Wil Barnett

Shirley Gorelick was born in the USA, in 1924. She earned her B.A. at Brooklyn College (1944), where she studied under Serge Chermayeff, and her M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University (1947). She briefly studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown and Betty Holliday in Port Washington. Her early work was influenced by Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, but she became uncomfortable with the distortion of the human figure in modern art. Gorelick emerged as a strong figurative artist with her first solo show, held at the Angeleski Gallery in 1961, where she exhibited an array of truncated nudes in the prevailing abstract expressionist idiom. Several years later, using the visual language of 20th-century realism, Gorelick reinterpreted Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre, Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and the Three Graces. Most notably, Three Graces IV and Three Graces V feature the repeated forms of a nude, middle-aged African-American model. As Gorelick’s work evolved in the 1970s, the direct associations with her artistic forebears lessened, although she continued to be inspired by them. Blending the theme of the Three Graces and the Tahitian nudes of Paul Gauguin, Gorelick created Westchester Gauguin (Three Sisters), a series of paintings that portray suburban adolescents amid an overgrowth of pachysandra. She further recast the Three Graces in Willy, Billy Joe, and Leroy (1973), a compelling portrait of three African-American men in the artist’s studio. Inspired by Paul Cézanne’s Card Players, Gorelick also painted Chess Game (1972), in which she depicted a group of men playing chess outdoors. Despite the ongoing influence of her artistic predecessors, Gorelick was a realist who painted from direct observation, photographs, and other material, to reach the essence of her subjects. Nevertheless, she always embraced the materiality of the paint. In the late 1970s, Gorelick began to paint middle-aged couples, either together or individually, which further revealed her interest in psychological states. Her work was praised by reviewers in the New York Times, Newsday, Soho Weekly News, Long Island Press, Arts Magazine, Feminist Art Journal and Womanart. Gorelick was actively involved in SOHO 20 Gallery (est. 1973), the second artist-run, all-women exhibition space in New York City and was among the founders of Central Hall Artists Gallery (est. 1973) in Port Washington, New York, the first cooperative of its kind on Long Island.

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

Find original abstract paintings, sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.

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.