Mary Abbott (born July 27, 1921) is an American artist known as a member of the New York School of abstract expressionists in the late 1940s and 50s. Her abstract and figurative work were also influenced by her time spent in St. Croix and Haiti, where she lived off and on throughout the 1950s. Abbott was born in New York City. Her family lineage traces back to John Adams, the second president of the United States. Her mother, Elizabeth Grinnell, was a poet and syndicated columnist with Hearst newspapers. After World War II, Abbott joined the "Downtown Group", which represented a group of artists who lived in lower Manhattan. In 1946, she set up a studio on Tenth Street in Manhattan(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Abbott) "Mary Abbott’s strong personal and professional relationship with de Kooning influenced his output to an astonishing degree. Abbott had experimented with abstract landscapes from her Southampton home for nearly five years by the time de Kooning began his own landscape series. The creative exchange between the two artists continued through the following decade. As Abbott and de Kooning’s lives were intertwined, so too were their works which seem to share subject, technique, and even color palette. This fundamental exchange of ideas has gone almost entirely unrecognized and provides new insight..... When it comes to Abstract Expressionism, the same auspicious names dominate: Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Motherwell, Gorky. These artists have dominated art historical discussion, textbooks, museum exhibitions, and newspaper headlines since the late 1940s. Imagine a largely overlooked protagonist in this narrative, a crucial figure in the New York Post-war art scene whose story is only now surfacing. This new story is emerging and with it the understanding of the profound influence Mary Abbott had on the Abstract Expressionist movement and especially on her lover, Willem de Kooning." http://bigthink.com/articles/mary-abbott-a-wake-up-call undefined

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