HOUSTON, TX.- Chryssa (1993- 2013), Robert Indiana (b. 1928), Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), Agnes Martin (1912- 2004), Lenore Tawney (1907-2007), and Jack Youngerman (b. 1926) were among a group of artists, writers, filmmakers, and poets who lived, worked, or spent time on the Coenties Slip. The small, funnel-shaped street led to the East River in the old seaport on the lower tip of Manhattan, and it offered views of the Brooklyn Bridge, cheap rents, and distance from the bustle of the city center. The artist’s studios were the defunct eighteenth-century sail-making lofts and industrial spaces facing the water. Known as “the Slip,” the street’s remove and its proximity to nature proved formative for its inhabitants, as did their influence on each other. The paintings, sculptures, and drawings they produced constitute an important but overlooked facet of abstraction in postwar American art.

Said Curator Michelle White, “The artists of Coenties Slip were interested in using the natural world as a touchstone for formal exploration. This community of colleagues, friends, and lovers exchanged ideas and influences. Notable are formal similarities between Lenore Tawney’s woven threads and Martin’s diaphanous compositions of taut marks of graphite and paint.”

While the works in the exhibition are stylistically and materially distinct, the selection is united by the artists’ desire to discover new forms of abstraction. Each artist began her or his career during the height of Abstract Expressionism, a movement that stemmed from a belief that a work’s impact was achieved through a correlation to the artist's psyche rather than through a representation of the world. In contrast, the artists of the Slip approached abstraction with a quieter palette, a willingness to let the world around them seep into their respective compositions, and an interest in the emotional weight of refined lines and nuanced gestures. Additionally, their formally reductive work from this time anticipates the tenets of Minimalism in the years to come.

Ellsworth Kelly Foyer Installation, on view through February 2018

As a complement to Between Land and Sea and The Beginning of Everything: Drawings from the Janie C. Lee, Louisa Stude Sarofim, and David Whitney Collections, concurrent exhibitions that highlight early work by Ellsworth Kelly, White has organized an installation in the main building’s foyer of seven of Kelly’s rarely exhibited early paintings. Produced while he lived in Coenties Slip, these temporary loans from the artist’s estate showcase his pioneering approach to abstraction in the mid-to-late 1950s.

Said Menil Director Rebecca Rabinow, “As we begin our 30th anniversary celebrations, we are delighted to showcase these vibrant early canvases by Ellsworth Kelly. Not only do they link two current exhibitions, but also they underscore the Menil’s longstanding commitment to the artist and his work.”