IN THE SPOTLIGHT
ALICE BABER
Alice Baber
“WOMEN CHOOSE WOMEN”
There are two major and a few minor themes that run through most of the discussion of “women’s imagery.” One major thesis is that the biological realities of a woman’s body—her round organs, bilateral symmetry, and centrally located uterus—condition her work as an artist. Judy Chicago and her California Institute of Arts Feminist Program group feel that these factors tend to produce centrally focused paintings or sculpture and a preponderance of circular, ovoid, or box shapes in overlapping flowerlike concentric structures. I am afraid, however, that despite the logical neatness of this theory, precious little work can be found, in this show at least, that conforms to it. Alice Baber’s centrifugally massed, ovoid fingers that overlap like petals of a single giant flower provide the only perfect example of such an image in the entire show. Andree Golbin’s bilaterally symmetrical arches of hard-edged color bands fanning out atop an expanse of marbleized painterly ground, Pat Adams’ breastlike form, Nancy Ellison’s pear in section, Buffie Johnson’s enormous Pomegranate, and Dorothy Heller’s Womb of Light provide a few supporting examples, as does Ruth Richard’s circular, sectioned construction in wood. But only a few. By April Kingsley
HENI NEWS
Phillips New York Modern & Contemporary Art Sale Exceeds $8.5 Million
Key sales included works by Andy Warhol, Alice Baber, Nicole Wittenberg, and Sasha Gordon. Other artists featured in the sale ranged from modern masters such as Wolf Kahn, Beverly Pepper, and Gerhard Richter to contemporary figures including Dana Schutz, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Kehinde Wiley. Specialists Avery Semjen, Jaime Israni, and Katie Zoni were involved in the sale.
Following the sale, Phillips New York will present "Alice Baber: Sacred Spaces," an exhibition focusing on the artist's abstract works. The exhibition is scheduled to run from March 6 to March 25, 2026. A related event is noted for March 5.
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
ALICE BABER
50 Years Ago looks back at the art of the 1970s. The decade was marked by rapid social change, political unrest, and an expanding openness to abstraction and new artistic forms. The exhibition reflects the wide range of approaches that gained momentum during this period, including Color Field painting, textile practices, Pop Art, the Washington Color School, and Conceptual art.
The exhibition includes works by artists such as Alice Baber, Lynne Drexler, Sheila Hicks, Robert Indiana, Richard Serra, and Sean Scully. Many of these artists engaged directly or indirectly with the political climate of the time. This includes responses to the Vietnam War and broader social change.
February 26- April 18. 2026
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
BOOK TALK: GAIL LEVIN
Celebrate the launch of new books on feminist biographies, including Alice Barber: An Artist’s Triumph on Tragedy, with a lecture by esteemed Rutgers alumna, Gail Levin (Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York). A book signing and reception will follow Professor Levin’s talk.
This event is organized in partnership with the Rutgers University Department of Art History.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
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
BONHAMS SKINNER
GENE DAVIS
Untitled (Green Triangle)
signed 'G. DAVIS' (on the reverse)
oil on Masonite
30 x 24 in (76.2 x 61.0 cm)
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE
Ending from 12 March 2026, 13:00 EDT
Online, Skinner Marlborough, Massachusetts
BONHAMS SKINNER
GENE DAVIS
Black Turmoil
acrylic on canvas
12 x 10 1/16 in (30.5 x 25.5 cm)
Painted in 1957
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE
Ending from 12 March 2026, 13:00 EDT
Online, Skinner Marlborough, Massachusetts
BONHAMS SKINNER
GENE DAVIS
Black Turmoil
acrylic on canvas
12 x 10 1/16 in (30.5 x 25.5 cm)
Painted in 1957
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE
Ending from 12 March 2026, 13:00 EDT
Online, Skinner Marlborough, Massachusetts
BONHAMS SKINNER
GENE DAVIS
Untitled
oil on canvas
36 x 36 in (91.5 x 91.5 cm)
Painted circa 1955-1960
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART ONLINE
Ending from 12 March 2026, 13:00 EDT
Online, Skinner Marlborough, Massachusetts
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
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
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
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