Women's History Month: Gertrude Greene

Among the many women artists who deserve recognition in the history of art, Gertrude Greene is certainly toward the top of my list. She was a standup, persistent modernist during the difficult economic period of the Great Depression (1929–1940), when American artistic tastes turned to Regionalism and Social Realism. 

Gertrude Greene (1904–1956, United States), Construction, 1935. Painted wood, composition board, and metal, 16 ⅛" x 24" (41 x 61 cm). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (MOMA-P2093)

In the early 1930s, Greene was the first American artist to make painted wood relief constructions. Works such as Composition prompted people to question whether the work was a painting or a sculpture. It was an obvious throw-down to the period’s domination by Social Realism and American Scene Painting. Greene not only questions the boundaries between media, but she cleverly places the shapes in a way that teases at the concept of space, particularly with the wood projecting from the support. By causing people to think analytically about her work, Greene brought about of an acceptance of sorts for total abstraction as a valid strain of modern American art.

Abstraction was virtually nonexistent in American painting from the time of the Great Depression until after World War II (1939–1945). Americans turned introspective during the Depression, and they desired uplifting, realistic depictions of American life in art. Abstract artists were excluded from museum shows and galleries. Critics panned abstraction as “un-American.” 

A small group of pioneer abstractionists—a great number of whom were women—formed the American Abstract Artists group in 1936 to promote abstraction in American art. These dedicated abstractionists provided an important link between early 1900s European movements and post-World War II abstraction in America. Greene was one of the founding members of the group.

A painter, sculptor, and social activist, Greene pioneered support for artistic freedom and opportunity. By age twenty-seven, Greene was recognized as one of New York’s few radical avant-garde artists deeply dedicated to nonobjective abstract art. In 1926, she married painter Balcomb Greene and in the following years they lived between Vienna, New York, and Paris. Greene's exposure to the European avant-garde during the early 1930s had a lasting impact on her when they returned to New York City in 1933. Her work was a synthesis of Cubism and Constructivism.

A supporter of liberal political causes, Greene helped establish the Unemployed Artists Group (renamed the Artists Union). This group lobbied for federal support for unemployed painters, sculptors, and printmakers during the Depression. Their public protests were crucial in the establishment of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). 

Greene was also an active member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, an artists union supporting artists whose work is more experimental and nonobjective in nature. The most active member of the group, Greene coordinating the first exhibitions. In 1937, Greene’s work was also included in the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Non-Objective Art (now the Solomon Guggenheim Museum).

Gertrude Greene, White Anxiety, 1943. Painted wood relief construction on composition board, 41 ¾" x 32 ⅝" x 2 ¾" (106 x 83 x 7 cm). Image courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (MOMA-P2092)

In Greene’s work after about 1940, a simple geometric approach akin to Neo-Plasticism and Constructivism predominated. As studies for these works, she began making paper collages that explored the merging of biomorphic and geometric form in which she experimented with layering as a spatial device. In the years following White Anxiety, Greene began to add gestural areas of built-up paint in her constructions. By the late 1940s, she had laid aside her constructions in favor of painting. Her paintings of the late 1940s were also characterized by pure geometric abstraction.

Correlations to Davis programs: Experience Art: 6.2; The Visual Experience 4E: 4.3; Experience Painting: p. 239