Lincoln Glenn

Lincoln Glenn Art gallery specializing in American art of the 20th century, with a focus on Abstract Expressionism

In the 1960s, the André Emmerich Gallery became best known as the primary venue for Color Field painting, representing i...
05/16/2026

In the 1960s, the André Emmerich Gallery became best known as the primary venue for Color Field painting, representing its major practitioners for the next several decades. “There was no master plan,” Emmerich explained. “I liked Color Field painting. Bill Rubin came to me when French & Company was breaking up and urged me to take them on… I went artist by artist, by my feeling for it.” Emmerich had known the young painter Helen Frankenthaler for several years and began showing her work in 1959. Through her, he met the influential art critic Clement Greenberg, the movement’s earliest champion. Greenberg had overseen French & Company’s modern art department from 1958 until it was dissolved in 1960, showing several Color Field artists that would subsequently join Emmerich’s stable during the 1960s: Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Friedel Dzubas, and Wolfgang Hollegha.

The ever-increasing scale of Color Field canvases led Emmerich to find a larger space. In the fall of 1964, he moved the gallery to the fifth floor of the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street, where it remained until its closing decades later. Emmerich’s steadfast commitment to abstract painting and sculpture throughout the 1960s and onward set his gallery apart from an art world increasingly focused on conceptual, politically engaged, and intermedia art. In his view, abstraction was a vital cultural force, serving as a vehicle for both aesthetic inquiry and a meaningful engagement with society. Emmerich saw Matisse and, later, the Abstract Expressionist painters as exemplary in this regard. Matisse, he explained, “painted through the two worst wars France has gone through, and through the Occupation…. He painted what he always painted—women, flowers, light, forms, what art and culture are about. He kept the torch burning.” In a similar vein, Emmerich observed that the Abstract Expressionist artists, though they “didn’t think they could save mankind or the body politic through art,” nevertheless “did believe that making art was a high cultural mission of immense value.”

Open until June 27 | A Tribute to André Emmerich

Born in Baltimore in 1921, Anne Truitt initially studied psychology before turning fully to art in the late 1940s. Altho...
05/15/2026

Born in Baltimore in 1921, Anne Truitt initially studied psychology before turning fully to art in the late 1940s. Although often associated with Minimalism because of the geometric clarity of her sculptures, her work differed profoundly from the industrial and impersonal tendencies of artists such as the work of Donald Judd or Carl Andre. Truitt’s sculptures were painstakingly handmade and hand-painted, carrying traces of touch, memory, and autobiography. Drawing inspiration from childhood recollections of the American landscapes of Maryland, Truitt distills architecture, light, and experience into a sculptural language rooted in quiet introspection rather than serial repetition or mechanized production.

Truitt’s relationship with Andre Emmerich proved pivotal to her emergence on the national stage. Emmerich recognized the originality of her work early on and gave her first solo exhibition at his space in New York in 1963. The exhibition introduced Truitt’s tall, elegantly proportioned painted wooden sculptures to a wider audience and established her as a significant new voice in contemporary sculpture. The show was especially important because it preceded the formal codification of Minimalism later in the decade, positioning Truitt as an artist working independently toward a radically simplified sculptural form. Through Emmerich’s support, her work entered important critical and institutional conversations surrounding abstraction, color, and the evolving language of American sculpture during the 1960s.

Image:
Anne Truitt
Arundel XLII, 1977
Signed, titled and dated "26 March '77" on the reverse
Acrylic and graphite on canvas
60 x 60 inches

Visit us at 17 East 67th Street for  and Madison Avenue’s galleries for our annual Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk th...
05/13/2026

Visit us at 17 East 67th Street for  and Madison Avenue’s galleries for our annual Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk this Saturday, May 16. This free event invites the public to visit participating galleries, view their exhibitions and attend expert talks led by artists and curators on Madison Avenue & side streets from East 57th to East 86th Streets.

We hope to see you there !

In 1950, Hollegha co-founded the avant-garde “Hundsgruppe” alongside artists such as Maria Lassnig, Arnulf Rainer, and E...
05/12/2026

In 1950, Hollegha co-founded the avant-garde “Hundsgruppe” alongside artists such as Maria Lassnig, Arnulf Rainer, and Ernst Fuchs. He later joined the Art Club in Vienna, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1952. A pivotal moment in his career came through his association with Otto Mauer, a key supporter of modern art, with whom he co-founded the “Gruppe St. Stephan” in 1956. Alongside artists such as Mikl and Markus Prachensky, Hollegha helped shape a new direction for Austrian abstraction in the postwar period.

His work gained international recognition in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the Guggenheim International Award for Painting in 1958 and the Carnegie Prize in 1961. From the 1960s onward, Hollegha developed his signature style: expansive, color-saturated compositions derived from impressions of the natural world. These paintings often balance gestural freedom with a strong sense of structure, creating immersive visual fields that evoke landscape without direct representation.

In addition to his artistic practice, Hollegha had a significant impact as an educator. From 1972 to 1997, he led a master class in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, influencing generations of artists. He has lived and worked primarily in Rechberg in Styria, Austria, as well as in northern Spain. Today, Hollegha is regarded as a major figure in Austrian postwar art, celebrated for his sustained exploration of color, scale, and abstraction.

Images:
Wolfgang Hollegha
Untitled, 1990
Signed lower right
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 43 3/8 inches

Wolfgang Hollegha in his studio in Vienna, 1954

John Levée was an American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career bridged the New York and Paris art worlds in the ...
05/08/2026

John Levée was an American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career bridged the New York and Paris art worlds in the postwar decades. His early life was interrupted by military service during World War II, during which he participated in the liberation of France in 1944. This experience led to a lasting connection with Europe, and in 1949 he returned to Paris, enrolling at the Académie Julian, where he met fellow American painter Sam Francis.

Levée’s early work was strongly influenced by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, particularly artists such as Jackson Po***ck, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell. His paintings from this period emphasized gestural brushwork, dynamic composition, and an expressive use of color. His later works often incorporated collage elements and layered surfaces, combining painterly immediacy with compositional refinement.

Over the course of his career, Levée exhibited widely in major institutions in both the United States and Europe. His work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957 and 1958, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in multiple exhibitions throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. He also exhibited at the Carnegie Institute, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Palm Springs Desert Museum, among others, and maintained long-standing relationships with galleries such as André Emmerich Gallery and Gimpel Fils in London. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Toulouse in 1983.

Levée’s paintings are represented in numerous important public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, among many others in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Throughout his long career, he remained committed to abstraction, developing a body of work that reflects both the energy of Abstract Expressionism and the evolving language of postwar painting.

Image:
John Levee
December VI, 1960
Signed and dated upper left; signed, titled and dated on the reverse
Oil on canvas
20 x 20 inches

In the 1960s, Friedel Dzubas had begun to separate and suspend fields of color across the canvas, allowing them to overl...
05/07/2026

In the 1960s, Friedel Dzubas had begun to separate and suspend fields of color across the canvas, allowing them to overlap without fully blending. These expansive chromatic forms appear to drift lightly across the surface, as though they have only just settled into place. The resulting compositions combined a sense of monumentality with remarkable atmospheric delicacy, distinguishing Dzubas from many of his contemporaries within Color Field painting. Works from this period are often characterized by forms that appear suspended, hovering weightlessly across the canvas and creating compositions that feel expansive and atmospheric rather than heavily structured. During the 1960s Dzubas frequently employed chromatic surfaces that allowed one color to breathe through another, producing a sense of luminosity and spatial ambiguity. The paintings retain a lyrical quality closely tied to the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, yet they also embrace the clarity and restraint associated with Color Field painting.

By the mid-1970s, Dzubas’s work had evolved toward a more structured and painterly mode of abstraction. The floating, diffuse forms of the earlier decade gave way to more sharply articulated shapes that engage decisively with one another. While color remained central to his practice, it became denser and more complex, often organized through dynamic contrasts and dramatic internal tensions. These later paintings possess a heightened physicality and structural complexity, reflecting Dzubas’s growing interest in scale, as well as the relationship between color and form. Overall,  Dzubas’s paintings of the 1970s convey a greater sense of momentum and visual weight, demonstrating the artist’s evolution within the language of abstraction.

Image:
Friedel Dzubas
Idelic Summer, circa 1975
Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse
Magna on canvas
31 x 72 inches
(top)

Friedel Dzubas
Floating Spring #2, 1968
Magna on canvas
20 x 55 inches
(bottom)

Joel Perlman approaches sculpture as an active process of experimentation, using industrial materials to investigate bal...
05/06/2026

Joel Perlman approaches sculpture as an active process of experimentation, using industrial materials to investigate balance, structure, mass, and spatial tension. Working predominantly in steel, he develops his sculptures directly through cutting and welding, allowing each work to evolve organically during fabrication. The evidence of making remains intentionally visible, emphasizing the handmade nature of the work and underscoring the relationship between construction and artistic expression. Perlman has described his early encounter with welding as transformative, captivated by the immediacy and force through which separate fragments of metal could be fused into a unified form. This direct engagement with material remains central to his practice.

His sculptures often draw upon the formal clarity and structural dynamism associated with Russian avant-garde, particularly through their use of geometry and industrial materials. Equally important are the negative spaces and open passages within the compositions, which function as active elements that shape the viewer’s experience of the work.

Born in New York in 1943, Perlman studied at Cornell University, earning a BFA in 1965, before completing an MA at the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. While at Cornell, he learned welding through community courses attended largely by tradespeople, an experience that informed both his technical understanding and artistic outlook. Since 1973, he has taught at the School of Visual Arts. Over the course of his career, Perlman has received numerous awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work has entered major museum and sculpture collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Storm King Art Center, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Utsukushi-ga-Hara Open-Air Museum.

Image:
Joel Perlman
Silver Square, 1983
With stamped initials and date
Bronze
18 x 14 x 4 inches

Lincoln Glenn Gallery is proud to support and sponsor the American Art Conference.As the United States approaches the 25...
05/05/2026

Lincoln Glenn Gallery is proud to support and sponsor the American Art Conference.

As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Initiatives in Art & Culture (IAC) marks the 30th year of its American Art Conference, convening artists, curators, collectors, and scholars to examine important questions in American art: how do we define horizon? Who defines it? What artificial boundaries are being challenged as part of that effort?

Boundless Horizons, IAC’s 2026 3-day American Art Conference, May 14-16, at Heritage Auctions, explores how artists have challenged imposed limits, and, in doing so, reshaped American cultural identity. The speakers include a wide range of leading voices in American art today, among them Anne Helmreich, Randall Griffey, Dan Shogren and Susan Meyer, Kathleen Foster, Joyce Scott, Wanda M. Corn, Suzanne Smeaton, Tony Abeyta, and Don Stinson. 

Occurring at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, this program of wide-ranging talks and panel discussions is designed to expand perspectives on American art, culture, and artists. It positions American art as an evolving and essential field shaped as much by resistance to constraint as by tradition. The conference explores how American art continues to move beyond familiar narratives and expand definitions of form, subject matter, and media.

EVENT DETAILS
What: Boundless Horizons
When: May 14 – May 16, 2026
Where: Heritage Auctions
445 Park Avenue (between East 56 street and East 57th street)
New York, New York

Jack Tworkov was a central figure in the development of Abstract Expressionism, as a founding member of the Eighth Stree...
05/03/2026

Jack Tworkov was a central figure in the development of Abstract Expressionism, as a founding member of the Eighth Street Club. Born in Poland and raised in New York, Tworkov emerged in the 1940s and 1950s alongside artists such as Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, helping to define a new language of gestural abstraction that emphasized process, spontaneity, and painterly intensity. Over the course of his career, however, his work evolved significantly: by the mid-1960s he began to move away from the improvisational energy of early Abstract Expressionism toward a more structured, geometric mode, reflecting a sustained intellectual engagement with order, systems, and the underlying logic of pictorial space.

The 1960s mark a pivotal turning point in the work of Jack Tworkov, signaling a decisive shift away from the gestural intensity that had aligned him with first-generation Abstract Expressionism. Up to the late 1950s, Tworkov’s paintings were characterized by vigorous, improvisational brushwork and a strong emphasis on the physical act of painting. Around 1960, however, he began to question the sustainability of this approach, feeling that the rhetoric of spontaneity had become exhausted or overly mannered within the movement.

Tworkov's later career was supported by institutions and exhibitions that intersected with André Emmerich’s program, including a significant retrospective exhibition organized with the André Emmerich Gallery in 1991, which surveyed paintings from 1930 to 1981. This association situates Tworkov within the gallery’s broader commitment to advancing postwar abstraction, even as his work maintained a distinct trajectory, bridging the gestural ethos of Abstract Expressionism with a more analytical, post-painterly sensibility that paralleled Emmerich’s vision.

Image:
Jack Tworkov
Figure CD, 1960
Titled upper left; signed and dated on the reverse
Oil on canvas
42 x 23 inches

Address

542 West 24th Street
New York, NY
10011

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 6pm

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+16467649065

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