American Women Artists

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

This grouping features three stylistically distinct works. Elaine de Kooning’s portrait of Fairfield Porter is a moving depiction of the American painter, who was one of de Kooning’s most vocal supporters. The canvas is perhaps the most elaborate among several preparatory drawings and canvases in which she featured Porter. Sally Michel Avery’s Long Nude testifies to her work in larger formats after the passing of her husband and fellow artist Milton Avery in 1965. A lifelong artist herself, she devoted most of her early years to a career in commercial illustration to financially support his practice. Alice Baber’s 1980 The Ring of the Garden of the Jaguar bears her signature painterly language: varyingly translucent washes of color gravitating toward the edges and creating a sense of luminosity across the canvas.

Sources: Debra Bricker Balken, ed., Arthur Dove: A Retrospective (MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997), 104.