9th Street Art Exhibition

9th Street Art Exhibition
"Greenwich Village" by Felix Stahlberg, 2017.
DateMonday, May 21, 1951 to Sunday, June 10, 1951
Duration20 days
Venue60 East 9th Street, New York, New York 10003
LocationGreenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, United States
Also known as"Ninth Street Show" and "9th Street Show"
TypeAbstract Expressionism
ThemeGroup Show
Organized byLeo Castelli, curator and financial backer. Franz Kline, promotional designer. Aaron Siskind, event photographer.
ParticipantsKey figures in abstract expressionism, America's first internationally influential art movement.

The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show (May 21-June 10, 1951).[1][2] Now considered historic, the artist-led exhibition marked the formal debut of Abstract Expressionism, and the first American art movement with international influence. The School of Paris, long the headquarters of the global art market, typically launched new movements, so there was both financial and cultural fall-out when all the excitement was suddenly emanating from New York. The postwar New York avant-garde, artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, would soon become "art stars," commanding large sums and international attention.[3] The Ninth Street Show marked their "stepping-out," and that of nearly 75 other artists, including Harry Jackson, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert De Niro Sr., John Ferren, Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Milton Resnick, Joop Sanders, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and many others who were then mostly unknown to an art establishment that ignored experimental art without a ready market.[3]

The artist-led show was intended to make names — and it did.[3] Word of the exhibition slipped out prior to the Monday night preview, but that only added to the interest.[3] Author Mary Gabriel writes, "Nothing sold, but no one cared. The exhibition had earned the artists attention on their own terms."[4] Their form of art — the New York School — was later called "the quintessential American and modern art movement."[5] At the time, however, "[i]t appeared as though a line had been crossed, a step into a larger art world whose future was bright with possibility."[6]

  1. ^ "9th St." Show Poster Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b c d Barcio, Philip (Aug 23, 2018). "How the 9th Street Art Exhibition Stepped Out of the New York Art Canons in 1951". Ideel Art.
  4. ^ Gabriel, Mary (September 1, 2017). Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art. New York: Little Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0316226189.
  5. ^ Florêncio, João (Sep 23, 2016). "Abstract Expressionism: how New York overtook Europe to become the epicentre of Western art". The Conversation.
  6. ^ Bruce Altshuler, Avant-Garde In Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994) ISBN 0-8109-3637-2