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.

The show, which will continue through June 15, is co-curated by Serina Manqueros, owner of Wendt Gallery, and Steven Lowy of Portico, Manhattan, curator of the Bauer estate and a Pereira expert.

(Because an imposing armory blocked her view from the front of her third floor flat, she painted in the rear where she could take advantage of north light).

Burns collects books about those formative times, and, as it turns out, a number of them refer to Pereira’s work. He has generously provided a list of such works in his personal library:

—Advancing American Art: Politics and Cultural Confrontation in Mid-Century by Taylor D. Littleton and Maltby Sykes, University of Alabama Press, 2005.

—Jackson Pollock: A Biography by Deborah Solomon, Cooper Square Press, 2001.

—Clement Greenberg: A Life by Florence Rubenfeld, Scriber, 1997.

—Surrealism in Exile and the Beginnings of the New York School by Martica Sawin, MIT Press, 1995.

—Abstract Expressionist Painting in America by William C. Seitz, Harvard, 1983.

“Most of the references are single ones,” Burns says, “thought the first book, Advancing American Art, has more details and reproduces her painting, Composition (1945), which was included in the exhibition, Advancing American Art, which was scheduled to tour in 1946-47 but was withdrawn after being attacked by some politicians and right-wing journalists.”

Burns’ list prompted a recollection by Djelloul Marbrook, the artist’s nephew. In 1963, he recalled, Pereira took part in picketing the Museum of Modern Art with other artists and writers. One of their complaints was that the museum had senabled Abstract Expressionism to steamroller other developments in American art.

Pereira was particularly articulate and passionate on this score, telling the BBC, which covered the event, that Abstract Expressionism had introduced a European angst to an exuberant American art scene. This remark was to prove problematical for her career, because it was misinterpreted in some quarters as an anti-Semitic sentiment, since many of the Abstract Expressionist painters were Jewish and had immigrated from Europe. Marbrook says this accusation stunned Pereira. She had meant simply that a more optimistic vein in American art had been shortchanged by the attention then being given Abstract Expressionism. The incident earned her important enemies.

Pereira participated in the life of Greenwich Village in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Marbrook remembers her sending him with some money for the hard-luck poet Maxwell Bodenheim. Pereira herself experienced hard times, but her  first inclination upon selling a painting and after paying her rent was to share some of her money with a fellow artist or poet.

The title on Surrealism struck another chord in Marbrook’s mind. His mother, the artist Juanita Guccione, Pereira’s younger sister, had been involved with the Surrealists in exile in New York City. She had done art work for their newspaper, Pour La Victoire. Both women studied with Hans Hofmann in Manhattan and Provincetown, MA.
Burns is the author of As Good a Reason As Any, Redbeck Press, UK, 1999;
Confessions of an Old Believer, Redbeck Press, 1996; Cool Kerouac, Limited and numbered edition, The Beat Scene Press, UK, 2008; What I Said, Eyelet Books, UK, 2008; and other books of poems, essays and stories.

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.

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.

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.