1960 Cosmic Abstraction Painting

A textured “Cosmic Abstraction ” that we attributed to Yeffe Kimball.
While the work is unsigned the technique used with the blistering paint closely resembles her work.
A dynamic mid-century work with great movement and use of color and texture.

Yeffe Kimball came to New York City from Oklahoma to study at the Art Students League, where she studied 1935-39, with field trips to France and Italy. She also studied with Fernand Leger in NYC from 1940-1941.

In 1948, she married Harvey Slatin, also of New York, and they lived for many years at 11 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. Her husband had been given a sample of the “fused earth” from the first atomic explosion, and much of Kimball’s work after her marriage drew from this concept; her work of the 1950s is called her “fused-earth” period.

By the early 1960s, Kimball had entered into her space concept period, with paintings of burning planets, spewing atmospheric gases, and flashing comets.

From 1942 to 1965, Kimball exhibited in more than 100 shows at art galleries and museums. Her first major appearance was at the National Academy of Arts in 1942. In 1945, she was in the Armory’s Critic’s Choice show, and in the same year her work was shown at the Whitney. Her work was also shown at the Carnegie Institute that year, as well as at museums in Georgia and the Carolinas.

In 1946 she had her first solo show, at the Rehn Gallery in NYC; by 1987 she had had more than 55 solo exhibitions, which must be a record for any American artist.

Among her other exhibitions are the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento in 1947; the Dayton Art Institute in 1958; the Denver Art Museum in 1947; Galeries Giroux in Brussels, Belgium, in 1948; Delgado Museum of Art in New Orleans in 1947; JFK Intl Airport in 1964; Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe in 1948 and in 1957; Nova Gallery in Boston, 1961 and 1962; Portland Art Museum in Oregon in 1949; Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1950; Tirca Kavlis Gallery in Provincetown annually from 1959 to 1965; University of New Mexico in 1948 and 1957; University of Virginia Museum of Fine Art in 1963; and four major exhibitions at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, which gave her a restrospective that toured the nation in 1966-1967.

Kimball’s work is included in the collections of the following museums: Baltimore Museum of Art; Boston Museum of Fine Art; Cincinnati Art Museum; Dayton Art Institute; Chrysler Art Museum; Mattatuck Museum; Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences; Philbrook Museum, Tulsa; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon (this piece is called “Fawn and Spirits,” and combines modernist and Native American motifs); Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Washington & Lee University, Virginia.