Irene Rice Pereira

Welcome to the official website of Irene Rice Pereira (1902-1971). I. Rice Pereira, as she was known, was one of the foremost modernist artists of the 20th Century. Her paintings can be found in museums around the world. The purpose of this website is to direct inquirers to her paintings, publications about her, museums and galleries exhibiting her work, archives and relevant websites. One of those sites, www.juanitaguccione.com, is devoted to the painting career of her sister. Correspondence and original appreciations of Irene Rice Pereira’s work and life are invited.

Vacillating Progression, a Pereira oil on layers of coruscated glass is one of the artist’s best works. Displayed at The Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute
in Utica, New York,it ranks with such other Pereira masterworks as
Green Mass at The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. There is hardly a better exemplar of the artist’s reputation than this singular work.—DM

Among a small group of art works donated by Sidney Mishkin to his alma mater, Baruch College, is Irene Rice Pereira’s Affluent Surface. Other paintings in this highly refined selection are Max Ernst’s Mother and Daughter, Barbara Hepworth’s Bimorphic, Marsden Hartley’s Mount Katahdin—Snowstorm, Alfred Henry Maurer’s Two Women and Girl in Grey, Georges Mathieu’s Festival in Norwich, and untitled works by
Alexander Calder and Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echauren.

Djelloul Marbrook, Pereira’s nephew, said of the gift that it would have pleased Pereira on several counts, not the least being that she spent a good part of her life painting in a studio an easy walk from Baruch’s present location. He remarked that Pereira thought highly of Ernst, Hartley, Hepworth, Matta and Calder.

A 1964 Pereira oil painting, Light Extending Itself, is part of the Non-Objective Art exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition is itself part of the larger Modern Life exhibition on the 5th floor. Light Extending Itself is the gift of Howard Weingrow.

Pereira had a special connection to Brooklyn. She, her two sisters, brother and mother lived near the museum when Pereira first went to work as secretary to help support the family. She and her younger sister, the artist Juanita Guccione, then called Anita Rice, followed their younger sister, Dorothy, into art studies, but Dorothy died in her early thirties.

Both Irene and Anita studied at Pratt Institute and traveled to North Africa in the 1930s. Irene visited various places in Morocco and Algeria. Anita settled in Bou Saada, Algeria, for several years. Their experience of
the quality of light in North Africa had a lasting impact on their work.

In 1935-6, Anita, who then painted under the name Juanita Marbrook, exhibited a number of paintings she had made in Algeria in The Brooklyn Museum. The work received considerable media attention at the time. These works are now part of 174 oils, watercolors and drawings permanently exhibited in Algiers by Sonatrach, the Algerian national energy company. It is believed the artist is the first American woman painter to receive this kind of attention by a Muslim nation.

The Pereira archive at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, is receiving a significant addition of documents and photographs.

Djelloul Marbrook, the artist’s nephew, recently discovered two boxes of papers and photographs overlooked in his initial donation of the Pereira papers to the Schlesinger.

The original papers were given to the Schlesinger after the artist’s death in 1971 and subsequently Mr. Herrick Jackson made a grant to the library to pay for organizing the archive. The library is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ms. Kathryn Allamong Jacob, Schlesinger curator of manuscripts, said, “We are excited at the prospect of seeing this wonderful collection grow.”

The artist’s personal library resides at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.

This is the Schlesinger Library’s official description of its Pereira holdings:

Author : Pereira, I. Rice (Irene Rice), 1902-1971
Title : Papers, 1929-1976 (inclusive)

Finding aids : Unpublished finding aid.
Description : 10 linear ft.
History notes : Abstract painter, poet, and philosopher, Pereira was a major figure in the art world from 1930. She worked with the WPA Federal Art Project in New York, 1935-1939; in the 1940s she experimented with new media (glass, plexiglass, and plastic) of the constructivist school; and in the 1950s she returned to paint and canvas. She published numerous books on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. For further biographical information, see Notable American Women: The Modern Period (1980).
Summary : Correspondence, manuscripts of her writings, notebooks on philosophy, articles, poems, painting inventories, photos, both personal and of art work, exhibition catalogs, financial records, grant applications, and printed material pertain to Pereira’s interests and career.
Restrictions : At least one location has information and/or restrictions on access. Click on the holdings link(s) for specific information.
Notes : Portions of the collection are available on microfilm at the Archives of American Art.
Cite as : I. Rice Pereira Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard university.

Pereira’s “Study for a Rug” was exhibited May 11-August 19, 2007, at the new Donald W. Reynolds Visual Arts Center in the Oklahoma City Museum of Art as part of the exhibition, “Breaking the Mold: Selections from the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 1961-1968.” The Oklahoma City Museum bought the entire WGMA collection of 153 works in 1968 when the WGMA merged with the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

Irene Rice Pereira’s Spirit of Space (1957) was included in the exhibition “femme brut(e)” September 14, 2006, through February 4, 2007, at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 625 Williams Street, New London, CT, tel (860) 443-2545 (http://www.lymanallyn.org/exhibitions.html)