Margaret Mellis stars in major new show at the Whitechapel
Black and White, c. 1968, oil on cotton duck
January 11, 2023
Margaret Mellis will feature in a major new group exhibition opening at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Action, Gesture, Paint brings together 150 paintings made by a generation of women artists from around the world who embraced abstraction between 1940 and 1970.
In so doing, star names such as Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner, and the Portuguese Helena Vieira da Silva, will be shown alongside the work of lesser-known artists including Wook-kyung Choi, of South Korea, and the Mozambican-Italian Bertina Lopes. British artists selected for the exhibition include Gillian Ayres, Sandra Blow, Elsa Vaudrey and Mellis.
Mellis returned to abstraction throughout her career, from the small post-war collages made with the encouragement of Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, to the large 'colour structures' of the late 1960s. Examples of the latter can be found in the permanent collections of the Government and Arts Council.
Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 runs from 9 February to 7 May 2023.
