Eleanor Nell Sinton, Nell Sinton Abstract Expressionist Landscape San Francisco California Modernist, c.1950

Description

Eleanor Nell Sinton
Roots and Stems 1950,
Oil on canvas,
Signed lower right N. Sinton,
Provenance: Braunstein Quay Gallery (bears … more Eleanor Nell Sinton
Roots and Stems 1950,
Oil on canvas,
Signed lower right N. Sinton,
Provenance: Braunstein Quay Gallery (bears label verso)
Framed: 24.5 X 20.5 sight 21 X 17 inches.

Nell (Eleanor) Sinton (1910-1997) was a painter, art collector and educator in San Francisco, California
Nell Sinton began painting in the 1920s. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (then called the California School of Fine Arts). Nell Sinton, one of the early California woman abstract expressionist painters.
A member of a family that moved to San Francisco in 1851, Nell Sinton began painting in the 1920s. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (then called the California School of Fine Arts) a decade before abstract expressionism emerged there, and, later, with Lucien Labaudt and Maurice Sterne, (1937-1938). She also worked as an apprentice to Sterne on the Federal Art Project (WPA) murals in San Francisco (1938-40) and was a member of the San Francisco Art Commission (1959-63). In 1959, Sinton was acknowledged as one of the Ten Most Distinguished Bay Area Women. A notable Bay Area Expressionist painter, she was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966-1972. Nell Sinton is well-listed in all relevant art reference works including Who Was Who in American Art and Artists in California (1786-1940). Her style evolved from figurative family scenes and cityscapes to abstract oils and watercolors, collages, assemblage and sculpture constructions. Sinton has often incorporated collage of some type with acrylic painting. Sinton was acknowledged as one of the Ten Most Distinguished Bay Area Women and was an active member of the Bay Area art community and also served on the San Francisco City and County Art Commission, 1959-1963 and the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966-1972.
She was in a show at Foster-Gwin art & antiques of works by woman artists who helped build the Abstract Expressionist movement in San Francisco Bay area. Artists included Jay DeFeo, Emiko Nakano and Nell Sinton.
The Smithsonian collection houses "Nell Sinton, An Adventurous Spirit: The Life of A California Artist," (oral history, University of California, Berkeley, 1993); Motion picture films include footage by Coni Beeson of Sinton at work with Delia Moon, and "Scroll: The Social Development of an American Female" (1976). A small portion of the material including letters from Jay DeFeo and Wally Hedrick (DeFeo's former husband) to Eleanor (Nell) and Stanley Sinton.
She has multiple works in the collection of SFMOMA. Sinton's work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at museums including the San Francisco Museum of Art and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Chicago Art Institute, Los Angeles County Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Oakland Art Museum. In 1981, Mills College held a 30-year retrospective exhibition of Sinton's work dividing her still-active career into several periods. The earliest works, from the 1940s, were naïve and charming interiors and landscapes. From the 1960s came the Abstract Expressionist paintings, voluptuous, “loosely formal” compositions exploding in riots of color and exposing, said Art Week, Sinton-the-poet at her best. Next came her figurative phase, somewhat in the manner of David Park and Richard Diebenkorn. Then there were small mixed-media constructions and, in the late 1970s, a Garden Party series thick with social satire. She showed at the Braunstein-Quay Gallery in San Francisco (they held her estate as well as John Altoon and Peter Voulkos). Besides painting, Sinton served for several years on the San Francisco Art Commission. She also taught workshops at University of California at Berkeley and Irvine, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and elsewhere. The SF Art Institute played a major role in developing San Francisco’s international reputation as a tolerant and innovative environment for art, music, and political expression. The school was particularly influential in nurturing an open-minded atmosphere and as a result many of these rebellious and creative artists mixed with the poets, writers, “The Beats”, and jazz musicians, to help bring new ideas of freedom and creativity to the San Francisco Scene. The faculty, with locals Hassel Smith, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Park, was quickly joined by artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Ansel Adams. She is included in the San Francisco Art Institute library artists’ book collection which includes both unique and classic titles from the 1950s through the present. The collection is particularly strong in conceptual and humorous titles of the 1960s and 1970s by artists such as Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Alan Kaprow, Michael Snow, and Chris Burden, William T. Wiley, Larry Sultan, Nell Sinton, Yoko Ono, Lorna Simpson and Kiki Smith.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1949; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1950; Bolles Gallery, New York and San Francisco, 1962; Quay Gallery, San Francisco, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1974; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1970; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1976; Oakland Museum, 1990.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Fifth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, California Palace of The Legion of Honor, 1952; Winter Invitational, California Palace of The Legion of Honor, San Francisco in addition to group shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art, including "Corridor: Fred Martin, Roy De Forest, Tony Delap, Nell Sinton," at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the Los Angeles County Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Oakland Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Painting and Sculpture in California: The Modern Era; Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980; Susan Landauer, The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism; The Art of California, Selected Works from the Collection of The Oakland Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Painting and Sculpture Collection. less