Doris Lee & Her Contemporaries: Selections from the Permanent Collection

On view in the Post-1950s Gallery

The artists presented in this gallery are all contemporaries of Doris Lee. They share similar approaches to subject matter and reflect Lee’s own stylistic trajectory. Included are American Scene paintings of everyday life by southwestern Pennsylvania regional artists such as Dorothy Davids, Mary Martha Himler, and Esther Phillips, as well as Jane Haskell’s meditative diptych. Lee would have known Peggy Bacon in Woodstock and Isabel Bishop in New York, both of whom shared her joy in capturing intimate and humorous moments in time.

In contrast, Mary Abbott, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Michael West all chose an Abstract Expressionist path, the style which predominated in the 1950s. Lee embraced this development  with her own simplified and colorful abstractions referencing nature and the landscape.

All exhibitions are supported by the Hillman Exhibition Fund of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Free admission to exhibitions is generously supported by UPMC Health Plan.