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CHARLOTTE PARK

Charlotte Park's contribution to the emergence of abstract expressionism in the 1950s was significant, but only recently has it received full recognition. Notwithstanding her acclaim as a first-generation member of the abstract expressionist movement, in the 1960s Park withdrew from the art world. She emerged again in 1973 with a solo exhibition at Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY. For the next twenty years her work was included in numerous group exhibitions on Long Island and in New York City, as well as Seventeen Abstract Artists of East Hampton: The Pollock Years, 1946-1956, at the American Cultural Center of the United States Embassy in Paris in 1979. The exhibition traveled to Zabriskie Gallery, New York, in 1980; the William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, CT; and the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, in 1981
As her practice developed, Parks noted a distinct change in her palette, which she ascribed to living in Springs surrounded by nature. Although she began as a proponent of Cubism, by the 1950s she had adapted a more lyrical idiom, suggesting organic contours of natural forms. Throughout this period she exhibited steadily at the prominent Stable and Tanager galleries in New York, and was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition of 1953. 
 
In 1979, Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton held a solo exhibition of Park's paintings from the 1970s, which were also shown in 1980 at the Ingber Gallery in Manhattan. The following year the Louise Himelfarb Gallery in Water Mill, NY presented a two-person show of recent work by both Park and Brooks. In 2003 the Parrish Art Museum hosted Three East End Artists, featuring Park alongside Dan Christensen and Allan Wexler as three influential artists who have lived and worked on eastern Long Island. The renewed interest in her work in the 21st century has led to solo exhibitions at the Spanierman Gallery in East Hampton, Spanierman Modern in New York City, Berry Campbell Gallery , NY, and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton.
 
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