Patricia Failing reviews Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum, on view through September 25, 2016.

Failing writes: For [curator Gwen] Chanzit, expressionistic gesture painting represents the ‘heart’ of Abstract Expressionism… With very few exceptions, the confident, exuberant, high-keyed painterly abstractions in the Denver exhibition not only conform to the ideals and visual pleasures of this widely practiced genre… Since none of these artists came to be regarded as canonical Abstract Expressionists, their absence demands art history’s attention. Sexism obviously played a role, but so did a growing consensus among New York artists and critics that gesture painting had become an academic dead end by the end of the 1950s.”