Author Description

"Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism is published in concurrence with the first museum retrospective exhibition in over 20 years of paintings by American artist Sally Michel (1902 - 2003) at the Mennello Museum of American Art. It is her first retrospective in Florida, a location where she sought both colorful inspiration and secluded respite in the state's natural beauty. The themes of Michel's oeuvre between the 1930s - 1990s, ranged from studied nudes to intimate, figurative depictions of her closest relationships to rare, captivating landscapes of her travels in the United States and abroad. Two essays from Katherine Page, Curator Art and Education, and Eleanor Heartney, New York Based Art Writer, consider how Michel's work unfolds across seven decades, imparting a lyrical expression of the everyday, which shares Michel's respect for humans, animals, and deep admiration for nature and its corresponding ever-changing light. Page explores Michel's abstract language and the influence of Tonalism in relationship to figuration while a new essay by Eleanor Heartney provides a critical feminist lens to understand Michel's contributions to the art world that helps secure her place in art history. A force in abstraction, figuration, Tonalism, and color, Sally Michel's extraordinary production is a rich, varied, and compelling story that commands a more inclusive consideration that did not manifest in her lifetime"--