Alice Baber: Works From The Permanent Collection

January 24, 2026 - May 31st 2026

Weil Gallery

Alice Baber (1928–1982) was an American abstract painter and printmaker whose work centered on luminous color and gently modulated forms, most often ovals, circles, and floating organic shapes. Her paintings emphasize radiance and spatial ambiguity, inviting viewers into meditative fields of light and atmosphere. Born in Charleston, Illinois, on August 22, 1928, Baber experienced persistent health challenges as a child, spending extended periods in Florida to avoid severe Midwestern winters. These early limitations coincided with an unusually precocious artistic education: she began formal drawing lessons at eight and enrolled in college coursework while still in her early teens. After two years at Lindenwood College in Missouri, she continued her studies at Indiana University in Bloomington under the guidance of figurative expressionist Alton Pickens, earning a master’s degree in 1951.

That same year, Baber traveled to France to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau, marking the beginning of a lifelong pattern of international travel that would significantly inform her work. She spent extended periods in Paris starting in the late 1950s and later traveled widely across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Notable journeys included visits to Japan for an exhibition at the Osaka Pinacotheca Museum, multiple trips to India in the 1970s, a solo exhibition in New Delhi, and a four-month lecture and exhibition tour through thirteen Latin American countries in 1976, sponsored by the United States Information Agency.

By the early 1950s, Baber had settled in New York City, where she became active in the Tenth Street art community. She joined the March Gallery cooperative and presented her first solo exhibition there in 1958, the same year she began attending the Yaddo artist residency in Saratoga Springs. Alongside her studio practice, Baber supported herself through writing and later served as art editor for McCall’s magazine. From 1964 to 1970, she was married to abstract painter Paul Jenkins, with whom she shared a deeply international artistic life.

Baber was also a dedicated advocate for women artists. She organized and curated significant exhibitions highlighting women’s contributions to abstraction, including Color Forum (1972) at the University of Texas at Austin and Color, Light, and Image (1975) at the Women’s Interart Center in New York, presented in conjunction with the United Nations, International Women’s Year. She contributed critical writing to these efforts, including an essay for the Color Forum catalogue. (Left)

Alice Baber died in New York City on October 2, 1982, at the age of fifty-four. Her work is held in major public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as museums throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Her legacy is further preserved through the Baber Midwest Modern Art Collection at the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art in Indiana and the Alice Baber Memorial Art Library at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.