IN THE SPOTLIGHT
ALICE BABER
Alice Baber
GLASSTIRE
Book Review: “Alice Baber: An Artist’s Triumph Over Tragedy”
Abstract art was booming in New York, and it soon became Baber’s visual language of choice. But unlike her male contemporaries who splattered, dripped, and poured paint with bravado, she applied colors by rubbing the paints into the canvas with her finger, building up her luminous tones intentionally and gradually. “I was certainly a part of a whole movement of artists who were interested in abstraction,” she said in an undated interview, “but my particular direction was not involved with their canons.” In the book, Levin argues convincingly that Baber’s work stemmed from her synesthesia, and that her subsequent disappearance from mainstream modern art history comes in part from the fact that “her art represents a new kind of abstraction.”
By Lauren Moya Ford
THE AUBURN PLAINSMAN
Redefining American art through untold stories at The Jule Museum
In his presentation, Nemerov highlighted the concept of livingness, or a sense of life, that was integral to the works of Frankenthaler. He also detailed how other artists featured in the exhibit portray that sense of livingness in vastly different ways. Some, such as Hartigan, opted for darker bolder motifs, and others, such as Baber, employed lighter and more subtle techniques.
Visitors to the exhibit can see the liveliness of the art with Frankenthaler's "Blue Territory," Hardigan's "Sweden" and Baber's "Lord of the Rainbow" – all being showcased in the exhibit. Ethan Olsen, one visitor to the exhibition, described why he found the storytelling of the collection to be impactful. By Erin Cosby
Photo by Roxy Duda | Photographer | The Auburn Plainsman
BONHAMS: NY
Modern & Contemporary Art Online
Alice Baber
Untitled
signed 'Alice Baber' (lower right)
watercolor on paper
30 x 22 1/4 in (76.4 x 56.5 cm)
Executed circa 1975
Provenance
Stefan Munsing Collection, Washington, D.C. (gifted by the artist).
Thence by descent to the present owner in 1994.
Ending from 19 February 2026, 12:00 EST
PHILLIPS
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART
New York
Alice Baber
Ladder over and under
acrylic on canvas
77 1/8 x 57 7/8 in. (195.9 x 147 cm)
Painted in 1972.
Provenance
A.M. Sachs Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1974
28 February 11am ET 2026
EXPLORE THIS EVENT
ALICE BABER
THE LEON LEVY CENTER FOR BIOGRAPHY
Join Gail Levin and Deborah Solomon for a lively chat about artist Alice Baber in person!
At the time of her premature death at just fifty-four, the paintings of Alice Baber (1928 - 1982) had already entered the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney. How could such an accomplished and visionary artist then fall into near obscurity?
Mar 24, 2026 from 6:30pm to 8pm EDT
PHILLIPSX
NEW YORK
ALICE BABER SACRED SPACES
Alice Baber: Sacred Spaces, a major selling exhibition dedicated to the pioneering American Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painter. Presented in partnership with Jody Klotz Fine Art. Featuring nearly 30 works spanning 1959 to 1981, the exhibition offers the most comprehensive market-facing presentation of Baber’s artistic evolution to date, coinciding with the publication of Gail Levin’s groundbreaking new biography, Alice Baber: An Artist’s Triumph Over Tragedy.
VIEWING
6 - 26 March 2026
ALICE BABER
Family Day: Mix It Up
See bright colors, big shapes and unexpected materials, then create your own modern masterpiece.
Mar 28, 2026
ALICE BABER
Discover the captivating life of a Permanent Collection artist
Exploring the Collection: Alice Baber
January 24, 2026 - May 31st 2026
Weil Gallery
ALICE BABER
As if in a Dream: History, Fantasy, Future
As if in a Dream: History, Fantasy, Future is curated by James Glisson, Chief Curator & Curator of Contemporary Art. This exhibition features Alice Baber, Dominic Chambers, Eduardo Chavez, Rafael Coronel, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Marsden Hartley, Mimi Lauter, Wright Ludington, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Jorge Pardo, Patricia Peco, Lari Pitman, Odilon Redon, Max Hooper Schneider, and Brenna Youngblood, among others.
March 1, 2026 – January 3, 2027
WOMEN ARTISTS IN ASCENDANCE
Featuring objects on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art alongside the university art collection, Women Artists in Ascendance pulls back the curtain on the story of modern American art by displaying works from a dozen women artists who were goliaths in their own right, including Helen Frankenthaler, Alice Baber, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner, Joan Brown, Amanda Williams and other notable women artists.
Exhibition Info:
August 19, 2025 — July 2, 2026
Bill L. Harbert Gallery
SOTHEBY’S NY
Alice Baber
The Green Door to the Wind
signed, titled and dated 1976 on the overlap
Acrylic on canvas
30 by 40 in.
76 by 101.5 cm.
Executed in 1976.
EMILY FRIEDMAN FINE ART
Alice Baber: Prismatic Sequences. This online exclusive features rare 1965 watercolors and vibrant lithographs. Explore Baber’s "stain and lift" technique and her mastery of color-field abstraction through these radiant works on paper.
GENE DAVIS
Gene Davis
SOTHEBY’S NY
Contemporary Discoveries
Gene Davis
Peeping Wall II
titled and dated 1961 (on the stretcher)
Magna acrylic on canvas
92 by 110 ¾ in.
233.7 by 281.3 cm.
Executed in 1961.
Sale Opens 18 February 2026 | 12:00 EST New York
BONHAMS: NY
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE
Gene Davis
Study for Corcoran Rotunda
signed, inscribed and dated 'Study for Corcoran Mural Gene Davis 1975'
oil on unstretched canvas
10 1/8 x 27 1/2 in (25.7 x 69.9 cm)
Painted in 1975
Ending from 19 February 2026, 12:00 EST
HILL AUCTION GALLERY
Gene Davis
Honey Gun, 1980, an original acrylic on canvas painting exemplifying the artist's iconic vertical stripe compositions. The large-scale work features rhythmic bands of alternating colors in varying widths, creating a visual tempo that reflects Daviss deep engagement with musical improvisationparticularly jazz. A central figure of the Washington Color School, Davis utilized line and color as primary expressive elements, forging a distinct language within postwar American abstraction. The verso is signed, titled, and dated, and retains two gallery labels: Hokin Gallery, Inc., Palm Beach, and Dorothy Blau Gallery Inc., Florida. The work is housed in a minimalist period wood and chrome gallery frame. Provenance: Includes documentation from Dorothy Blau Gallery Inc., Bay Harbor Islands, and a purchase receipt from a prior owner. Accompanied by a artist hand-signed coffee table art book of Gene Davis's works.
February 25, 2026 2:00 PM EST
Sunrise, FL, US
YARES ART
Installation view: Frank Stella, Gene Davis and Larry Poons
YARES ART is presenting Fields of Color V on view in New York gallery from September 2025 to February 2026. Fields of Color V materializes the personal and professional relationships between the principal artists of the Color Field and Abstract Expressionist movements. The twenty-eight monumental scale works on view demonstrate the revolutionary techniques employed by these artists, often learned or influenced from one another, that went on to permanently alter the trajectory and status of American art in the canon of art history.
September 15, 2025 – February 27, 2026
HOLLIS TAGGART
Expanded Fields, a historic group exhibition examining the emergence and evolution of Color Field painting and its expanded dialogue across postwar abstraction. Featuring works by Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Friedel Dzubas, Leon Berkowitz, Sam Francis, Larry Poons, Hans Hofmann, Dorothy Hood, Sheila Isham, Teruko Yokoi, and Anthony Caro, the exhibition traces the sustained inquiry into color as structure and subject.
The exhibition will be on view on the first floor of Hollis Taggart in Chelsea from January 15 to February 21, 2026, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 15 from 6 to 8 pm.
GENE DAVIS
The Legacy of the Washington Color School
A single-gallery installation exploring the legacy of the Washington Color School.
The Washington Color School emerged in the 1950s as a new direction of abstraction centered in Washington, DC. Known for staining unprimed canvases with vibrant fields of color, the first-generation Washington Color School artists, including Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Gene Davis, Howard Mehring, Paul Reed, and Thomas Downing, explored the expressive power of color, light, and form. They were unified by a similar style and sensibility rather than a manifesto, advancing abstraction through innovative processes and an emphasis on color.
November 22, 2025 - April 12, 2026
EXPLORE THIS EVENT
GENE DAVIS
Recent Acquisitions
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA)
Gene Davis's works are featured as part of the museum's permanent collection rotation.
Exhibition
February 4, 2026 – April 26, 2026
GENE DAVIS
This exhibition includes works by Pierre Alechinsky, Vincent Baldassano, Robert Baxter, Romare Bearden, Ilya Bolotowsky, Ann Chernow, Eric Chiang, Ed Colker, Arnold Copeland, Michael Cummings, Charles Michael Daugherty, James Daugherty, Lisa Daugherty, Gene Davis, Paul Decker, Stevan Dohanos, Seymour Fogel, Sam Francis, Elsie Freund, Frances Gershwin Godowsky, Sam Gilliam, Sidney Gordin, Richard Hunt, Roberto Lugo, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Tudor Maier, Suzanne McCullough, Joan Miró, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Natkin, John Nichols, A. R. Penck, Walter Quirt, Paul Rand, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Risko, Alex Ross, Arnold Roth, Barbara Rothenberg, Eric von Schmidt, Larry Silver, Frank Smith, Tracy Sugarman, and Jack Whitten.
February 26, 2026 – June 7, 2026
Opening reception, Thursday February 26 from 6-8pm.
GENE DAVIS
We, Too, Are Made of Wonders
The exhibition features artists such as Dorothy Hood, Mildred Thompson and Boramie Ann Sao, who explore abstract theories and scientific laws using rich colors and dynamic movement. Lamar Dodd and Robert McCall observe NASA space missions and attempt to capture their cultural significance. Photographers Arthur Tress and Mark Steinmetz compel audiences to consider the miracle of flight by offering views of the sky from multiple vantage points. John Biggers, Helen Lundeberg and Gene Davis venerate the Earth and sky, reminding viewers to take a moment and look up.
January 24 – June 28, 2026
A CONVERSATION WITH GENE DAVIS
Do you think it might have something to do with spatial qualities?
What my stripes have become now are quite different from what they started out as. I didn’t really understand what I was about at first. I think maybe the best painters don’t know what they’re doing in the beginning. The painter who can tell you exactly what he’s doing isn’t doing much. At first I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what I was doing. It just seemed like maybe a good idea. Pure whim motivated it. I think that’s a pretty good motivation anyway, to do something just for the sheer hell of it. Later I began to realize there was something behind my decision. You see, I’m a frustrated musician. I studied music all through my teens. But I have a tin ear, and I wasn’t really very good. Painting stripes with musical intervals may be a kind of unconscious compensation for the fact that I never made it as a musician. I don’t set out to do musical paintings—that’s corny. The fact remains, however, that music is an art of interval and my work is an art of interval.
I have always been an interval artist. Even now in the new black and white paintings I’m working on, I am interested in spatial interval. Before it was color interval.
—Barbara Rose
THE PAINTER WHO EARNED HIS STRIPES
Gene Davis, the leading member of the Washington Color School, is celebrated a half century after his striped paintings caught on
“The Smithsonian Institution, which benefitted from a generous amount of his work donated to the museum after his death in 1985 at 64, may have missed the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Washington Color Painters” exhibition last year, but is making up for it with the newly opened “Gene Davis: Hot Beat” at its Smithsonian American Art Museum.
—Roger Catlin - Museums Correspondent
JON SCHUELER
Jon Schueler
ARTNET
Inside a New Gallery Championing Postwar Abstraction
In a time marked by mass gallery closures, Matthew Shamnoski took the leap from online to brick and mortar with a gallery dedicated to stewarding the architects of 20th-century abstraction.
I’m very excited about our next exhibition, “Jon Schueler: Moods and Memories,” which centers on works Schueler created as dedications and remembrances—most notably paintings dedicated to his widow, Magda Salvesen, who continues to lead the foundation. These works reveal a deeply personal dimension of Schueler’s practice, where memory and emotional attachment become inseparable from abstraction. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Max Woertendyke’s new short documentary, Woman in the Sky (2025), which focuses on Magda and the legacy she has helped shape. We’ll be hosting a screening at the opening reception on February 12.
SHAMNOSKI GALLERY
Jon Schueler
Moods and Memories (Solo Exhibition):
Venue: Shamnoski Gallery (115 East 72nd Street, New York, NY 10021).
Dates: February 12 – March 15/17, 2026.
Special Event: An opening reception and screening of the documentary Woman in the Sky (directed by Max Woertendyke) will take place on Thursday, February 12, 2026, beginning promptly at 6:00 pm.
JON SCHUELER
The film will be screened as part of a solo exhibition titled "Jon Schueler: Moods and Memories".
Shamnoski Gallery (115 East 72nd Street, New York, NY 10021).
Thursday, February 12, 2026.
The accompanying exhibition runs from February 12 through March 15, 2026
JON SCHUELER
ART AT KIRKCALDY GALLERIES
Collecting the Contemporary: Scottish Art at Kirkcaldy Galleries
This display features works by modern and contemporary painters who were inspired by Scotland. In addition to works by John Bellany, Ken Currie, Callum Innes and Jon Schueler,
31 Jan 2025 - 31 Dec 2027
THE NEW CRITERION
OF SOUND MIND
by Erik Anjou
On the life and work of the painter Jon Schueler.
A number of years ago I was introduced to the work of Jon Schueler (1916–92), the Abstract Expressionist painter, protégé of Clyfford Still, and subject of the first solo show at Leo Castelli’s new gallery in 1957. Expansive, luminous works that hover between abstraction and representation, swaths and splashes of soft-edged color that float like clouds from the canvas—to cut to the chase, I became an acolyte. Both a Schueler painting and his heralded autobiography, The Sound of Sleat, adorn my Inwood apartment.
ETHICS PRESS
Infused with Place
The Translation of Scotland's Geography in Paintings of the Sea
by Joe Boyd
JON SCHUELER
Acclaimed Art World Documentary from Executive Producer David Corenswet Expands National Reach with Austin Film Festival Selection
"Woman in the Sky" Offers an Intimate Portrait of Love, Legacy, and Magda Salvesen's Pioneering Role in Artist Estate Management.
SYD SOLOMON
SYD SOLOMON
SYD SOLOMON
Origins: Sarasota Artist Colony, 1945-1965
ABOUT:
This historical group exhibition revisits the creative legacy of the Sarasota Colony—a vibrant and visionary community of artists who helped shape the region’s post-war cultural identity and laid the groundwork for Sarasota’s emergence as a thriving arts destination.
Drawn to the Gulf Coast for its climate, light, and Ringling School of Art, these painters, printmakers, and educators established studios, taught classes, and exhibited widely, fostering a collaborative spirit that flourished between 1945 and 1965. Origins is a visual tribute to this remarkable era—highlighting the innovation, camaraderie, and enduring influence of the colony's members.
FEATURED ARTISTS INCLUDE:
Syd Solomon, Helen Sawyer, Elden Rowland, Shirley Clement, George Kaiser, Martha and William Hartman, Judy Axe, Robert Chase, Jerry Farnsworth, Harold Slingerland, Al Parker, Hilton and Dorothy Leech, Eugene White, Loran Wilford, Ben Stahl, Sidney Laufman, Thornton Utz, Glenna Finch, Roy Nichols, Nike Parton, Robert Larsen, and more.
January 20-April 11, 2026
SYD SOLOMON
Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed
Exploring the dualities of war — concealment and revelation, chaos and order – Solomon illustrates the complexities and nuances of military service, providing a visual representation of the psychological and emotional landscapes that Veterans navigate through his abstract art.
February 7, 2025 - June 1, 2026