Like Walker, the American artist Nell Blaine (1922–1996) was also concerned with the interplay of abstraction and representation, although she eschewed pure abstraction for most of her painting life, preferring instead landscape, still life, and portraiture —the work upon which her reputation rests. Encountering Blaine’s abstractions from the Forties caused a jolt of delighted surprise. Completed before she turned thirty, Blaine’s abstract phase began while she was studying with Hans Hoffman and continued through her inclusion in Peggy Guggenheim’s important “The Women” show at Art of this Century (when Blaine was only twenty-one) and her first solo exhibition at the Jane Street Gallery, ending around the time the Jane Street Group dispersed at the end of the decade.

Despite her obvious indebtedness to Léger and Mondrian, Blaine’s abstract work—hard-edged, favoring pure colors, black ou ...

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