Janet Sobel (1893–1968) was a Ukrainian-born American painter whose pioneering use of poured and dripped paint positioned her as a crucial but long-overlooked figure in the history of Abstract Expressionism.

 

Born in Ukraine, Sobel emigrated to the United States in 1908, settling in Brooklyn, New York. She began painting relatively late, in her forties, while raising five children, yet quickly developed a bold, experimental style that drew the attention of critics and artists alike.

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In the early 1940s, Sobel created all-over compositions by pouring, dripping, and blowing paint across the canvas—techniques that predated and influenced Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. Her work, exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in 1945, caught the eye of Clement Greenberg, who acknowledged her innovations.

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Despite early recognition, Sobel’s career was cut short by health issues and the art world’s gendered biases, which led to her marginalization in canonical accounts of Abstract Expressionism. Today, she is celebrated as one of the movement’s true originators, her work representing a vital rethinking of abstraction, gesture, and modernism itself.