Minimalist artist Jo Baer was born Josephine Gail Kleinberg in Seattle, Washington in 1929. She studied at the University of Washington, Seattle from 1946 to 1949, majoring in biology, while taking freshman art courses. She pursued studies in Gestalt psychology in New York City with the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research from 1950 to 1953.

Initially an Abstract-Expressionist when that movement was at its height in the 1950s, Baer moved to geometric, hard-edged painting when that aesthetic surfaced in the 1960s, perhaps as a result of meeting minimalist artists Donald Judd and Dan Flavin in 1962. In the 1970s, her style changed back to an expressionist handling of animal and human forms.

She moved to Ireland in 1975, London in 1982 and Amsterdam in 1984, collaborating with English artist Bruce Robbins from 1978 to 1984.

Baer, in a 1983 article in "Art in America" essentially attacking abstraction, declared that she is "no longer an abstract artist." While she describes her goal of "radical figuration," Baer remains, in the 1990s into the new millennium, an abstractionist manifesting its various idioms, from nearly pictographic drawing in paint to working with broader, simpler shapes.

In 1969, Baer received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She taught briefly in 1969-70 in New York City at the School of Visual Arts.

The artist has exhibited widely around the world, with one-person shows in many venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Noah Goldowsky and Fischbach galleries, in New York City; Galleria Toselli in Milan, Italy and Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne, Germany. Baer participated in group exhibitions such as Documenta 4 in Kassel, Germany, Kolnischer Kuntsverein, Cologne, Germany and the Guggenheim Museum, New York City.

Jo Baer's paintings are in these public collections:

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Arts Council of Great Britain, London, England

Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md.

Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC, N.Y.

Fort Worth Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, Arnhem, NL.

Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, NL.

Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, West Germany

Kunstmusem Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Ludwig Coll., Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln, West Germany

Ludwig Coll., Suermondt Museum, Aachen, West Germany

Levi-Strauss Coll., San Francisco, Calif

Michener Coll., University of Texas at Austin, Texas

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Ill.

Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A.

Museum of Modern Art, NYC, N.Y.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, N.Y.

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, Calif.

Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague, NL.

Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, NL.

Saatchi Coll., London, England

San Francisco MOMA, S.F. Calif..

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC, N.Y.

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL.

Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL.

Tate Gallery, London, England

Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, NY.

University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina


From Jules and Nancy Heller, "North American Women Artists of the 20th Century"
internet: http://www.jobaer.net


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