Gertrude Greene: Purity

Gertrude Greene - Construction - 1935 - Painted wood, board, and metal - 16 x 24" (40.6 x 61 cm) - MoMA, New York (click photo for larger image)American artist Gertrude Glass Greene (1904-1956)  looked to the purity of Mondrian and Russian Constructivists Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo, and Vladimir Tatlin for her artistic foundations, avoiding overt commentary in her art. She became fascinated with the Constructivists’ ideas about unifying art and politics—their belief that when "purified," art would show the way for reordering society along higher planes. 

Even more than the theory, however, Greene was impressed with the work of such artists as Naum Gabo and began doing Constructivist drawings. 

Greene was also an activist. She helped establish the Unemployed Artists' Group, which was formed to lobby for federal support for unemployed painters, sculptors, and printmakers. 

“In 1937, when the American Abstract Artists was formed, Greene was its first paid employee. She tended the desk at the Squibb Gallery exhibition in 1937, passing out questionnaires and answering the queries and jibes about the art that was featured in the first annual show. Her own work was also shown that year in the opening exhibition of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.”