Category — Art history

This essay from the Neuberger Collection explores Pereira’s critique of abstract expressionism, which turned some of the leading critics of her era against her.

The D. Wigmore Gallery in Manhattan has just mounted a small, highly focused and penetrating examination of Pereira’s works on glass and later oil paintings that reflect the evolution of her metaphysics.

By Djelloul Marbrook

This early (1939) geometric abstraction in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan was executed on the eve of her breakthrough to painting on layers of fluted glass. Her second husband, George Wellington Brown, a naval architect, was influential in interesting her in new materials. See other Pereiras at the Metropolitan Museum on the Gallery page.

By Djelloul Marbrook

Mid-Century Modernism: Origins and Evolution, a lecture scheduled by the Detroit Institute of Arts at 6:30 on April 27th, examined 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 Detroit Institute of Art 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.

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. 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.

Work by Irene Rice Pereira was included in “Body, Line, Motion: Selections from the Permanent Collection” at the Samuel Dorsky Museum  at the SUNY campus in New Paltz, New York, from Jan. 10 to Apr. 11, 2010. The exhibition, curated by Amy lipton, included works depicting human and animal forms that emphasize movement, dance, and ritualistic activity.

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

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 Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. Reavey, an Irish poet and close friend of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, had been Great Britain’s cultural attaché 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 death of Pereira. 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 at the death of Dylan Thomas 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