Abstract* painter, lithographer and feminist*, Alice Baber specialized in paintings of ovals, circles and free-forms that extolled the radiance of color. Born August 22, 1928 in Charleston, Illinois, the artist was dogged by ill-health as a child, forced to spend her winters in Florida to escape the harsh northern winters. Cancer would claim her on October 2, 1982 in New York City at the relatively young age of fifty-four. She is buried in Fairview Cemetery in Edgar County, Illinois.
But she began her art studies early, as if to compensate for a shortened life, studying drawing as an eight-year-old, and taking a college class by age twelve. She attended Lindenwood College in Missouri for two years, then studied with Alton Pickens, a figurative expressionist painter, at Indiana University in Bloomington. She received her M.A. degree there in1951.
Travel was an important activity for Baber in the early 1950s, during her marriage from 1964-1970 to abstract painter Paul Jenkins, and throughout her life. In 1951, she studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau, France, and traveled through Europe. In 1958, she began a several-year period of living in Paris. In 1964, Baber and Jenkins visited Japan for their show at the Osaka Pinacotheca Museum.
Baber visited India twice in the 1970s. In 1974, she had a one-person exhibition in New Delhi, the same year she traveled to Iran for a show in Teheran. In 1976, she traveled to thirteen Latin American countries, lecturing and exhibiting, on a four-month tour sponsored by the United States Information Agency.
In the early 1950s, Baber went to live in New York City, where she became a member of a Tenth Street co-operative gallery, the March Gallery, where she had her first one-person show in 1958. She attended the Yaddo Colony* in Saratoga Springs, New York for the first time in that year. She was supporting herself by writing, later becoming art editor of McCall's magazine.
Baber organized exhibitions of women artists, including "Color Forum," in 1972 at the University of Texas, in Austin, and "Color, Light, and Image," in 1975 in New York City at the Women's Interart Center, a show of artists from around the world in recognition of the United Nations International Women's Year. Baber wrote an essay for the catalogue of the Texas show. Phyllis Derfner covered the latter exhibition in the March-April, 1976 issue of Art International.
Baber was a writer and teacher, as well as an artist, serving as artist-in-residence in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico's Tamarind Institute lithography workshop. She taught painting at the New School, New York City; University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of California, Berkeley. Her stain paintings, different from but related to those of Paul Jenkins, explored both variations of a single color and rich combinations of multiple colors.
Several Alice Baber paintings form the nucleus of the Baber Midwest Modern Art Collection of the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art in Indiana. In East Hampton, Long Island, New York, the Guild Hall Museum established the Alice Baber Memorial Art Library.
Her work is in the collections of four major New York City museums, the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art; and in Washington, D.C., the Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts. Other collections with her work are museums in New Delhi, India; Manchester, England; Amsterdam, Holland; Osaka, Japan; Israel; Austria; Cologne, Germany, and San Francisco and Santa Barbara, California.
Source:
Jules and Nancy Heller, North American Women Artists of the 20th Century
and http://www.baberfamilytree.org/historian/alice_baber.htm
Written by Lonnie Pierson Dunbier
Artist-In-Residence, Tamarind Institute, University of New Mexico, 1979
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
March Gallery, NY, 1958
Deuxieme Biennale de Paris, 1961
American Embassy, London, 1961
Galerie de la Librairie Anglaise, Paris, 1963
New Vision Art Centre, London, England, 1963
Pinocotheca Museum, Osaka, Japan, 1964
A.M. Sachs Gallery, NY, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977
Kunstverein Museum, Cologne, Germany, 1966
Bernard M. Baruch College, NY, 1968
Galerie Lambert, Paris, France, 1970
Galerie Fur Zeitgenossiche Kunst, Hamburg, Germany, 1971
University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1971
Tom Bortolazzo Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA, 1972
Ingber Gallery, White Plains, NY, 1973
Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY, 1973
Iran-American Society, Tehran, Iran, 1974
Chanakya Gallery, New Delhi, India, 1974
Euro Kunstgalerie, Saarbrucken, Germany, 1974
Rathaus at Benrath, Dusseldorf, Germany, 1974
Palm Beach Galleries, Palm Beach, FL, 1975
The University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, 1975
American Library, Brussels, Belgium, 1975
Arvil Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico, 1976
William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1976
Santa Barbara, CA, 1976
Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, 1976
St. Mary's College, Maryland, 1977
Henri Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1977
Centro Colombo Americano, Bogota, Columbia, 1977
Centro de Arte Moderne, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1977
Sala Nacional de Exposiciones, San Salvador, SA, 1978
Kunst- Galerie 63, Switzerland, 1978
Buscaglia Castellani Art Gallery, Niagra University, Niagra Falls, NY, 1979
Allen House Galleries, Louisville, Kentucky, 1978
Frances Aronson Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 1978
The Art Package, Chicago, Illinois, 1979
Gibbs Art Gallery, Charleston, SC, April 10- May 20, 1979
Gallery West, Los Angeles, 1980
Galerie de'l Arte Nueva, Lima, Peru, 1980
Amerika Haus, Frankfurt, Germany, 1980
Tarble Art Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, 1981
Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, NY, 1980, 1981
Musee d'Art Haitien, College St. Pierre, Port-au-Prince, HA, 1982
American Centre, Port-of-Spain, TR, 1983
Edgar Country Bicentennial Art Center and Museum, Paris, IL, 1983
Galeria de Arte Moderno, Santa Domingo, DO, 1983
National Art Gallery, Kingston, JA, 1983
Retrospective, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1983
Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, NY, NY, October 9- November 8, 1986
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Stable Gallery Annual, NYC, 1957
"Looking Back: Exhibition of Older and Present work by 13 Artists", Marino Art Galleries, NY, 1958
"Deuxieme Jeune Biennale de Paris", Paris, FR, 1961
"GEDOK", Galerie fur Zietgenossiche Kunst, Hamburg, WG, 1961
"Les Surindependents", Musee de la Ville de Paris, FR, 1961
4-artist group, Galerie Karl Flinker, Paris, FR, 1962
U.S.I.S. exhibition, "Modern american Painting", (U.S. Embassies in London and Edinburgh; University College of Wales at Aberswyth, 1962
"International Graphics", New Vision Centre, London, 1963
"International Graphics", New Vision Centre, London, 1964
"Artists from New Vision Centre Gllery", Galerie Wirta Berlin, 1964
"New Acquistions", Worchester Museum of Art, MA, 1964
Group Exhibition, A.M. Sachs Gallery, 1965
"Selected Painters", Mulvane Art Center and Washburn University, Topeka, KS, 1965
"Trends", Manchester, GB, 1965
"Le Havre International Exposition", Maison de la Culture du Havre, Le Havre, FR, 1966
W.I.A.C Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1966
"Looking Backward over 25 Years", Sheldon Swope Art Gallery, Terre Haute, IN, 1976
"Third Kent" Invitational", Kent State University, OH, 1968
"Trends in 20th Century Art", The Art Galleries, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1970
Group Exhibition, Amerika Haus, Vienna, AU, 1970
"A New Consciousness: The CIBA-GEIGY Collection", The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, 1971
"Color", Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1972
"Color Forum", Huntington Galleries, University of Texas, Austin, 1972
"Contemporary American Painting", Alumni Memorial Bldg. Gallery, Lehigh University, PA 1972
"Die Amerikanische Malerie", Amerika Haus, Berlin, 1972
"Painting & Sculpture", Storm King Art center, Mountaindale, NY, 1972
"Women Artists", Stanford Museum, CT, 1972
"Women in the Arts", Center for 20th Century Studies and Fine arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1972
Group Exhibition, CUNY Graduate Center Mall, New York, NY, 1973
"IX Painters", Fordham University, NY, 1973
"The Harold and May Rosenberg Collection", Montclair Art Museum, NJ, 1973
"Women Choose Women", New York Cultural Center, New York, NY, 1973
"Contemporary Paintings", Review of the NY Gallery Season, 1974-75", Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery, Syracuse University, NY, 1974
"New York Professional Women artists: Walk Thru Art", Central Park and Battery Park, New York, NY, 1974
"Works by Women from the CIBA-GEIGY Collection", Kresge Art Center Gallery, Lansing, MI, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC, 1974
"Works on Paper from the CIBA-GEIGY Collection", Summit Art Center, NJ, 1974
"Color, Light and Image", 125 artists, curated by Alice Baber, Women's Interart Center, New York, NY, 1975
"Feminie 75", UNESCO, Paris, 1975
"4 American Artists", U.S.I.S. Cultural Center, Nairobi, KE, 1975
"Six Artists", Bayonne Jewish Community Center, NJ, 1975
"The Year of the Woman", Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY, 1975
"Visual Artists Coalition Exhibition", Lowenstein Library Gallery, Fordham University, New York, NY, 1975
"american Artists '76: A Celebration", Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX, 1976
"American Women Painters", Houstaonic Community College, Bridgeport, CT, 1976
Group Exhibition, Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, NY, 1976
"A.M. Sachs Gallery Artists", Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1977
"Tenth Street Days: The Co-ops of the 50's", Association of Artist-Run Galleries, New York, NY, 1977
"Visual Artists Coalition Exhibition", New York University Contemporary Arts Gallery, New York, NY, 1977
Group Exhibition, Clayworks, New York, NY, 1978
Group Exhibition, Women's Interart Center, New York, NY, 1978
"Women Artists 78", CUNY Graduate Center Mall, New York, NY, 1978
"Women Invite Women", WARM, Minneapolis, MN, 1978
"Art as Furniture, Furniture as Art", Ingber Gallery, New York, NY, 1979
Group Exhibition presented by the Women Artists of Eastern Long Island, Guild Hall, East Hampton, Long Island, NY, April 21-May16, 1979
"118 Artists", 1974
"Visual Artists Coalition Exhibition", Fordham University, NY, 1975
Art Museum of Greater Lafayette (Lafayette, IN)
Art Museum, Mount Holyoke College, MA
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Ball State University Museum of Art (Muncie, IN)
Blanton Museum of Art, The University Texas at Austin, TX
Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University, Niagara University, NY
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Fordham University, NY
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
Jack S Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN
Kresge Art Museum, East Lansing, MI
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, FL
Marinotti Collections, Italy
Manchester Museum, Man
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY
Museum of Modern art, Bogota, Colombia
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York City, NY
National Art Gallery, San Salvador
National Museum of Isreal
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
Newark Museum, NJ
Notre Dame University, ID
Pinocotheca Cutai, Osaka, Japan
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Roy R. Neuberger Museum, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY
Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN
The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Wallrof Richartz Museum, Koln, Germany
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Wright Museum of Art, Beloit, WI
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