Christian Messier

Louisa Chase was born in Panama City, Panama. Seven years later, her family moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She studied painting and sculpture at Syracuse University and at the Yale University School of Art. In 1975, she moved to New York and had her first solo show at Artists Space. 

Chase was among the wave of Neo-Expressionists of the 1980s who rejected the detached, pared-down approach of Minimalism and Conceptualism in favor of a dynamic technique and the use of symbolic imagery in her paintings and prints. She has had numerous solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, and has participated in group exhibitions held in the United States and abroad, notably at the Daimaru Exhibition Hall in Osaka, Japan, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 1984. 

In 1984, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston organized a traveling exhibition of Chase’s work, and in 1997 the Madison Art Center held a retrospective exhibition of her prints. 

Chase is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978–79 and 1982–83. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. 

Chase’s work can be found in major public collections across the country, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Denver Art Museum, Colorado; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City the Madison Art Center, Wisconsin; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the New York Public Library; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

(Biography provided by Diane Villani Editions)

Explore a vast range of abstract prints on 1stDibs to find a piece to enhance your existing collection or transform a space.

Unlike figurative paintings and other figurative art, which focuses on realism and representational perspectives, abstract art concentrates on visual interpretation. An artist may use a single color or simple geometric forms to create a world of depth. Printmaking has a rich history of abstraction. Through materials like stone, metal, wood and wax, an image can be transferred from one surface to another.

During the 19th century, iconic artists, including Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georgiana Houghton and others, began exploring works based on shapes and colors. This was a departure from the academic conventions of European painting and would influence the rise of 20th-century abstraction and its pioneers, like Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.

Some leaders of European abstraction, including Franz Kline, were influenced by the gestural shapes of East Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy interprets poetry, songs, symbols or other means of storytelling into art, from works on paper in Japan to elements of Islamic architecture.

Bold, daring and expressive, abstract art is constantly evolving and dazzling viewers. And entire genres have blossomed from it, such as Color Field painting and Minimalism.

The collection of abstract art prints on 1stDibs includes etchings, lithographs, screen-prints and other works, and you can find prints by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and more.