The 9th Street Art Exhibition,[1] otherwise known as the 9th St. Show, Ninth Street Show May 21-June 10 1951 was a historical, ground-breaking exhibition curated by Leo Castelli.[2] It represented the New Art in the 20th Century.[3] It was a gathering of a number of notable artists, and it was the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School. The opening of the show was a great success. According to Altshuler, "It appeared as though a line had been crossed, a step into a larger art world whose future was bright with possibility."
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Action painters[4]: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Hans Hofmann
Color field painters: Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Robert Motherwell.
Artists who served in World War II did not have the attention of the Art critics of the post-World War II era.
The studios were located in lower Manhattan in the area bounded by 8th and 12th street between First and Sixth Avenues during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The artists who occupied these studios were called the Downtown Group.[5] In 1949 the Downtown Group founded the Artists' Club located at 39 East 8th streets. The members with few exceptions were mostly war veterans, forty years old, professional artists.[6] The weekly discussions in the Club led to the idea of organizing an exhibition. A linoleum cut poster was created by Franz Kline to promote the show.[1][7] The show was located at 60 East 9th Street in the first floor and the basement of a building which was about to be demolished.
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"The artists celebrated not only the appearance of the dealers, collectors and museum people on the 9th Street, and the consequent exposure of their work but they celebrated the creation and the strength of a living community of significant dimensions.[3] [8] There are documents available from the "Ninth Street" show: Series of photographs made by Aaron Siskind, who himself was a member of the New York School.[9] [10] Yet in spite of the public interest exhibited toward the "Ninth Street" Show, there were few galleries that were willing to accept the works of the New York School artists who were unknown to the new Art criticism. A converted horse stable named The Stable Gallery, located at 924 7th Avenue and 58th Street in New York City continued to host the New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals 1953-1957.[11] The poster of the second New York Painting and Sculpture Annual at The Stable Gallery in 1953, included an introduction by Clement Greenberg: [12]
