Abstract Women Artists at the Whitechapel Part 4

Lilian Holt

(1898, UK - 1983, UK)

Tajo, Ronda, 1956

Oil on canvas

Holt was an influential and founding member of the Borough Group, a collective of painters that included Walter Sickert, Jacob Epstein, Jacob Kramer, and David Bomberg whom she married in 1940. In the 1950s, she and Bomberg moved to Ronda in southern Spain. Holt made many paintings of views of the small town built on two sides of a ravine, working in situ and painting quickly, conveying a sense of place through colour and abstract forms.

Emiko Nakano

(1925, USA - 1990, USA)

Composition in Yellow, 1957

Oil on canvas

During the Second World War, California-born Nakano and her family were placed in an American internment camp for three years because of their Japanese ancestry. When they were eventually released, Nakano attended art school and studied with the West Coast Abstract Expressionists. A painter, printmaker, fibre artist and fashion Illustrator, Nakano's work often reflected an abstract approach to landscape painting, in which large blocks of colour are orchestrated in taut compositions to convey a sense of space and light.

Else Fischer-Hansen

(1905, Denmark - 1996, Denmark)

Composition, 1949

Oil on canvas

A Danish painter who studied in Italy, Fischer-Hansen's early works were naturalistic and figurative, but in the 1930s her practice became increasingly abstract as she started making what she referred to as 'psychological paintings', abstractions based on specific landscapes or drawing on musical works. Her paintings of the sea, light and air are created in a highly simplified abstract form, often with just a few strong colours on a light background.

Elsa Vaudrey

(1905, Scotland - 1990, UK)

Untitled, 1959

Gouache on board

Vaudrey began painting in water colour, ink and gouache in the tradition of British landscape painters until she came across the New York School painters in two exhibitions at Tate,

'Modern Art in the United States' 1956 and the

'New American Painting' in 1959. Adopting the technique of Tachisme, her work shifted into a distinctive and fluid gestural abstraction from the 1960s onwards, in which visionary expressive impressions of the natural world featured as subject matter.

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

(1908, Portugal - 1992, France)

La Nef (Interieur d'Eglise)

[The nave (Interior of a Church)],

1955

Oil on canvas

Having lived in Portugal, Brazil, and France, Vieira da Silva was a leading member of the European and international Art Informel movement.

Her works feature complex, mostly geometric compositions using lines that explore space and perspective through her characteristic use of heavy impasto and overlaid forms. The subject matter of Vieira da Silva's 1950s paintings focuses on post-war Europe: cities that had been burned or flooded, alleyways, sunsets and landscapes, both natural and built.

Marie Raymond

(1908, France - 1988, France)

Montagne, 1961

Oil on canvas

Associated with Tachisme and one of the central figures of the artistic scene in postwar Paris, Raymond and her husband the artist Fred Klein are the parents of celebrated French artist Yes Klein. During the Second World War, Raymond and her family took refuge in Cagnes-sur-Mer with other artists including Hans Arp and Sonia Delaunay, and there her work became resolutely abstract, often inspired by nature and country walks.

Ida Barbarigo

(1925, Italy - 2018, Italy)

Promenade, 1963

Oil on canvas

Barbarigo was an Italian painter from Venice, who abandoned landscapes and portraits after moving to Paris in 1952 and became associated with the abstract painting movement of the New School of Paris. Painting in ochre tones, rhythmical white brushstrokes, and using sinuous forms orchestrated against light, airy backgrounds, Barbarigo frequently incorporated personal references in her work, in an attempt to

'unlearn how to paint', as she described it, and be closer to her senses.