6 Ft Painting Vertical

Like many creatives, Karina Gentinetta’s road to success wasn’t a straight line. Before she became a prolific abstract painter of mesmerizing, charged works in acrylics, pencil, oil pastels and charcoal, she was a lawyer.

Born in Buenos Aires, Gentinetta and her siblings fled with her parents during Argentina’s Dirty War, when thousands of people were killed or forcibly disappeared by the government. The Gentinettas arrived in New Orleans, where Karina later graduated from Tulane University Law School. She initially wanted to major in art, but her cautionary parents — her father drove a taxi in New Orleans — urged their bright daughter to study something more practical.

She practiced law for 13 years before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, destroying her and her husband’s home. Gentinetta found herself at a fork in the road: law or art? She chose the latter. She also began to nurture her interest in the beauty of vintage objects and how they could be reborn, opening a shop for antique furniture. Some of her earliest paintings were made to complement her antique presentations.

Inspired by artists like Cy Twombly and Franz Kline, Gentinetta’s abstract paintings — typically pale canvases with calculated bursts of color — are emotional. Others bear a more stark palette of black and white with intense and sometimes graphic strokes. Gentinetta often uses materials that one might find at a construction site, like wall plaster and house paint, symbolically and tactilely responding to how her city was wrecked but has endured. Her collectors have included Courtney Love Cobain, and in 2016 she collaborated with RH Modern on a limited-edition series. Gentinetta’s work tells a unique story that does not end after a glance.

Find Karina Gentinetta’s art on 1stDibs.

Bring audacious experiments with color and textures to your living room, dining room or home office. Abstract paintings, large or small, will stand out in your space, encouraging conversation and introducing a museum-like atmosphere that’s welcoming and conducive to creating memorable gatherings.

Abstract art has origins in 19th-century Europe, but it came into its own as a significant movement during the 20th century. Early practitioners of abstraction included Wassily Kandinsky, although painters were exploring nonfigurative art prior to the influential Russian artist’s efforts, which were inspired by music and religion. Abstract painters endeavored to create works that didn’t focus on the outside world’s conventional subjects, and even when artists depicted realistic subjects, they worked in an abstract mode to do so.

In 1940s-era New York City, a group of painters working in the abstract mode created radical work that looked to European avant-garde artists as well as to the art of ancient cultures, prioritizing improvisation, immediacy and direct personal expression. While they were never formally affiliated with one another, we know them today as Abstract Expressionists.

The male contingent of the Abstract Expressionists, which includes Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, is frequently cited in discussing leading figures of this internationally influential postwar art movement. However, the women of Abstract Expressionism, such as Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell and others, were equally involved in the art world of the time. Sexism, family obligations and societal pressures contributed to a long history of their being overlooked, but the female Abstract Expressionists experimented vigorously, developed their own style and produced significant bodies of work.

Draw your guests into abstract oil paintings across different eras and countries of origin. On 1stDibs, you’ll find an expansive range of abstract paintings along with a guide on how to arrange your wonderful new wall art.

If you’re working with a small living space, a colorful, oversize work can create depth in a given room, but there isn’t any need to overwhelm your interior with a sprawling pièce de résistance. Colorful abstractions of any size can pop against a white wall in your living room, but if you’re working with a colored backdrop, you may wish to stick to colors that complement the decor that is already in the space. Alternatively, let your painting make a statement on its own, regardless of its surroundings, or group it, gallery-style, with other works.