Plan for The White City

Perle Fine studied in the 1930s at the Art Students League and with the noted painter and teacher Hans Hofmann at his schools in New York and in Provincetown. She felt strongly about the need for an underlying structure in her paintings ("I couldn't paint a picture that was a scribble. . .") and she resisted being welcomed into the "big tent" of Abstract Expressionism; her work represents a singular path of experiment and challenge. She often embedded such diverse materials as Reynolds Wrap and sand in the paint medium to build up and activate the surface.