As the fair celebrates America’s 250th birthday, we salute the Hamptons as a mecca for the pioneering development of Abstract Expressionism—considered by art historians the nation’s greatest contribution to the art world. While this gesture-driven ensibility originated in the 9th Street district in NYC in the late 1940s, many of those pioneering artists soon migrated to the spacious, sunny studios on the East End of Long Island, creating an all-inclusive center for the movement.

This display recognizes a selection of those pioneering East End  ‘mover-and-shaker’ AbEx artists, ca 1950-70, who helped shape and define this important art genre.

On display, for acquisition, are original works by Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Esteban Vicente, Peter Busa, Syd Solomon, Robert Dash, Hedde Sterne, Mary Abbott, Larry Rivers, Perle Fine, Mariam Shapiro, John Grillo, and Robert Motherwell. This “Trailblazers of Hamptons Abstraction” display runs concurrently with another similar show at  the Nassau County Musuem of Art (Roslyn, Long Island, until July 12), “250 Years of Art of Long Island” of which most of those 1950-70 pieces and this entire HFAF display are from the personal collection of Rick Friedman and Cindy Lou Wakefield.