Alice Baber (American, 1928-1982) "Green Around Green"
Hammer Price w/ BP
$170,800
| Lot #: 14 Alice Baber (American, 1928-1982) "Green Around Green" |
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Oil on canvas. Signed 'Baber' (lower left). Signed, titled and dated 'Alice Baber "Green Around Green" 1966' (on reverse). Catalog Note: For further reading on the artist, see: Levin, Gail. Alice Baber: An Artist's Triumph Over Tragedy. Pegasus Books, 2026. Provenance Note: Michael Pauker, board chairman of the Barclay Knitwear Company Inc., which he had founded almost a half century ago, believed to be one of the oldest and most successful manufacturers of men's sportswear in the United States. In addition to an active business career, Mr. Pauker spent considerable time and effort on many philanthropic causes. Following World War II, he was a participant in the campaign that was to bring many of the survivors of the Nazi era to what was then Palestine. He was a past chairman of the March of Dimes, the United Jewish Appeal, the Greater New York Fund, a director of Maimonodes Institute, a founder of the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and a trustee of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue. |
| 33 x 33 in. |
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Provenance Artists for SEDF (Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality, Inc.) Collection of Michael and Frida (Kleinfeld) Pauker, New York, New York. Jane Margot Davis, Kingston, New York, acquired by descent, 1971. |
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Condition No in-paint or restoration. |
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Auction Date Sep 25, 2025 |
Details:
Alice Baber was a brilliant American abstract painter who turned pure color into poetry. Rising out of the post - Abstract Expressionist scene in New York, she developed a radiant language of floating ovals and translucent washes that seemed to glow from within - like stained glass in motion.
During the 1960s and 70s, her canvases were shown at the Whitney, MoMA, and museums worldwide, earning her international recognition at a time when few women painters broke through. A passionate advocate for women in the arts, she lived and worked between New York and Sag Harbor, L.I, Paris, and Florida, always chasing light and color.
Reviews in Artnews and the New York Times in 1966 focused on Baber’s luminous colors - jumping, hopping, beating, and leaping “between islands to pulsate at different speeds, throbbing in one area, and then flowing easily” and drifting “lyrically over a white field toward a gentle vortex.”
Her paintings - now in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and beyond - remain prized for their lyricism, luminosity, and fearless celebration of color as a living force.
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