The abstract expressionist painter and Chicago-born poet Corinne Michelle West (1908-1991) was thirty-one years old when she officially changed her name in both her personal and professional life to Michael. The year was 1939 and in the testosterone-driven milieu of the New York avant-garde, Michael West was being noticed. She studied under Hans Hoffman at the Art Students League and her work was admired by the influential art critic Clement Greenberg who visited her studio in the nascent days of Abstract Expressionism. Unfortunately, like so many other talented female artists before and since, as the fame and fortune of her male contemporaries grew, she faded into obscurity.
The current exhibition, Epilogue: Michael West’s Monochrome Climax, her second solo show since 2019 at Hollis Taggart in New York, seeks to correct the historical record. This well-documented show reveals the dynamic forces that influenced West’s volatile series of largely black and white paintings from the late 1940s through the early 1980s and we marvel at why she is not better known today. Following the groundwork laid by Taggart in the previous show of West’s paintings, essays, and poems, Space Poetry: The Action Painting of Michael West, this exhibition focuses on West’s fascination with the yin and yang modalities that a limited palette of primarily black and white suggests.
521 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001
