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Katherine Barieau
Deep Down
1967

About the Item

Watercolor, Gouache and Watercolor and Gouche on paper Collage layers, abstract expressionist painting by Katherine Barieau (American, 1917-2011). Image, 36"H x 28" W. Mat, 47.5"H x 39"W. Signed lower right "Barieau '67" and description tage on verso, with partial exhibition label. Katherine was born in Baltimore, MD, in 1917. She was raised in Cambridge, MA. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1938 and her M.F.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1953. She shared a famous Shattuck Avenue studio with Richard Diebenkorn and Paul Wonner, and enjoyed early success showing her work in San Francisco and New York. Her first important show, “Paintings of Garden and Growth,” (the Adam and Eve paintings) was exhibited at Van-Diemen Lilienfeld Galleries in New York in 1958. She lived in El Cerrito, CA, and taught at many Bay Area schools. She died in 2011, leaving behind a lifetime of strikingly original paintings, and a legacy that a commitment to an art form can provide for a rewarding and well-lived life. Barieau’s work can be found in a handful of public and private collections, including the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA. Katherine Barieau was among the artists associated with the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s. She remained active in the regional art scene throughout the following decades, producing abstract and figurative work in oil, acrylic, watercolor, mixed media and collage. The daughter of Scottish immigrants, Barieau was raised in Cambridge, MA. She graduated from Wellesley College (BA 1938) and later settled in California. Her art studies culminated with her enrollment in the art department at the University California, Berkeley (MFA 1953). A quote from a 1992 artist statement reads, "I was caught up in the wave of Abstract Expressionism and influenced by the riches in the Unconscious (I had a Jungian therapist). I have never ceased to experiment with media and searching to find how best to express inner ideas. It was wonderful to be exposed to established and active painters, to have a chance to study with experienced painters, to have friends who were also exploring and involved." Her teachers included John Haley, James McCray, Glenn Wessels and Felix Ruvolo. Her friends included fellow UC students Paul Wonner, Theophilus Brown and Jerrold Davis - as well as Richard Diebenkorn after this return to Berkeley in 1953. Barieau also studied with the California watercolorist Alexander Nepote, and with the New York School Abstract Expressionists Esteban Vicente and Kyle Morris. Like many others of her generation in the Bay Area, the artist also worked in a figurative style in the 1950s and later. Over the years, she took interest in a variety of subjects. Music was one inspiration - Barieau had studied piano and violin as a child, and later in life she played the viola. Her travels in California, Britain, Egypt and elsewhere also influenced her art. The artist exhibited in New York at the Van Diemen-Lillienfeld Galleries (1958 solo show, and group shows) and at many venues in the San Francisco region, including the Lucien Labaudt Gallery. Her last gallery show (a retrospective) was held in San Francisco in 2009. Barieau also taught, most notably as instructor of painting and later assistant professor at the California College of Art. A set of course materials she prepared in 1961 included a statement of advice that captured her own philosophy as an artist: "Do not accept an academic reproduction of the figure on your canvas. Look until you can feel an individual reaction to the relationships of the space. Your expressions of your reaction are related to your sense of personal freedom. Aim for freedom." During a lifetime of painting, Barieau moved seamlessly between abstraction and figuration, large canvases and small studies on paper, and oils, acrylics, watercolors, collages and prints. She filled early canvases with meditations on the Garden of Eden, the figures of Adam and Eve seemingly transfixed by the painterly bravura of their surroundings. Later canvases, equally ambitious, are spare—an interplay of just a few brushstrokes suggesting the relationship between musical notes, or words in a poem. She filled sketchbooks with quick watercolor studies and heavily worked pencil drawings alike. She filled them in the studio and on the road. The latter chronicle trips as she experienced them in real time. Early pages contain “anticipation of” drawings, abstractions in which she seems to search herself for clues about the nature of a place as she readies herself to visit. These are followed by airport sketches—people walking with luggage, reading newspapers—and then quick aerial landscapes painted from the plane. The bulk of the books contain paintings and drawings made on site. Even if the works did not masterfully harness the powers of color, gesture and form (which they unfailingly do), they would interest an anthropologist, a sociologist, a historian and a geologist alike for the faithful record they keep of what she saw everywhere she looked. New York’s skyline in the late 1940s; methods of fishing on the Nile river in the 1970s; ways of dress in Latin America in the 80s; the seating arrangement of her local symphony orchestra in their summertime concert series; these and countless other facts of Barieau’s experience are recorded in a decisive and exuberant play of color and line. The sketchbooks remain largely intact, but Barieau removed hundreds of drawings herself, mounting and matting them. It is from these works that the fifteen sketches presented here are chosen. Plucked from their chronological place in Barieau’s life and presented in the isolation of the picture frame, such works display a remarkable painterly sensibility and demand the attention we naturally accord to works of art. But as a group, these works also testify to a life of constant wonder at the beauty and variety of the world, and a strong faith in painting as a means to translate this wonder for others.

Creator:
Katherine Barieau (1917 - 2011, American)
Creation Year:
1967
Dimensions:
Height: 47.5 in (120.65 cm)Width: 39 in (99.06 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
Medium:
Paper,Watercolor,Gouache
Movement & Style:
Abstract Expressionist
Period:
1960-1969
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Soquel, CA
Reference Number:
Seller: R34961stDibs: LU5421714823

Deep Down

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