Attributed to Janet Sobel, no coa, private collection, medium: oil, measurements: 23"HX31"W framed, good condition, needs new frame Biography: Janet Sobel, born Jennie Olechovsky, was a Ukrainian-born American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career started mid-life, at age forty-five in 1938. Sobel pioneered the drip painting technique that directly influenced Jackson Pollock. Her belief in the ethics of self-realization in a democracy led to Sobel's encounter with philosopher John Dewey. Dewey championed Sobel by writing about her in a catalogue statement at the Puma Gallery in New York in 1944. In this catalogue he states: Her work is extraordinarily free from inventiveness and from self-consciousness and pretense. One can believe that to an unusual degree her forms and colors well up from a subconsciousness that is richly stored with sensitive impressions received directly from contact with nature, impressions which have been reorganized in figures in which color and form are happily wed.Sobel used music for inspiration and stimulation of her feelings into her canvas. Sobel's works exemplify the tendency to fill up every empty space, sometimes interpreted as horror vacui. She often depicted her feelings through past experiences. Her depiction of soldiers with cannons and imperial armies, as well as traditional Jewish families, reflected the experiences of her childhood. Her figures often demonstrated the time of the Holocaust, where she relived the trauma of her youth. Overcoming those youthful traumas, Sobel found a safe realm for her imagination through art.Effect of art criticsAn art authority during Sobel's time, Clement Greenberg, wrote on avant-garde painting. Although he had not addressed her during the three years her professional works circulated in New York galleries, he eventually positioned "Sobel as a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism". Generally, he only framed Sobel's work relative to Abstract Expressionism or to Pollock, and especially in relation to Pollock's career. He consistently described Sobel's work as inferior to that of Pollock by characterizing it as "'primitive'" and that of a "'housewife'".In certain circles, the effect of his influence was a failure of recognition of her work during her career.Nonetheless, Peggy Guggenheim included Sobel's work in her The Art of This Century Gallery in 1946, and the influence of her work has been recognized by the artists who were touted highly in critiques by Greenberg.