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Jo Baer - Biography

Baer rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s with her ex­treme­ly re­duced paint­ings in which a slen­der strip of col­or along­side a broad­er black band runs round the large white cen­ter of the can­vas. The dif­fer­ence in ef­fect of the col­ored strip next to a pale or a dark field, and the im­pact of Can­vas size and for­mat on the view­er’s per­cep­tions are among the cen­tral top­ics in Baer’s paint­ing.

Baer describes her early ambition to make "poetic objects that would be discrete yet coherent, legible yet dense, subtle yet clear."

Af­ter mov­ing from New York to Ire­land in 1975, Baer’s work un­der­went a fas­ci­nat­ing change in style. It be­came rep­re­sen­ta­tio­n­al, nar­ra­tive and mul­ti­col­ored. She de­vel­oped her prin­ci­ple of “Rad­i­cal Fig­u­ra­tion”, in which she traced el­e­ments from cul­tu­r­al his­to­ry, such as archa­ic cave paint­ing or an­cient Gre­cian cul­ture, back to their ori­gins. This re­search is re­flect­ed by her paint­ings from 1975 on­ward. Her gouach­es re­veal an ear­ly in­ter­est in signs and sym­bols, and al­so a wider spec­trum of col­ors.

ARTWORKS FOR SALE