Alice Baber

Luxembourg + Co., is pleased to present an exhibition of works by the American artist Alice Baber (1928-1982) in its London space.

Baber is best known for her long-life dedication to study biomorphic forms and the infinite possibilities of light and colour through painting. Showcasing a selection of significant achievements from throughout her career, the works on view span from 1964 to just a year before her untimely death in 1981, and chronicle her experimentation between different mediums, intensities of color, saturation, composition, and forms.

Among these, the display includes examples of Baber’s unique method of ‘sinking’ (or ‘staining’) and ‘lifting’ tissue papers dipped in watercolour in order to obtain a sense of organic-like expansion in her shapes; an attribute that is now regarded as her signature style.

Alice Baber was often associated with American Abstract Expressionism as well as with Colour Field painting, although her work does not fall neatly under either one of these artistic categories. Baber’s unique approach to watercolors and oils is characterized by colourful biomorphic forms, expressing rhythm, movement, and the intricate interplay of color transparencies on paper and canvas. Baber championed a synesthetic approach to colour, considering painting as a practice that evokes more than just visual experience, but also one that relates to taste, touch, smell and memories. ‘When I first conceive of a painting’, she once explained, ‘I must feel it, I hear it, I taste it, and I want to eat it.’