American (1928-1982

The story of the post-war female artists remains an open book, as new discoveries and rediscoveries are being made every day. Museums, critics and collectors continue to search out female artists of the period.

One of these is Alice Baber. Baber was the wife of noted Abstract Expressionist painter Paul Jenkins, but she was a noted artist in her own right. Unfortunately, her career was cut short when she died of cancer at the age of 54 in 1982.

A painter, printmaker, curator, feminist and writer, Baber’s abstract expressionist paintings in watercolor and oil explored “the infinite range of possibilities” of color and light within and from the form of the circle. With a focus on composition, transparency, color, and line, Baber aimed to depict the form of a feeling through the use of intense pigments. She constantly sought to satisfy her indulgence in what she later called her “color hunger,” likened to the hunger of plants for light. She told one critic that she was looking for "a way to get the light moving across the whole thing."

Born in Illinois, Baber went to live in New York City in the early 50's, where she became a member of the Tenth Street co-operative gallery, the March Gallery, and where she had her first one-person show in 1958. She attended the Yaddo Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York for the first time in that year. She was supporting herself by writing, later becoming art editor of McCall's magazine.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Met, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, MOMA and the Corcoran. The Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton has a library dedicated to her. She was subject of a retrospective exhibition the Swope Museum in 2019.