In 1908, with her mother and siblings, Jennie Olechovsky moved from what is now Dnipro, Ukraine, to Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Baruch Olechovsky, had been mercilessly murdered in one of Russia’s pogroms. Life was tough for immigrants in America, and Jennie married Max Sobel at age 16. When she turned 44, in 1937, she picked up a brush. Sobel took imagery from Ukranian folklore, and painted with dynamism and softness. Flowers and symbols from many cultures coexist in her brightly colored canvases. Eventually Sobel moved to abstraction, pioneering a drip technique that would later become explosive in the work of Jackson Pollock. This retrospective gives a luminous artist her due. —Elena Clavarino