Irene Rice Pereira

Mid-Century Modernism: Origins and Evolution, a lecture scheduled by the Detroit Institute of Arts at 6:30April 27th, will examine the work of Irene Rice Pereira and several of her peers. By 1955 many American artists, architects, and designers broke free of European precedents and developed distinctively American forms of modernism. Independent curator Susan Larsen looks at mid-twentieth-century painters, showing the ways in which they drew on the progressive political ideals of the 1930s, with a focus on artists represented in the DIA’s collection, including Josef Albers, Pereira, Mark Rothko, and Vaclav Vytlacil. Pereira’s 1950 oil painting, Bright Beyond, will be featured. The presentation is sponsored by the Associates of the American Wing.

One of the highlights of Modern Masters at Wendt Gallery in Manhattan this October is Transforming Night (left), an oil painting by I. (Irene) Rice Pereira. It was included in a 1953 Whitney Museum retrospective exhibition of her work and that of Loren MacIver.

Modern Masters is a second edition of the gallery’s inaugural Non-Objective or Not exhibition. Steven Lowy, Wendt Modern’s curator at large, will continue to showcase masterworks by Art of Tomorrow artists Rudolf Bauer, Hilla Rebay, Rolph Scarlett and Pereira. Bauhaus artist Xanti Schawinsky and Texas modernist Seymour Fogel. The exhibition serves as a preview to upcoming solo and two-person exhibitions scheduled for 2011.

Wendt Gallery is a fine art gallery whose purpose is to create greater awareness of the importance the arts play in contemporary culture. By showcasing past and present, representational and abstract art the gallery hopes to bring special focus to the influence that early modern artists have played on the art of today.

For more information please call 212-838-8818, visit www.wendtmodern.co. Wendt is on the 8th floor of the Fuller Building at 57th Street and Madison Avenue. A reception will be held October 14th, 6-8 p.m.

A newly conserved parchment painting by Irene Rice Pereira, Composition In White, was among the works shown in an exhibition at the Newark Museum called Constructive Spirit, Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s. The show opened Feb. 17, 2010, and closed May 23, 2010. Dr. Karen A. Bearor, Pereira’s biographer, contributed an essay to the catalogue entitled Light Play in Abstract Art and Film. In her essay she discusses Pereira’s work in relationship to other artists in the show who were also interested in light and light projection.

Work by Irene Rice Pereira was included in Body, Line, Motion: Selections from the Permanent Collection at the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, New York from Jan. 10 to Apr. 11, 2010.

This exhibition opened Friday, February 5, 2010 the same day the artist was featured in an exhibition in Manhattan at the new Wendt Gallery in the Fuller Bulding at 57th Street and Madison Avenue.

The Dorsky exhibition included works depicting human and animal forms that emphasize movement, dance, and ritualistic activity. It was curated by Amy Lipton.

Irene Rice Pereira was uncommonly aware of the culture in which she worked, as an index of the correspondence of the cultural critic Parker Tyler at The New York Public Library shows.The archive contains a letter from Pereira written in 1966. It is contained on page 14 of a pdf file.

Tyler was well known as a champion of the avant-garde in film, art and literature. HIs papers and those of his friend, Charles Boltenhouse, a poet and filmmaker, are available for viewing in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library of the main library.

Pereira wrote frequently to tastemakers and other artists, and so her correspondence is likely to be found in a broad spectrum of archival material. —DM

Rose Planes, 1945

Pereira’s Rose Planes, 1945, is one of more than 108,000 images from the AMICA (formerly The Art Museum Image Consortium Library). More than 20 museums participate in this project. Rose Planes is owned by The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.

I. Rice Pereira’s third husband, George Reavey, was the first translator into English of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Reavey, an Irish poet and close friend of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, had been Great Britain’s cultural attache in Moscow during World War II.

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Welleseley College in Massachusetts is offering a series of podcasts featuring the work of 42 poets and artists, including Thomas, Frank O’Hara, Reavey and the artists Helen Phillips and Willem deKooning.

A portfolio of 21 etchings and poems was published in 1960, 11 years before the artist’s death. The audio track representing this collaboration features Kristina L. Szilagyi, Class of 200, reading Omega by Reavey. Each print integrates text and image, including a poem in the hand of the author. The Omega print was made by Pereira, an example of close
collaboration  between Reavey and Pereira over a long period.

The artist and her husband were present at Dylan Thomas’ death in November 1953 in Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, only a few blocks from her studio home at 121 West 15th Street in Manhattan.

Reavey, who was fluent in both French and Russian, was a meticulous reader of poetry, his voice reflecting his precisionist inclinations. Pereira’s own voice—she was a frequent lecturer—was hushed and musical. She was an even better listener than she was lecturer.

Pereira and Reavey were avid party-givers. Reavey would often break into Russian  dances at these parties. Thomas was often their bartender. He was a jolly and mischievous bartender.—DM

Three White Squares

Three White Squares, a 1940 Pereira oil painting, is on exhibit at The D. Wigmore Fine Art Inc., 730 Fifth Avenue, New York City, in an exhibition called Explorations in Black and White: The 1930s through the 1960s. This painting has been reproduced frequently and was included in the seminal 1953 Loren MacIver/I. Rice Pereira restrospective at The Whitney Museum. The show will continue through December 23, 2009.

Women Artists by Margaret Barlow (Rizzoli, 2008, 328 pp) offers an insightful appreciation of Pereira’s career and a color plate of the rarely reproduced What Is Substance?

Ms. Barlow is co-editor of the Woman’s Art Journal. The journal is associated with the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers.

Pereira wrote extensively about the concept of substance and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, UK, has twelve volumes of Pereira notes on the subject.

Women’s Arts Journal.