Alice Baber (1928-1982), "Blue Leaf to Shell" from the "Tragedy of Color Series," 1975, Watercolor on Arches, Image/Sheet: 30" H x 22.25" W

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Aug 29, 2023

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• Lot Description

  Alice Baber
  (1928-1982)
  "Blue Leaf to Shell" from the "Tragedy of Color Series," 1975
  Watercolor on paper, watermark Arches
  Signed, titled, and dated, verso: Alice Baber; various notations in other hands and artist's death notice on a card affixed, verso
  Image/Sheet: 30" H x 22.25" W
  Other Notes: The two inscriptions read: This was a gift to Leah + Joe from our friend Alice Baber c. 1975 / now you'll have lots of $ to go out carousing and drinking & god knows what! Love T & B
  
  Alice Baber, who was born in Charleston, Illinois in 1928, began exhibiting her work in New York City in 1957 when she was included in the Stable Gallery's Sixth Annual Exhibition of New York artists. Baber, as one of the approximately twenty women included on the Annual's extensive roster, was shown alongside Grace Hartigan, Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, Mary Abbott, Joan Mitchell, and Elaine de Kooning. While many of the male artists featured in this exhibition have been recognized as key figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Baber n who died at the age of fifty-four in 1982 n has long been overlooked by museums and the art market at large.
  
  In a 1970s article for "Art in America," Al Brunelle wrote of Baber's work,"Her paintings are romantic and lyrics - but they are also reductive and systematic; she regulates the component elements in each work but not the overall structures. Transparent spectrum color is applied over a luminous white ground, to form irregular elliptical shapes of roughly similar size. They are generally more transparent in their centers, which gives them an effect of buoyancy. They tend to draw together, with considerable overlapping, into rather casual clusters that seem almost accidental or naive... [E]ach painting is experienced as a single phenomenon largely because of the paint handling, and which floods the entire work with a pulse of unified feeling."
  
  Baber was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1970s and continued to paint until her death on February 2, 1982, in New York City. Her work is held in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Today, she is recognized as an important figure in the development of abstract art in the United States and is celebrated for her unique and innovative style.
  
  Alice Baber's work has been exhibited alongside many key members of the Abstract Expressionist movement, including (but not limited to): Mary Abbott, William Baziotes, Norman Bluhm, Louise Bourgeoise, Friedel Dzubas, Perle Fine, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Gillespie, Sam Gilliam, Michael Goldberg, Adolph Gottlieb, Grace Hartigan, Hans Hofmann, Paul Jenkins, Ray Johnson, Franz Kline, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Robert Natkin, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Charlotte Park, Ray Parker, Betty Parsons, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt, Milton Resnick, David Smith, Theodoros Stamos, Alma Woodsey Thomas, Bob Thompson, Jack Tworkov, Esteban Vicente
  
  Select Museum Collections:
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
  Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
  Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
  Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
  Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
  
  For additional information on the historical context of this painting, please see Joan Marter, "Women of Abstract Expressionism," published by the Denver Art Museum in conjunction with Yale University Press, 2016.

  Condition

  Overall good condition. The sheet with deckled edges and the vertical extreme edges are ever-so-slightly unevenly trimmed, possibly in the hand of the artist. The sheet with slight light staining/toning, mostly visible in a raking light. A pea-sized and pinpoint pale area of staining, on the verso sheet, not affecting the image. The sheet is loose, not matted.
  
  Unframed

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