Alice Baber

Abstract Expressionist Alice Baber Advocated for Women Artists. At Long Last Her Own Work Is Taking the Spotlight

"Reverse Infinity" at Berry Campbell in New York marks the first major exhibition of works by Alice Baber in over 40 years.

Alice Baber lived, by her own account, as an artist out of sync with her times, navigating the downtown New York art scene of the 1950s and ‘60s as both insider and outsider. Her life, as she described it, existed in the “slightly uncomfortable feeling of not belonging to any place.”

A new exhibition at “Reverse Infinity” New York’s Berry Campbell aims to change that (through May 18). The exhibition is the first large-scale showing of Baber’s work in over 40 years and features a remarkable ensemble of the artist’s luminous, auric abstractions made in thin veils of radiant color. The paintings on view span from 1960 to 1982—these last works are intimate, elegant watercolors made just months before Baber’s untimely death from cancer at the age of 54. The Embarcation (1960), the earliest work in the show, meanwhile, is a stain-like almost botanical vision of purples and blues imbued with hazy atmospheric quality. Early canvases give way to more mature works, such as Blue Flotilla and Time of Day, both from 1966, platelet-like discs of colors, in deeper, often jewel-toned hues. These works can seem biomorphic or even vegetal—like looking at a plant very close up.

RSVP: Berry Campbell

Alice Baber: Reverse Infinity
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Here's what caught our eye during last week's crush of art fairs in New York City.

New York gallery Berry Campbell had a standout booth, a curated presentation of 12 postwar women artists. The gallery has a distinct focus on re-examining underrepresented women artists of the 20th-century. Gallery owner Christine Berry called it “an incredible day,” noting high demand for artists including Alice Baber, Bernice Bing, and Lynne Drexler.

Works by Drexler sold for $885,000 and $200,000; the artist, who has been drawing intense interest, will likely be the subject of a traveling institutional retrospective at some point in the near future. A work by Baber went for $200,000—Berry Campbell hopes to mount a solo show of the artist next year.

Later on in the day, the gallery let Artnet News know that a painting by Ethel Schwabacher had been sold for $195,000.