Lechovsky[1]), was a Ukrainian-born American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career started mid-life, at age forty-five[2] in 1938.

[8] Upon recognizing Sobel's talent, her son Sol, an art student, helped her artistic development and shared her work with émigré surrealists, Max Ernst, André Breton, as well as John Dewey and Sidney Janis.

[10] Peggy Guggenheim included Sobel's work in the show Women in her The Art of This Century Gallery in 1945, alongside the likes of Louise Bourgeois and Kay Sage.

Her depiction of soldiers with cannons and imperial armies, as well as traditional Jewish families, reflected the experiences of her childhood.

The art critic Clement Greenberg mentioned that Jackson Pollock had noticed Janet Sobel's painting in the 1940s.

Although he had not addressed her during the three years her professional works circulated in New York galleries, he eventually positioned "Sobel as a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism".

"[6] "Sobel was part folk artist, Surrealist, and Abstract Expressionist, but critics found it easiest to call her a 'primitive'."

As Zalman summarizes, her title of "primitive" was "a category that enabled her acceptance by the art world, but restricted her artistic development".

Due to the attitudes of some of the critics of her day, Sobel became known as a suburban housewife who, working professionally as an artist, inspired the feminist conversation around domestic roles of women.