Untitled

Perle Fine, a painter, printmaker, and teacher, left her native Boston for New York, where, in the late 1930s, she studied with the highly influential teacher Hans Hofmann. In New York she became one of the few women artists associated with the abstract expressionists. In 1954 she moved to the Springs section of East Hampton, not far from her friends Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, where, according to the artist, she began to work with "large bands of color, in many cases black … some vertical, some horizontal." Having for some time introduced collage elements in her painting, in the late 1950s Fine embarked on a group of "foldover" collages in which she cut, creased, and spliced separate pieces of painted paper to create vibrant, multi-layered compositions. In this small but dynamic example, Fine’s process of using variously textured papers for a tight composition is also evident.