Anna Walinska (1906-1997) was an American Modern artist whose life and career were both tied to Europe and the School of Paris in the 1920’s - 30’s and America and the development of the New York school of abstract expressionism of the early 1950’s. 

Her parents were Russian immigrants, part of the Jewish intelligentsia whose political and social views forced them to immigrate first to London where Anna was born and later to NY. 

1918, Anna Walinska arrives in NY and enrolls at the Art Students League she is 12 years old.
1922, shy of turning 18 she moves to Paris studies with Andre Lhote and begins her career as an artist exhibiting at the Salon des Independents.
1935, Walinska returns to NY and works exhibiting for the Federal Art Project. participating in various group shows across the country. Using her connections she opens for a brief time a commercial art gallery giving Arshile Gorky his first NY solo show. 
By the early 50’s change appears in her compositions bringing abstraction further into the figure but never completely abandoning one for the other. Her color palette changes blending into monochromatic overtones. 

1954 to 1955, she travels by plane around the world staying 4 months in Burma where she continued to paint. 
Back in NY Walinska begins to experience full grown maturity as an abstract American artist that will follow her through the end. Her lines moving in and out of abstraction, the composition is no longer an illusion of a reality but the reality itself held inside the 2 dimensional space of the canvas. 
Very much like this new acquisition from 1957 titled Flight into Egypt, the artist brings back to life centuries of traditions depicting the traveling family, symbol of immigration that continues to be true today. Abstraction and Figuration like the two opposite ends of the bridge connecting a 2000 year old story into the present day light.