Image: Lincoln Glenn, New York
Lincoln Glenn is highlighting Mercedes Matter’s 'Untitled (Reclining Nude)' in its current exhibition 'Making Space: American Women Artists and the Century of Change', on view at the gallery’s Chelsea space in New York through August 22, 2026. The work, dated circa 1954-56, is an oil on canvas measuring 30 by 36 inches. The gallery’s online presentation pairs the painting with commentary on Matter’s stitched marks, openness of form and vivid palette, while placing it among a broader selection of women artists represented in the exhibition.
The show is being presented by Lincoln Glenn at 542 West 24th Street in Chelsea, one of the gallery’s two Manhattan locations. Lincoln Glenn, founded in 2022, says its program focuses on American art from the 19th century through the late 20th century, with particular attention to Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. The gallery has also framed its mission around recovering artists active between the 1950s and 1970s whose work has not always remained visible in standard art histories.
Matter’s painting is part of that effort to recontextualize mid-century American art through the work of women artists. On Lincoln Glenn’s artist page, the gallery notes that Matter, born in 1913 and active until 2001, began painting as a child and studied with Hans Hofmann at the Art Students League in New York. The gallery also records her role in the Works Progress Administration, her presence among the early female members of The Club, and her later work as an educator and founder of the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture.
'Untitled (Reclining Nude)' is described by the gallery as a painting in which matter, color and form remain in productive tension. In the exhibition’s online work entry, Lincoln Glenn writes that the painting embodies “a system of open deductions,” and notes that in the 1950s Matter organized a weekly figure-drawing session in her studio with a group that included Lois Dodd, Philip Pearlstein, Philip Guston, Jack Tworkov and, occasionally, Alex Katz. The work is also positioned within the exhibition’s mix of abstraction, figuration and landscape, with related artists on view including Louise Nevelson, Jane Freilicher, Helen Lundeberg and Lynda Benglis.
The gallery’s blog post devoted to the painting, written by Bella Clemente, describes an initial difficulty in locating the reclining figure and then a gradual recognition of it at a distance. That text links the experience of looking to Matter’s broader practice, emphasizing her hesitancy, self-critical standards and the slow reveal of form through color and brushwork. It also notes that Matter was associated with figures including Alexander Calder, Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, Alberto Giacometti, Franz Kline and Elaine and Willem de Kooning.
Lincoln Glenn’s artist biography further situates Matter as a painter who worked on still lifes that gradually evolved into abstraction and as a teacher whose 1963 ARTnews essay, 'What’s Wrong with U.S. Art Schools?', helped lead to the founding of the New York Studio School in 1964. In that account, the school’s founding manifesto was signed by Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Mark Rothko and others. 'Making Space: American Women Artists and the Century of Change' remains on view in Chelsea through August 22, 2026.
