Alice Baber

1928 - 1982

BiographyBorn in Charleston, Illinois, Baber relocated with her family to the Florida Everglades at the height of the Depression. It was the wealth of natural beauty there that inspired the young Baber and ultimately dictated the palette and subject of her painting. She traveled to India and South America, where she was further stimulated by nature's splendor and the native animal life. Baber was also passionate about poetry, which she infused into her painting by giving abstract artworks metaphorical titles. In 1946, Baber enrolled in her first art history course, where she fell in love with the painting of Paul Cézanne. Her passion for the artist led to a summer in France in 1953, where she studied at the École des Beaux Art and had the opportunity to see the work of Cézanne in person.

EXTENDED BIO:
Alice Baber (August 22, 1928 – October 2, 1982) was an American abstract expressionist painter who worked in oils and watercolor.

Alice was born in Charleston, Illinois. She grew up in Kansas, Illinois and Miami, Florida, her family traveled south to Florida yearly because of Alice poor health. They settled in Illinois when World War II started. She was interested in becoming an artist from an early age and choose to study art when she attended Lindenwood College for Women in Missouri and at Indiana University. She also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and lived in Paris throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. She was briefly married to painter Paul Jenkins, the union lasted from 1964 to 1968.

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, New York are both named in her honor. Numerous major galleries in the United States own her works including the Guggenheim, Whitney, Metropolitan, and the Museum of Modern Art.

REFERENCES:

Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Interview with Alice Baber Conducted by Paul Cummings, May 24, 1973[dead link]
Baber Family Tree. Alice Baber

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