She Was a Student of Hans Hofmann and a Friend of Arshile Gorky. But This Artist’s Work Was Obscured—Until Now

At this year’s Armory Show, New York’s Hollis Taggart gallery is
making a compelling case for artist Michael West (1908–1991),
showing her works alongside those by four of her celebrated peers:
Arshile Gorky, Hans Hoffman, Richard Pousette-Dart, and
Franz Kline.

“This is about her and her circle,” Hollis Taggart told Artnet
News. “We wanted to show her in the context of those artists
so that people can have a broader sense of her work and her
influences.”

The artist, born Corinne Michelle West, might have been
forgotten entirely save for a chance encounter in a hospital
thrift shop in Westchester County. It was there, in 1989, that
Stuart and Roberta Friedman encountered one of her works.

The couple bought it anyway, unwittingly setting themselves on
the path of becoming the custodians of West’s legacy. It took the
Friedmans a couple of years to figure out who West was. By the time
they found her phone number in the Yellow Pages, she had already
died, with neither a will nor heirs. Her estate, the Friedmans soon
learned, was being auctioned by the city.

The couple were not major art collectors, but they took the
plunge, purchasing some 110 paintings on canvas, 500 works on
paper, and various photographs, letters, exhibition announcements,
and other ephemera.

“I think they spent something like a few thousand dollars,”
Taggart said. The couple stored the archive for over 25 years.
Taggart acquired the estate in 2019.

At the Armory, works that sold for just $2,500 to $10,000 ten
years ago are now selling for $50,000 to $100,000. Works on paper
are priced from $6,500 to $ 28,000, and paintings are going
for between $40,000 and $125,000.

A native of Ohio, West moved to New York in the 1930s, where she
enrolled at the Art Students League and studied under Hans Hofmann,
the legendary teacher. Changing her name to Michael as a way to
gain traction in the male-dominated art world was the idea of
Arshile Gorky, whom she counted as a friend. Yet despite
finding some success, West died in obscurity.

“We’re bringing her back into the light and resurrecting her
legacy,” Taggart said. Still, the dealer says, not all her work is
being released all at once.

“We are holding back some of the most rare works, especially
from the ’50s—there are very few and we’d like to have those placed
in museums,” he said, noting institutional interest from the Getty
Museum in Los Angeles and the Phillips Collection in Washington,
DC. “She’s not in that many museums—but she’s going to be.”

See more works by the artist below.

The post She Was a Student of Hans Hofmann and a Friend of
Arshile Gorky. But This Artist’s Work Was Obscured—Until Now
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