Mary Abbott (July 27, 1921 – August 23, 2019) is an American artist known as a member of the New York School of abstract expressionists in the late 1940s and 1950s. Her abstract and figurative work were also influenced by her time spent in St. Croix and Haiti, where she lived off and on throughout the 1950s.
Abbott was one of three female members of the Artist’s Club in New York, alongside Perle Fine and Elaine de Kooning. Abbott declared that her life’s work was “using the medium, paint, color and line [to define] the poetry of living space.” She studied painting with Eugene Weiss and George Grosz, who remembered her “serious demeanor.” Her work is characterized by sweeping and energetic brushwork, as well as a use of vibrant color derived from her mood or her surroundings. Abbott’s influences ranged from her peers like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, to Old Masters like Cimabue and Tintoretto.