Provenance:

Mr. and Mrs. Dennis L. Helliwell.

Brooklyn Museum, New York, gift from the above, 1988.

Lot Note:

Dorothy Gillespie was an American artist and educator whose seven-decade career bridged Abstract Expressionism, feminist art, and the expansion of art into public spaces. Born in Roanoke, Virginia, she studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art before continuing her training at the Art Students League and Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York.  

Gillespie became closely involved with the women’s art movement during the 1970s through the Women’s Interart Center, the Women’s Caucus for Art, and her teaching and lecture programs at the New School for Social Research. Her sustained contributions were later recognized with the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.  

Although Gillespie worked across painting, printmaking, collage, jewelry, and installation, she is best known for transforming lightweight aluminum into exuberant constructions of curling, radiating, and undulating ribbons. These works brought the gestural energy and saturated color of abstract painting into three dimensions, presenting a deliberately joyful alternative to the austere geometry and industrial weight associated with much contemporary metal sculpture. 

Overall: 111 × 45 × 35 in.

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