For a brief period in the 1950s and ’60s, an unexpected community of artists lived and worked on Coenties Slip, one of Manhattan’s oldest streets, at the island’s southeastern tip. The neighborhood was transitioning from a maritime to a financial center, with older buildings torn down to make way for glass skyscrapers. Drawn by cheap rents, open floor plans, views of the East River, and a sense of collective solitude, artists including Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, Jack Youngerman, and his wife, the actress Delphine Seyrig, settled in former sailmaking and industrial lofts.
Their diverse practices encompass abstraction and figuration, painting and drawing, textile and assemblage—and incorporate both the materials and the spirit of their unique environment. These artists never formed a movement. Yet they all had significant breakthroughs at Coenties Slip that changed the landscape of modern art, and they supported each other’s need to be a part of—but also apart from—the cultural scene of midcentury New York.
Organized by Samantha Friedman, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Prudence Peiffer, Director of Content, with Rachel Remick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.
