In the late 1930s Fine was coming to the end of her studies with Hans Hofmann, in New York and at his summer school in Provincetown, MA. There she studied among other avante garde artists like Larry Rivers and Lee Krasner. Her time there heavily influenced her early engagement with the gestural and expressive possibilities of abstraction. Untitled (c.1939) is a powerful composition dominated by a dark central mass containing these energetic forms and expressive marks. A surrounding yellow-ochre border produces a strong visual contrast that somewhat acts as a boundary to the irregularity of the central composition. Fine was not actively exhibiting her work at this time, however, across the 1940s she gained signigicant recognition, exhibiting at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Centry Gallery and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and presenting solo exhibitions at Betty Parsons in New York and at San Francisco's de Young Museum.