Artist/Realtor - Sounds complicated but it's a perfect fit. Since childhood, I have found inspiration from a pretty eclectic variety of sources. Nature, graffiti, chipping walls, architecture, fine stitching... My grandmother was a fine seamstress to "society ladies" as she would call them.  Remnants of fine fabrics turned up on cute little dresses for me.  Many of my figurative paintings like "Vanity Fair" and "Orchidea" were inspired by my visions of beautiful women at grand balls.  "Vanity Fair" was part of Robin Baron's spaces at interior design charity Holiday House in support of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. 

I like looking up - open skies - bird watching - swirling leaves - water towers - tall buildings... Ever look up in New York City?  It always amazes me to see the details high up when the only way anyone could see them is through windows of adjacent buildings.  I grew up in Montevideo, the home of some pretty renowned architects like Rafael Vinoly.  Architectural details and the patina of old doors still get me!  So yes, put simply, I love real estate too. 

The minute after my paintings are finished, I become aware that they will become part of a different environment from there where they were created.  They will eventually be finding a new home to fulfill their purpose becoming part of someone else's life.  Seeking the perfect new home, for my artwork or for my friends and clients, is the perfect canvas and I love being a matchmaker for both!  So so luck to be working with Douglas Elliman which has a history of supporting the arts and working with great architects like Vinoly!   Douglas Elliman is in it's fifth year of being a sponsor of Art Basel Miami. 

Elliman Mag pictured below,  just published it's art issue.  If you'd like a hard copy, please send me a message at link below and I'd be happy to send you the latest issue! 

Anahi DeCanio

Anahi DeCanio will be exhibiting artwork to compliment the living room design created by celebrated interior designer Robin Baron.  This year's Holiday House NYC marks the organization's 10th Anniversary.  The three week event will be held at the Academy Mansion off Fifth Avenue in New York City.  Below is a list of all the participating designers.  This year also marks the debut of Holiday House London with the participation of Elizabeth Hurley.  A yearly Summer Design Show-house also coincides with the high season in the Hamptons.  Anahi will be exhibiting artwork selected by Ms. Baron to compliment her design.   The Breast Cancer Research Foundation will be the beneficiary of funds raised.  Below is the list of participating designers for the New York City event which will remain open to the public through December 6th. 

Below is the list of participating designers for the New York City event which will remain open to the public through December 6th. 

​

2017 Designers and Visionaries
​Alyssa Kapito Interiors
Bjorn Bjornsson Design LLC
BJS Assoc Interior Design
Charles Nafie Architecture + Design
Cheryl Settino Mosher
Cynthia Spence Design
Genevieve Gorder
Groves & Co.
Jacqueline Hosford Interior Design LLC
Jaime Walters
James Rixner
Kim Radovich Interiors
Lucinda Loya Interiors
Magness Design
Mannarino Designs Inc.
Natalie Kraiem Interiors
Patrik Lonn Design
Robin Baron Design Inc.
Stedila Design
Touijer Designs
Vanessa Deleon Associates
Young Huh Interiors

​ABOUT HOLIDAY HOUSE
PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Holiday House, founded in 2008 by interior designer and breast cancer survivor Iris Dankner, is an interior design showhouse where top interior designers and lifestyle brands showcase their talent to raise critical funds for the prevention and cure of breast cancer.
In 2017, Holiday House will celebrate its tenth year of showhouses with the 10th annual Holiday House NYC at the Academy Mansion in NYC, the inaugural Holiday House London, and the launch of Holiday House: Ten Years of Decorating for a Cure, a beautiful coffee table book documenting Holiday House’s history from Pointed Leaf Press. Iris is also celebrating twenty years as a survivor!
Iris created the first Holiday House to combine her two passions – her love of design and her efforts to help women in need – at to create the first designer showhouse in New York City to benefit a breast cancer organization. The NYC showhouse has taken place eight times at the historic Academy Mansion on the Upper East Side’s Gold Coast, and once in two luxe townhouses in Manhattan’s lively SoHo neighborhood.
In its ten year history, Holiday House has featured top interior designers, received critical acclaim, been supported and endorsed by some of the most celebrated global luxury brands, and expanded to the Hamptons with a summer showhouse. Since partnering with The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Holiday House has granted over a million dollars to this renowned charity that invests 91 cents of every dollar to support it’s mission of ending breast cancer by advancing the world’s most groundbreaking research.
Holiday House is unique because each design space is themed around a holiday or special moment in life that inspires the designer. The event is as much about celebrating life as it is about fighting breast cancer.

​PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN HAMPTONS.COM 
Nicole Barylski
nbarylski@hamptons.com

Over Columbus Day weekend, you can celebrate the East End's legendary art history as you admire works featured in Mostly Abstract V at Ashawagh Hall in East Hampton, a venue that has shown masterpieces by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. 

"In keeping with the rich and storied tradition of abstract expressionist exhibitions at Ashawagh Hall, a diverse group of artists will present Mostly Abstract V," Beth Barry, who is included in the show, shared. "These artists create work that is a visceral and emotional response to the world, not a literal one." 

Mostly Abstract V will highlight pieces from Beth Barry, Barbara Bilotta, Anahi DeCanio, Anna Franklin, Mary Milne, Katherine Hammond, Bo Parsons, Sheila Rotner, Lieve Theirs, and Mark Zimmerman. 

About Last Night - Mixed Media on Canvas - Anahi DeCanio

"My work continues to shift to reflect a freer 'unedited' style," DeCanio shared. "The layers are all still there but the textures and texts that might have been hidden in the past have become more apparent and form an integral part of the visible final image. I'm allowing the viewer to come into an intimate space not shared before. It's been a bit of a challenging journey but very exciting." 

The pop up art show will be on display on Saturday, October 7 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday, October 8 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Monday, October 9 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. An opening reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. 

"The paintings and sculptures are an external expression of an internal, intuitive process," added Barry. 

Admission to Mostly Abstract V is free. 

Ashawagh Hall is located at 780 Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton. 


Nicole is the Editor-in-Chief of Hamptons.com where she focuses on lifestyle, nightlife, and mixology. She grew up in the Hamptons and currently resides in Water Mill.  www.hamptons.com  NicoleBarylski  NicoleBarylski

Long Island Arts Alliance, Long Island Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bloomingdale’s and TD Charitable Foundation are pleased to announce a collaborative art exhibition to celebrate September’s National Hispanic Heritage Month at Bloomingdale’s Furniture Gallery. A Free Artists’ Reception is scheduled for Wednesday, September 13 at 6 PM in the Bloomingdale’s Furniture Gallery of Roosevelt Field Mall.


2017 Exhibiting Artists

Berges Alvarez, Domingo Carrasco, Anahi DeCanio, Hector DeCordova, Ernani deSilva and Oscar Toro

Join us for an evening celebrating the art, food, music and culture of the Long Island Hispanic American Community.

Long Island Arts Alliance, Long Island Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bloomingdale's and TD Charitable Foundation are pleased to announce a collaborative art exhibition to celebrate September's National Hispanic Heritage Month.
 
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
with a new 
Hispanic Heritage Exhibit Sept 13 - Oct 15

FREE ARTISTS RECEPTION - Wed., Sept 13 at 6 PM
EMAIL to RSVP

Wine provided by Casa De Vinos and Luis Vasquez


Directions to Bloomingdale's Furniture Gallery of Roosevelt Field Mall. 
Come in at the entrance by the AMC Roosevelt Field Theater right off of Old Country Road.

Please visit Quogue Library Link for original article and Calendar of Events. 

​ANAHI DECANIO: UNEDITED ABSTRACTIONS

September 2017 Exhibit
Reception: Friday, September 8, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.

Anahi DeCanio is a multi-disciplinary artist working in a variety of media, including collage and assemblage. She is also the Creative Director of ArtyZen Studios, which focuses on fine art and product design. Ms. DeCanio, born in Uruguay, started her career on Wall Street and has been painting professionally for over a decade.

The artist sees “every brushstroke, color, element or scratch as symbols of the marks left behind by life events and the passage of time.” She explores this concept by applying countless strokes of paint and occasional collage elements and gilding to create intricate abstract landscapes. The alternating of opaque and transparent pigments adds to the complexity of these richly textured and luminously colored
paintings. “Some of these layers are part of the story but remain hidden,” the artist says, “some subtly reveal themselves in small glimpses.”

Ms. DeCanio is the founder and curator of the eco-friendly art and design show eARThHamptons, held annually on the East End. She is an active participant and volunteer in several charities and art organizations. Her work has been published widely and can be seen in several TV and motion picture productions. She has won numerous awards in national juried competitions and has participated in group and solo exhibits in Long Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Washington D.C. The artist is also a licensed agent with Douglas Elliman. 

Lulie Morrisey and Cristina Kepner are chairs of this exhibit, which will be on display from September 1-30.

Phyllis Hammond

Phyllis Hammond, a Springs sculptor, has been making art for 80 years. Her long career includes working as a draftsman at Raytheon for Patriot missiles. Early on she studied at the Kyoto City College of Fine Arts in Japan and later devoted many years to teaching. She started spending time on the East
End in the ‘80s and moved to Springs permanently in 1995.

Ms. Hammond began her career working in clay and over 40 years created many, often huge, clay sculptures and “whole environments,” exhibiting her work in numerous venues in SoHo and elsewhere over the years.

After she had moved to Long Island she decided to change direction, and today her work is created using steel and aluminum. As detailed in an article in the East Hampton Star (12-15-16), her sculptures start with “spontaneously doodled pencil drawings,” which she then redraws in more detail and scans
into a computer. These are converted into drawings in a vector program which are read by a waterjet machine that cuts the shapes from 4-by-8 foot sheets of aluminum.

The aluminum shapes are fed into a rolling machine at Liberty Iron Works in Southampton, further hammered and welded, and then powder-coated in bright shades of orange, blue, green and yellow. Some of the pieces are combined with others and some become large eight-foot screens.

Last fall Ms. Hammond installed five new sculptures in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York City and four at the Summit Library in New Jersey. She is currently working on an installation in the New York City Garment District.

Anahi DeCanio will be exhibiting in a two person show at the William Ris East Gallery on the Northfork of Long Island - also known as Long Island Wine Country. New abstracts will be on display juxtaposed with Charles Wildbank's realist paintings.  The exhibit will be held over the Labor Day Weekend.  A Meet the Artists Reception will take place on Saturday, September 2 from 4 to 7.  William Ris East is on Main Road in Jamesport adjacent to the Sherwood House Tasting Room.

​

- 















​QUOGUE LIBRARY
SEPTEMBER 1 - 30
ANAHI DECANIO: UNEDITED ABSTRACTIONS

Reception: Friday, September 8, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
​
Anahi DeCanio is a multi-disciplinary artist working in a variety of media, including collage and
assemblage. She is also the Creative Director of ArtyZen Studios, which focuses on fine art and product
design. Ms. DeCanio, born in Uruguay, started her career on Wall Street and has been painting
professionally for over a decade.

The artist sees “every brushstroke, color, element or scratch as symbols of the marks left behind by
life events and the passage of time.” She explores this concept by applying countless strokes of paint
and occasional collage elements and gilding to create intricate abstract landscapes. The alternating of
opaque and transparent pigments adds to the complexity of these richly textured and luminously colored
paintings. “Some of these layers are part of the story but remain hidden,” the artist says, “some subtly
reveal themselves in small glimpses.”

Ms. DeCanio is the founder and curator of the eco-friendly art and design show eARThHamptons, held
annually on the East End. She is an active participant and volunteer in several charities and art organizations. Her work has been published widely and can be seen in several TV and motion picture productions. She has won numerous awards in national juried competitions andhas participated in group and solo exhibits in Long Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Washington D.C. The artist is also a licensed agent with Douglas Elliman.

Her work can also be seen at Naula Showroom in Brooklyn (by appointment only) and at William Ris Gallery in Jamesport where she will be having a two person exhibit with Charles Wildberg over the Labor Day Weekend of 2017.  

Lulie Morrisey and Cristina Kepner are chairs of this exhibit, which will be on display from September 1-30
Meet the Artist Opening Reception - Friday, September 8 - 5 to 6:30

​

So... it's been a bit busy around here.  Participating in four major shows in about four weeks and curating eARThHAMPTONS...  I was so grateful to collaborate with so many wonderful artists, including 90 year old master Athos Zacharias!  The show was attended by more than 300 people and covered in several news media. Tons of work but soooo worth it!  A few surprises coming up!  Now getting ready for BKLYN Designs where I'll be exhibiting at the VIP Lounge beautifully designed by Naula!  Stay tuned!
​

eARThHAMPTONS 2017, an Earth Day Friendly ART & DESIGN Weekend Celebration at historic Ashawagh Hall, will be held the weekend of April 21st through the 23rd.  In 2017, eARThHAMPTONS will include a strong and eclectic art exhibit, design elements, and the participation of local farms and purveyors.  Following last year’s tradition hosting talks such as a presentation on pesticide free lawns by Edwina von Gal, 2017 programming will also include panel discussions and talks of interest to a wide audience.“We are truly delighted with how well received and welcomed the event has become.  We look forward to continue growing an enjoyable way to combine all the elements that make up our habitats at large and bring more attention to sustainable practices in the art and design world as well as our everyday lives” comments organizer DeCanio who is particularly fond of the natural beauty found on the East End.

Pamela Willoughby, a Cultural Curator with vast experience in the art world procured and curated the artwork of prominent Springs artist, and one time assistant to Willem de Kooning, Athos Zacharias. Zacharias’ work will be on exhibit as a special feature at the event.  His paintings can be found in important collections including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Art in Providence, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
The roster of accomplished artists participating will make for an exciting and eclectic show bringing a mix of styles and genres that range from classic tradition to contemporary art with an edgy bent.  Alongside Athos Zacharias, artists include the work of Anahi DeCanio, Peter Gumpel, Phyllis Chillingworth, Lori Horowitz, Alyssa Peek, and Lisa Petker Mintz.  Followed by a Unique Motion graphics video: “REBOOT”  and "REDRESS" a projection mapped motion graphics video by John Jinks,  viewed on the outside of Ashawagh Hall at dusk! Think very cool Drive-In Movie!

An invitational section of the show includes talented local artists, including artist and Art Groove organizer Geralyne Lewandowski, Charles Waller, Scott Bluedorn, Blair Seagram, Christine Newman, Gia Schifano, Nicole Barylski, Carl Scorza, Anu Annam, Nicole Passman, Martha McAleer, Live Thiers, Cynthia Sobel and Palm Beach artist and curator Elayna Toby Singer. These artists will be displaying one work each, adding additional media, techniques, and visual interest.

This year’s event includes a sister show at the William Ris Gallery in Jamesport entitled eARThNOFO.  In addition, owner and gallery director Mary Cantone will bring select works from her gallery to the South Fork by participating in eARThHAMPTONS in East Hampton.  Her gallery has quickly become a strong contributor to the arts in the region, representing a stable of talented prominent artists and artisans. 
Mary’s career in designing interiors and space planning has included collaborating with artists and clients to incorporate the fine arts into their lives. A bonus to Cantone’s innate and nurtured abilities is her keen sensibility for mixing mediums, styles and colors.  The gallery has been received to great success and has become a major contributor to the arts in the East End.  Her exhibits and art openings always bring in a crowd of art collectors and enthusiasts who have become loyal followers of the gallery.

Adding much excitement is the participation of acclaimed master craftsman and fine custom furniture designer Angel Naula. Naula will be contributing the Hamptons Stiletto Daybed, the latest version of his award-winning design as a special addition to the show Naula Workshop has collaborated with such acclaimed interior designers and architects and has completed high-profile residential projects for Robert Kennedy Jr., Hugh Jackman, Norah Jones, and Rupert Murdoch, among others.

Additionally, Naula created custom made pieces for the penthouse exquisitely designed by Kelly Behun for architect Rafael Viῆoly’s 432 Park Avenue.  Naula will be participating in upcoming BKLYN DESIGNS designing the VIP lounge with high end furniture pieces and artwork from Ms. DeCanio. Naula’s work has been featured in such notable venues as Esquire SoHo, Pulse Contemporary Art, Maison de Luxe Beverly Hills, Elle Décor, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and the Hamptons Designer Showhouse.  Besides his prominent role in the world of luxury design, Naula is a constant contributor to several numerous charities, including Design on a Dime. Stark Carpet is contributing to the event by providing a rug as a floor design element to offset the Hamptons Stiletto Daybed.

Following last year’s format, there will be additional programs and events throughout the weekend. On Friday evening, the show will host a special broadcast of the 2017 Wealth Report created by a team of experts from Knight Frank Residential in collaboration with Douglas Elliman. The report is the industry’s leading publication on global prime property markets, wealth distribution and luxury trends.  The panel of experts discuss trends in art collecting, classic cars, and wine markets as well as real estate. The Wealth Report offers invaluable insight into global trends and what will impact personal assets in the years to come. 

After the broadcast, a chat will be led by Dawn Watson, creator of Hamptons Party Girl and public relations manager for Douglas Elliman for the Hamptons and Long Island.  Anahi DeCanio has recently joined the Douglas Elliman team combining her Wall St. background and the same matchmaking and marketing skills she uses to put together eARThHAMPTONS to work with clients in the world of real estate.
 On Sunday at 1 pm, Pamela Willoughby will be moderating a thought-provoking and informative talk in keeping with the weekend’s eco-friendly theme. Panelists will include Laura Rose Dailey and Katie Rose Leonard of Amber Waves Farm, Ella Snow, members from Share the Harvest Farm and Scott Bluedorn.

Treasure Hunting for a Good Cause...

The design community, artists, artisans, and committed volunteers got together to create a great event for the benefit of Housing Works in New York City.  A great treasure hunt where donated items are offered for sale at a significant discount.
So much talent under one roof!  The more than 60 shopping vignettes are a great treasure trove of some of the best the design world has to offer.  
Proceeds from Design on a Dime fund Housing Works’ wraparound services and supportive programs for New Yorkers living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
This year, Anahi DeCanio will be donating abstract artwork to the very talented designer extraordinaire Robin Baron and fine custom furniture maker Naula.  It's a wonderful opportunity to make a contribution and for shoppers to see these exclusive vignettes and find some great deals.

​April 26th-29th, 2017
​
Tickets available!


Thursday, April 27, 2017
Opening Night Reception
VIP Cocktail Hour & Preview, 5:30 pm
Shopping, 6:30 pm
Public Sale
Friday, April 28, 10 am – 7 pm
Saturday, April 29, 10 am – 5 pm
Location:
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W 18th St
New York City
See Naula's complete collection at  their Brooklyn Showroom
349 Suydam Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Anahi DeCanio Artwork
WWW.NAULAWORKSHOP.COM
RobinBaronDesigns

​By RANDY KENNEDYJAN. 10, 2017​ - Click HERE for original article in THE NEW YORK TIMES

​The natural history of the postwar New York art world is usually understood according to a fairly simple geography. Abstract Expressionism, America’s entry into the major leagues, was shown uptown, by tony dealers like Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis and Eleanor Ward. By the time Pop and Minimalism had taken over in the late 1960s, the center of gravity shifted downtown, to SoHo, where pioneers like Paula Cooper and uptowners like Leo Castelli followed clairvoyant artists into cheap industrial lofts. And finally, after retailers and real-estate agents realized that those lofts were gorgeous, galleries were pushed west, to the warehouses of Chelsea, where their greatest concentration remains today.

But something happened along the way, in the 1950s and early 1960s, that has never been fully accounted for, a kind of foreshock of the earthquake that propelled the cutting edge of the art world south. “Inventing Downtown,” an art-packed historical deep-dive at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, tells the story of that lost chapter, the upstart gallery scene that flourished for more than a decade in the East Village, bequeathing a body of work that considerably scrambles not only the map but also the lock-step narrative of 20th-century art movements.

It was a diverse scene that held out a hint of utopian promise at a time when Abstract Expressionism was waning and new categories had not yet hardened: It included many more women than the uptown art world; it was not completely white; abstraction and figuration jostled side by side (if not always comfortably), along with genre-bending sculpture; and the gloriously messy birth of modern performance art took place in the midst of it all.

Pieces of the history have been gathered before, most notably in Joellen Bard’s “Tenth Street Days: The Co-ops of the 50’s,” a small 1977 book about the formation of the D.I.Y and at times gonzo gallery district near Cooper Union largely built by artists banding together against commercial and critical indifference. But the book quickly went out of print. Even artists from the scene who went on to long and celebrated careers, like Claes Oldenburg, Alex Katz, Lois Dodd and Lucas Samaras, describe having lived through a kind of historical lacuna, one that ended abruptly with the Pop revolution started by artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

“Pop Art just killed it,” said Mr. Samaras, 80, the sculptor and photographer, who performed in Allan Kaprow’s “18 Happenings in 6 Parts,” a performance-art landmark in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery on lower Fourth Avenue; it was one of the artist-run galleries that made up the downtown milieu. “It was as if there wasn’t enough time to write about what went on in those years,” Mr. Samaras said. “There wasn’t enough information available. And then suddenly it was gone.”

But over the past six years, Melissa Rachleff, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School, has almost single-handedly recaptured the grain of those years, for the exhibition and a comprehensive catalog that focuses on 14 artist-run galleries from 1952 to 1965. She interviewed surviving participants, sifted through archives at the Museum of Modern Art and elsewhere, and gathered works by aging artists that were all but lost to history, along with pieces by downtown luminaries like Robert Rauschenberg, Yayoi Kusama and the sculptor Mark di Suvero, who encouraged her to pursue the project.

“I had some artists just hand me their work from their closets, and say: ‘Here. I might not be alive by the time this show happens, but I want you to have this,’” Ms. Rachleff said, strolling the once-seedy blocks where the galleries stood, principally East 10th Street between Fourth and Third Avenues, near where many young artists in the 1950s lived in cheap cold-water apartments.

“This was my parents’ generation — I was born in 1963,” she continued. “And I really thought I had no interest in what happened in those years, especially because it was a time of white male privilege and exclusion and all of that. Yet here I am, and what I found here just knocked me out. I was like, ‘Mom, Dad, why didn’t you tell me?’”

The exhibition comes on the heels of a new book by the photographer and musician John Cohen, “Cheap Rents ... and de Kooning,” published by Steidl, documenting Mr. Cohen’s personal travels through the East Village scene, along with a show of his photographs from those years on view through Feb. 11 at L. Parker Stephenson Photographs on the Upper East Side.

The figurative painter Lois Dodd, the last living founder of the Tanager Gallery (1952-1962), the most influential of the artist-run galleries that clustered on East 10th Street, said it was difficult for people in today’s supercharged contemporary art world to imagine how profoundly uninterested collectors and dealers were in the 1950s in most art being made at the time.

“Most uptown galleries, with a few notable exceptions, were showing stuff that still looked like Impressionism,” said Ms. Dodd, 89, in an interview in the rough-hewn walk-up loft on East Second Street where she has worked since the late 1950s. “We didn’t have any illusions that we were going to be selling anything. In fact, we were kind of torn at the beginning about whether we should open a cafe or a gallery. We just wanted a place to see our friends and show each other our work.”

The Tanager was founded on East Fourth Street in a former barbershop, then relocated in 1953 to 90 East 10th, a cheaper, narrow, four-story building upstairs from a gin joint. That building now houses a defunct real-estate office where the gallery used to be. Next door at No. 88, now an architect’s office, was the studio of Willem de Kooning, a hallowed place for most of the young artist-gallerists who lived near it. (“It was like this giant living next door,” Ms. Dodd said. “He was a little older than we were, and he was really revered that way. I remember when he made his first big sale, the word went up and down the street like wildfire: ‘Bill sold a painting! Bill sold a painting!’”)

The art historian and critic Irving Sandler was hired as the gallery manager (the sole employee) of the Tanager in the mid-1950s, when he was a graduate student at Columbia University. He said in a recent interview that in his three years running the gallery “I sold a sum total of one piece.” Though that abstract sculpture, by a now-forgotten artist named Joe Messina, sold for $125 to the collector and heiress Rachel Lambert Mellon, known as Bunny, who told Mr. Sandler to deliver the piece directly to the Museum of Modern Art, to which she donated. (In his 2003 memoir, “A Sweeper Up After Artists,” he noted mordantly that when she gave him her name, he asked, in all sincerity: “How do you spell that?”)

Mr. Sandler, now 91, said that when the East Village galleries all coordinated their openings to Friday nights, “the streets around them would be just packed, the way streets in Chelsea are now.” “It was really a rich communal life that didn’t depend on money,” he said. “Everybody was poor. There weren’t really any winners or losers yet. It was a pretty glorious place to be.”

Across from the Tanager was the Brata Gallery, probably the most racially diverse of all the neighborhood’s galleries. It showed the work of the African-American painter Ed Clark and the Japanese-American artists Robert Kobayashi and Nanae Momiyama, as well as Ms. Kusama, whose 1959 solo show of “Infinity Net” paintings set her on the road to becoming the star she is today. The building that housed the Brata, along with those of the Camino Gallery, the Area Gallery and the final location of the Club, the renowned salon where the battle for the soul of Abstraction Expressionism was waged, are gone now, replaced by apartment buildings or stores or construction sites.

The East Village scene — more than the art world of SoHo, where a few remnants remain of the history that coursed through the streets — disappeared virtually without a trace. By the time it ran out of steam in the early 1960s, many of the women who showed there, including Ms. Dodd, were struggling to attract the kind of attention that their male counterparts were getting. Many women either stopped making art or stopped showing commercially. “I was too stupid to realize that women weren’t going to have the same opportunities,” Ms. Dodd said. “But you have your friends, who keep encouraging you, so you don’t stop.”

When Ms. Rachleff and I recently went unannounced into the architecture office in the building where de Kooning’s studio had been, a man came out and said that once in a great while, art aficionados like us stopped by and he let them stand around and use their imaginations. Around the corner, at the building that once housed the Reuben Gallery — a game-changing crucible of performance art that the critic Lawrence Alloway once described as “anti-ceremonious, anti-formal, untidy” and “highly physical (but not highly permanent)” — we rang the doorbell of what now seemed to be a mime troupe, but no one answered.

“I think the main reason this history is so little known is that it just didn’t fit any of the paradigms — it confused people,” Ms. Rachleff said. “My major revelation in doing this work is that if you follow what artists tell you, you quickly start to see that categories never really work the way historians would have you believe. This neighborhood was living proof.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 15, 2017, on Page AR24 of the New York edition with the headline: Recalling When Artists Ran the Galleries. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe