VVFA Modern | Artists | Irene Rice-Pereira (American, 1902 - 1971)
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Irene Rice-Pereira was a foremost Modernist artist and influential advocate for women in the arts. An abstract painter whose work reflects her interest in light, space, transience and mysticism, Rice-Pereira reached the height of her career in 1953, when the Whitney Museum held a retrospective of her work with Loren MacIver, and Life Magazine published a centerfold photo examination of her work. Transforming Night was painted during this period and exhibited in 1953 at the San Francisco Museum of Art.
Rice-Pereira’s active artistic career began in the 1930s. Married to a marine engineer, she created Cubist compositions influenced by the machinery and functional beauty of the ships designed by her husband. A trip to Morocco in the mid-30s added a passion for light and pure form to her approach, as she was taken by the bleaching sunlight on sand dunes and the intrinsically-Cubist architecture of the Magreb. By the 1940s, she was working with unconventional materials, such as fluted and coruscated layers of glass to capture her desired light effects.
As Abstract Expressionism came to dominate the American Art scene, Rice-Pereira held to her Geometric Abstraction, and her body of work has an integrity and persistence that reveals her independence of mind. A spellbinding lecturer and outspoken critic of injustice towards women, Rice-Pereira recognized that works by women artists were rarely shown in major collections, and women who did achieve success, she said, were often collaborators with more famous male artists. In her fight for women in the arts, she created a body of work that is now included in the most important public collections in America.
Collections
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Dallas Museum of Art, TX
Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington DC
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
Guggenheim Museum, NY
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Brooklyn Museum, NY
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Phoenix Art Museum, AZ
Denver Art Museum, CO
Rice-Pereira’s active artistic career began in the 1930s. Married to a marine engineer, she created Cubist compositions influenced by the machinery and functional beauty of the ships designed by her husband. A trip to Morocco in the mid-30s added a passion for light and pure form to her approach, as she was taken by the bleaching sunlight on sand dunes and the intrinsically-Cubist architecture of the Magreb. By the 1940s, she was working with unconventional materials, such as fluted and coruscated layers of glass to capture her desired light effects.
As Abstract Expressionism came to dominate the American Art scene, Rice-Pereira held to her Geometric Abstraction, and her body of work has an integrity and persistence that reveals her independence of mind. A spellbinding lecturer and outspoken critic of injustice towards women, Rice-Pereira recognized that works by women artists were rarely shown in major collections, and women who did achieve success, she said, were often collaborators with more famous male artists. In her fight for women in the arts, she created a body of work that is now included in the most important public collections in America.
Collections
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Dallas Museum of Art, TX
Delaware Museum of Art, Wilmington, DE
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington DC
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
Guggenheim Museum, NY
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Brooklyn Museum, NY
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA
Phoenix Art Museum, AZ
Denver Art Museum, CO
