Artwork of the 80's
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Artists & Works
Alice Baber
American (b. 1928-1982)
NIGHT DRUM (1977)
Oil on canvas
38” x 64”

STYLE: ABSTRACT-EXPRESSIONISM

  

Alice Baber began painting at the age of eight, later studying art at Lindenwood College for Women in Missouri and Indiana University. She also traveled worldwide, studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau, France, and lived in Paris throughout the late fifties and sixties. She was a member of the March Gallery on Tenth Street in New York and was art editor of McCall’s magazine.

Baber was instrumental in organizing exhibitions of women artists at a time when women were still struggling to gain prominence in the international art world. Baber’s legacy is honored at the Baber Midwest Modern Art Collection of the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art in Indiana, and the Alice Baber Memorial Art Library in East Hampton, Long Island, New York. Her paintings are in major museum collections throughout the world.

Baber’s work is recognized for its luminous, abstract shapes, particularly in stained canvases filled with clear, radiant color. Her compositions often consist of multiple round or ovoid shapes. Night Drum is typical of Baber’s best work.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

New York Times, 10/7/82 (obituary)
"Miss Baber's canvases, shown here and abroad in many solo exhibitions, radiantly fused light and color by means of ovoid shapes that streamed across the painting field, seeming to float in limitless space."
Vivien Raynor, New York Times, 3/13/81
"An attempt has been made recently to link the work of Alice Baber with such artists as Dan Flavin and Jim Turrell. To this eye, however, her paintings remain much as before: clusters and strings of wedge forms in pretty, translucent colors on a white ground. Perhaps the slight stiffness that characterizes Miss Baber's art is caused by her applying the stained shapes deliberately with her fingers."