{{Short description|American painter (1893–1968)}} {{Infobox artist | name = Janet Sobel | image = Photo of Janet Sobel.jpg | imagesize = | caption = | birth_name = Jennie Olechovsky | birth_date = {{birth date|1893|5|31|mf=y}} | birth_place = Katerynoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine) | death_date = {{death date and age|1968|11|11|1893|5|31|mf=y}} | death_place = Plainfield, New Jersey | education = | field = Drip painting, all-over painting | training = None | movement = Abstract Expressionism | works = ''Pro and Contra'' (1941), ''Through the Glass'' (1944), ''Milky Way'' (1945) | patrons = | awards = | spouse = Max Sobel }}
'''Janet Sobel''' (May 31, 1893 – November 11, 1968), born '''Jennie Olechovsky''' (occ. Lechovsky<ref>{{Cite web |last=Grovier |first=Kelly |date=March 8, 2022 |title=Janet Sobel: The woman written out of history |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-of-history?ocid=fbcul |website=BBC}}</ref>), was a Ukrainian-born American Abstract Expressionist painter who pioneered the drip painting technique; her work directly influenced Jackson Pollock.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Grovier |first=Kelly |date=March 8, 2022 |title=Janet Sobel: The woman written out of history |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-of-history |access-date=2022-03-10 |website=BBC |language=en}}</ref> She was credited as exhibiting the first instance of all-over painting seen by Clement Greenberg, a notable art critic. Her career started mid-life, at age forty-five<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/janet-sobel-forgotten-female-artist/|title=Janet Sobel: the Forgotten Female Artist Who Influenced Jackson Pollock|date=April 27, 2021}}</ref> in 1938.
==Early life== Janet Sobel was born as Jennie Olechovsky in 1893 in Katerynoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine). Her father, Baruch Olechovsky,<ref name=SobelWeb>{{Cite web|url=http://www.janetsobel.com/WilltheRealJanetSobelPleaseStandUp/22.html|title=Will the Real Janet Sobel Please Stand Up?|website=www.janetsobel.com|access-date=2018-04-12}}</ref> was killed in a Russian pogrom. In 1908, Sobel moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn with her mother, Fannie Kinchuk, a midwife,<ref name="NYTimes"/> and her siblings.<ref name=SobelWeb/> Two years later, she married Max Sobel,<ref name="Obit">{{cite news |title=Services Held for Mrs. Sobel |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/103367084/janet-sobel-1893-1968/ |work=The Courier-News |date=November 12, 1968 |location=Bridgewater, NJ |page=9 |accessdate=June 8, 2022 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}}</ref> a fellow emigrant from Ukraine, with whom she had five children.<ref name="NYTimes">{{cite news |last1=Blackstone |first1=Maya |title=Janet Sobel |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/obituaries/janet-sobel-overlooked.html |access-date=5 August 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=August 2, 2021}}</ref>
==Career== [[File:Invasion Day by Janet Sobel.png|thumb|''Invasion Day'' by Sobel on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]]Sobel was already a grandmother when she began painting in 1937.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Braverman |first=Laura |date=2022 |title=Janet Sobel - American, born Ukraine. 1894–1968 |url=https://www.moma.org/artists/5503 |archive-url=}}</ref> She produced both non-objective abstractions and figurative artwork.<ref name="Dewey" /> Upon recognizing Sobel's talent, her son Sol, an art student, helped her artistic development and shared her work with émigré surrealists Max Ernst and André Breton, as well as John Dewey and Sidney Janis.<ref name="Levin" />
Sobel presented her first solo show at Puma Gallery in New York in 1944.<ref>{{cite web |date=2008 |url=http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/janet_sobel/ |title=Janet Sobel (1894-1968) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110712213618/http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/janet_sobel/ |archive-date=12 July 2011 |access-date=2011-03-15 |website=Hollis Taggart Galleries}}</ref> Peggy Guggenheim included Sobel's work in the show ''The Women'' in her Art of This Century Gallery in 1945, alongside work by Louise Bourgeois and Kay Sage, among others. The following year, she invited her for a solo show at the same space;<ref>{{Cite web |last=White |first=Katie |date=2022-05-18 |title=Who Was Janet Sobel, the Ukrainian-Born Abstract Artist Who Created Drip Paintings Years Before Jackson Pollock? |url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/janet-sobel-ukrainian-abstract-artist-2111646 |access-date=2023-06-23 |website=Artnet News |language=en-US}}</ref> the brochure for the show was written by Sidney Janis.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Marter |first=Joan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ga31CwAAQBAJ&dq=Janet+sobel&pg=PA197 |title=Women of Abstract Expressionism |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-300-20842-9 |edition=Hardcover |pages=197}}</ref>
From 1943 through 1946, Janet Sobel became a powerful presence in the New York art world. She exhibited in the 27th Annual at the Brooklyn Museum in 1943 (she would also exhibit there in 1944 and 1945).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Janet Sobel - Artists - Outsider Art Fair |url=https://www.outsiderartfair.com/artists/janet-sobel |access-date=2023-06-23 |website=www.outsiderartfair.com |language=en}}</ref>
In 2016 her biography was included in the exhibition catalogue ''Women of Abstract Expressionism'' organized by the Denver Art Museum.<ref name="Marter">{{cite book |last1=Marter |first1=Joan M. |title=Women of abstract expressionism |date=2016 |publisher=Denver Art Museum Yale University Press |location=Denver New Haven |isbn=9780300208429 |page=197}}</ref> Her work was included in the 2024 exhibition Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).<ref name="BAMPFA">{{cite web |title=Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection |url=https://bampfa.org/making-their-mark |website=BAMPFA |access-date=16 April 2026 |language=en |date=21 March 2024}}</ref>
===Effect of inspiration=== Her belief in the ethics of self-realization in a democracy led to Sobel's encounter with philosopher John Dewey. Dewey championed Sobel by writing about her in a catalogue statement at the Puma Gallery in New York in 1944:
<blockquote>Her work is extraordinarily free from inventiveness and from self-consciousness and pretense. One can believe that to an unusual degree her forms and colors well up from a subconsciousness that is richly stored with sensitive impressions received directly from contact with nature, impressions which have been reorganized in figures in which color and form are happily wed.<ref name=Dewey>John Dewey, ''Janet Sobel'', Puma gallery, leaflet catalogue, New York, April 24 to May 14, 1944.</ref></blockquote>
Sobel listened to music while she painted for inspiration and stimulation. "There was a radio in each of the four rooms of her Brighton Beach apartment, and they played Janet's favorite songs. The music helped to put her in a trance where, armed with a brush, she could discover more and more secret rooms in her subconscious."<ref>Lozhkina, Alisa. "Journey to the Self: Janet Sobel." ''Janet Sobel: Wartime'', The Ukrainian Museum, New York, 2023.</ref> Sobel's works exemplify the tendency to fill up every empty space, sometimes interpreted as horror vacui. She often depicted her feelings through past experiences. Her depiction of soldiers with cannons and imperial armies, as well as traditional Jewish families, reflected the experiences of her childhood. Her figures often demonstrated the time of the Holocaust, where she relived the trauma of her youth. Overcoming those youthful traumas, Sobel found a safe realm for her imagination through art.<ref name=Levin>{{Cite book|title=Inside Out: Selected Works by Janet Sobel|last=Levin|first=Gail|publisher=Gary Snyder Fine Art|year=2003|location=New York|pages=5 and 6}}</ref>
===Effect of art critics=== Sobel's painting ''Milky Way'' (owned by the MoMa) was created in 1945, two years before Jackson Pollock began experimenting with drip painting. Clement Greenberg, an art authority during Sobel's time, writing on avant-garde painting, mentioned that Jackson Pollock had noticed Janet Sobel's painting in the 1940s.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Janet Sobel. Milky Way. 1945 {{!}} MoMA |url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80636 |access-date=2023-06-23 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Duggan |first=Bob |date=9 February 2010 |title=Mother of Invention |url=http://bigthink.com/ideas/18624 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120305100248/http://bigthink.com/ideas/18624 |archive-date=5 March 2012 |work=Big Think}}</ref> Pollock "'admitted that these pictures had made an impression on him'".<ref name=":1">Clement Greenberg, “'American-Type' Painting” (written in 1955, revised in 1958), in Clement Greenberg, ''Art and Culture'', Beacon Press, 1961, pp. 208–229, p. 218</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Zalman |first=Sandra |date=2015 |title=Janet Sobel: Primitive Modern and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism |journal=Woman's Art Journal |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=20–29 |issn=0270-7993 |jstor=26430653}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Pollock |first=Jackson |date=1978 |title=Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Drawings and Other Works |url=https://www.abebooks.com/9780300021097/Jackson-Pollock-Catalogue-Raisonne-Paintings-0300021097/plp |publisher=Yale University Press New Haven}}</ref>
In his essay ''"'American-Type' Painting"'', first published in 1955,<ref>[https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Art-Story_-Clement-Greenberg-vs-Harold-Rosenberg.pdf The Art Story] saylor.org</ref> Greenberg cited Sobel's works as the first instance of all-over painting he had seen.<ref name=":1" /> Although he didn't acknowledge her during the three years her professional works circulated in New York galleries, he eventually positioned "Sobel as a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism".<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Zalman |first=Sandra |date=2015 |title=Janet Sobel: Primitive Modern and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430653 |journal=Woman's Art Journal |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=20–29, p. 20 |issn=0270-7993}}</ref> Generally, he only framed Sobel's work relative to Abstract Expressionism or to Pollock, and especially in relation to Pollock's career. Greenberg consistently described Sobel's work as inferior to that of Pollock by characterizing it as "'primitive'" and that of a "'housewife'".<ref name=":2" /> Her paintings were characterized as belonging to "the realms of surrealism and primitivism."<ref name="Obit"/>
As Sandra Zalman writes, "Sobel was part folk artist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist, but critics found it easiest to call her a 'primitive'."<ref name=":2" /> This "category (that) enabled her acceptance by the art world, but restricted her artistic development".<ref name=":2" /> For example, Sobel is said to lack the "heroic scale" of Pollock.<ref>Anna Chave, “Pollock and Krasner: Script and Postscript,” originally published in ''Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics'' (Autumn 1993), and reprinted in Pepe Karmel, ed., ''Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews'', The Museum of Modern Art, 1999, 262-280, p. 273.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Zalman |first=Sandra |date=2015 |title=Janet Sobel: Primitive Modern and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430653 |journal=Woman's Art Journal |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=20–29, p. 29 n. 48 |issn=0270-7993}}</ref> Sobel was grouped as inferior due to being a housewife, while other painters, such as Mark Tobey, were also dismissed as inferior in some way.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Zalman |first=Sandra |date=2015 |title=Janet Sobel: Primitive Modern and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430653 |journal=Woman's Art Journal |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=20–29, p. 25 |issn=0270-7993}}</ref>
==Death== Sobel died at her home in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1968.<ref>{{cite news |title=Mrs. Janet Sobel, Artist from Plainfield |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/103432968/janet-sobel-1893-1968/ |work=The Courier-News |date=November 11, 1968 |location=Bridgewater, NJ |page=24 |accessdate=June 9, 2022 |via=Newspapers.com}} {{Open access}}</ref> In 2021, ''The New York Times'' published a belated obituary for her.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/obituaries/janet-sobel-overlooked.html|title=Overlooked No More: Janet Sobel, Whose Art Influenced Jackson Pollock|first=Maya|last=Blackstone|newspaper=The New York Times |date=July 30, 2021}}</ref>
==Exhibitions==
* 1944: ''Janet Sobel'', Puma Gallery, New York, solo show * 1946: ''Paintings by Janet Sobel'', Art of this Century Gallery, New York * 1962: ''Janet Sobel Paintings and Drawings'', Swain's Art Store, Plainfield, New Jersey * 2002: ''Janet Sobel: Selected Works from the Artist's Estate'', Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York * 2005, Janet Sobel, D.C. Moore, New York * 2010: Janet Sobel: Drip Paintings and Selected Works on Paper, Gary Snyder/Project Space, New York * 2021: ''Women in Abstraction''. Centre Pompidou.<ref name="Women in abstraction">{{cite book |title=Women in abstraction |date=2021 |publisher=Thames & Hudson Ltd.; Thames & Hudson Inc |location=London : New York, New York |isbn=978-0500094372 |pages=170}}</ref> * 2023: ''Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970'', Whitechapel Gallery London<ref name="Whitechapel Gallery">{{cite web |title=Action, Gesture, Paint |url=https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/action-gesture-paint-women-and-global-abstraction-1940-70/ |access-date=24 April 2023 |website=Whitechapel Gallery |language=en}}</ref> * 2023: Janet Sobel: Wartime, The Ukrainian Museum, NYC<ref>{{Cite web |title=Janet Sobel: Wartime |url=https://www.theukrainianmuseum.org/janet-sobel/ |access-date=2024-07-24 |website=www.theukrainianmuseum.org}}</ref> * 2024: ''Janet Sobel: All-Over'', The Menil Collection, Houston<ref>{{Cite web |title=Janet Sobel All Over |url=https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/370-janet-sobel-all-over |access-date=2024-02-23 |website=The Menil Collection |language=en}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
== Further reading == *{{Cite news |last=Grovier |first=Kelly |title=Janet Sobel: The woman written out of history |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-of-history |access-date=2022-03-10 |website=BBC |date=March 8, 2022 |language=en}}
==External links== *[http://www.haberarts.com/sobel.htm Grandmother of Drip Painting] *[http://www.artnet.com/artist/15804/janet-sobel.html Janet Sobel on artnet] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20110712213618/http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/janet_sobel/ Hollis Taggart Galleries] *[http://artknowledgenews.com/201010109683/2010-01-22-20-29-12-gary-snyder-project-space-shows-janet-sobel-who-influenced-jackson-pollack.html Gary Snyder/Project Space on Janet Sobel] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151124060800/http://artknowledgenews.com/201010109683/2010-01-22-20-29-12-gary-snyder-project-space-shows-janet-sobel-who-influenced-jackson-pollack.html |date=2015-11-24 }} *[http://www.janetsobel.com/WilltheRealJanetSobelPleaseStandUp/1.html Will the Real Janet Sobel Please Stand Up? (PDF by Libby Seaberg available for download] *[https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/arts/art-in-review-janet-sobel.html?pagewanted=1 ART IN REVIEW By Roberta Smith ''The New York Times'' — PDF available for download)] *[http://bigthink.com/ideas/18624 Mother of Invention (blog)] *[http://crystalbridges.org/blog/significant-careers-determined-artists-janet-sobel/ Significant Careers of Determined Artists: Janet Sobel; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art] *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQKniKtEW6o 2019 YouTube video about Janet Sobel] mentioning drip painting and all-over painting {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sobel, Janet}} Category:1893 births Category:1968 deaths Category:20th-century American painters Category:Abstract expressionist artists Category:Painters from New York (state) Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Category:Ukrainian emigrants to the United States Category:20th-century American women painters