: Painter-Poet.”

 

1. Quoted in Michael West: Painter-Poet (East Hampton, N.Y.: Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 1996), 9.

2. Ibid.
3. Michael West, “Notes on Art--The New Mysticism in Painting,” c.1946, quoted in Michael West: Painter-Poet, 4.
4. Michael West, “Notes on Art,” 1981, quoted in Michael West: Painter-Poet, 5.

Works

News

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Chelsea gallery Hollis Taggart expanding again despite fears of a slowing market - The Art Newspaper

Chelsea gallery Hollis Taggart expanding again despite fears of a slowing market

The Art Newspaper, August 10, 2023
Action, Gesture, Painting: Women in Abstraction, a World History (1940-1970) at the Van Gogh Foundation

Action, Gesture, Painting

Women in Abstraction, a World History (1940-1970) at the Van Gogh Foundation
Journal Ventilo, June 29, 2023
Abstract Expressionism’s forgotten women and their international contemporaries emerge from the shadows

Abstract Expressionism’s forgotten women and their international contemporaries emerge from the shadows

The Art Newspaper, February 2, 2023
Whitechapel Gallery offers thrilling landmark show of female abstract artists — review

Whitechapel Gallery offers thrilling landmark show of female abstract artists — review

Pioneering non-figurative work by women from all over the world gets its due in an exuberant London exhibition
Financial Times, February 1, 2023
Why Secondary Market Galleries Appeal to New and Established Collectors Alike - Artsy

Why Secondary Market Galleries Appeal to New and Established Collectors Alike

Artsy, November 4, 2022
The Armory Show 2021 in New York

The Armory Show 2021 in New York

Photologs
Ocula Magazine, September 12, 2021
In Black and White - Art & Antiques

In Black and White

Art & Antiques, April 2021
House tour: a Florida home embracing the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. To escape the cold winters of America’s east coast, a couple with adult children chose to design their family refuge on Florida’s sunny Jupiter Island. Photographed by Nicole Franz

House tour: a Florida home embracing the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi

Karine Monié for Vogue Living
Vogue Living, April 28, 2021
West overlayed marks on an earlier painting, Harlequin, to create Blinding Light (Credit: Gerard Vuilleumier /Hollis Taggart)

Blinding Light: The ‘Great American Painting’?

October 5, 2020
Michael Corinne West Friends, 1975–6 Hollis Taggart

The Rising Market for Women Abstract Expressionists

October 1, 2020
Michael West in her apartment, circa 1977. Courtesy of the Collection of The Michael (Corinne) West Estate Archives.

Why the Art World Is Rediscovering Female Abstract Expressionist Michael West

May 7, 2020
Michael West in her studio with Black and White, 1947. Photograph courtesy of the Michael (Corinne) West Estate Archives.

More Destinations for Digital Culture

Hollis Taggart Gallery
May 6, 2020
Hans Hofmann, Shangri-La, 1961, Hollis Taggart

What Sold during Armory Week

March 9, 2020
Visitors at The Armory Show 2020 at Pier 90 and 94. (Photo by Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Price Check! Here’s What Sold—and for How Much—at the 2020 Armory Show in New York

March 9, 2020
Work by Michael (Corinne) West and some of her better-known male peers on view from Hollis Taggart at the Armory Show 2020. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York.

She Was a Student of Hans Hofmann and a Friend of Arshile Gorky. But This Artist’s Work Was Obscured—Until Now

At the Armory Show, Abstract Expressionist Michael West, who adopted a man's name to find art world success, is poised for a major rediscovery.
March 6, 2020
Michael (Corinne) West’s work on view in the Hollis Taggart booth in the Perspectives section at Pier 90, curated by Nora Burnett Abrams

Visiting the 2020 Armory Show Amid Ominous Headlines

From art about environmental recklessness to Caribbean post-coloniality, Armory kicked off the spring art fair season in spite of growing coronavirus concerns.
March 6, 2020
Michael Corinne West, Untitled (Double-Sided), 1970–71. Courtesy of Hollis Taggart.

Editors’ Picks

15 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week
December 16, 2019
Michael (Corinne) West, “Green Apple” (1959), oil on canvas, 40 x 87 3/4 inches (courtesy of Hollis Taggart, NY.)

The Cosmological Musings of Michael West, an American Abstract Expressionist

The artist, born Corinne Michelle West, is among the forgotten women of the postwar era, who rarely adhered to one style.
December 3, 2019
Installation view of Peter Halley's Heterotopia II at Greene Naftali Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Three exhibitions to see in New York this weekend

From Peter Halley’s day-glo funhouse to Rachel Harrison’s retrospective at the Whitney
November 28, 2019
Remembering Michael West, a Forgotten Founder of Abstract Expressionism

Remembering Michael West, a Forgotten Founder of Abstract Expressionism

November 26, 2019
JOAN MITCHELL (1925-1992), Untitled, circa 1964, Oil pastel and graphite on paper
, 16 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches

Art Miami Highlight Exhibitors 2019

Hollis Taggart
November 25, 2019
In The Trade, Artist Moves

In The Trade

Artist Moves
April 2019
Art Industry News, Whoops! A German Man Forgot His Picasso on the Train + Other Stories

Art Industry News

Whoops! A German Man Forgot His Picasso on the Train + Other Stories
February 27, 2019
Hollis Taggart Now Represents Estates of Michael Corinne West, Leon Berkowitz

Hollis Taggart Now Represents Estates of Michael Corinne West, Leon Berkowitz

The Gallery Will Host Solo Exhibitions of Each Artist’s Work in Fall 2019 At Its Primary Space in Chelsea
February 26, 2019
Michael Corinne West Gento Niese, 1978 Hollis Taggart

11 Female Abstract Expressionists You Should Know, from Joan Mitchell to Alma Thomas

June 28, 2016
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Gallery talk by Dr. Ellen G. Landau

Saturday, November 9 at 2PM
This gallery talk took place at Hollis Taggart in conjunction with the gallery exhibition "Space Poetry: The Action Paintings of Michael West." Ellen G. Landau, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emerita in the Humanities, Case Western Reserve University, is currently an independent art historian and curator based in Pasadena, California.

Publications

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Asian-American Abstraction: Historic to Contemporary catalogue
Asian-American Abstraction: Historic to Contemporary
$ 25.00
Of the Past and Present: Estates and Contemporary Artists at Hollis Taggart
Of the Past and Present: Estates and Contemporary Artists at Hollis Taggart
$ 40.00
From Provincial Status to International Prominence: American Art of the 1950s
From Provincial Status to International Prominence: American Art of the 1950s
$ 20.00
Bold Marks: The Drawings of Michael West catalogue
Bold Marks: The Drawings of Michael West
$ 20.00
Epilogue: Michael West’s Monochrome Climax catalogue
Epilogue: Michael West’s Monochrome Climax
$ 50.00
Space Poetry: The Action Paintings of Michael West catalogue cover
Space Poetry: The Action Paintings of Michael West
$ 30.00
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