Mala Breuer

Sacred Heart Triptych (5.81)

1981

Mala Breuer grew up attending classes in painting and drawing from a young age at the California College of Arts and Crafts.

After high school Breuer attended what is now San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied under many notable artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Clyfford Still, David Park, and Mark Rothko.

Breuer matured as an artist in, and was profoundly affected by, the era of Abstract Expressionism, focusing more on material and application than representation. By the late 1960s, she was pouring water-thinned washes of acrylic paint onto large, wet, stretched, vertical canvases. During an exhibition of those works, a San Francisco gallerist suggested that she head to New York, where abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual art were continuing to gain traction. Breuer listened to this advice and set out for New York with intentions of staying only one year — she stayed for eight.

In New York, Breuer began working with a palette knife, making direct, abstract marks with dark colors and with great density. She gained recognition as a significant painter during her time there. In 1984 Breuer moved to northern New Mexico, a landscape that influenced her use of color, light, and more minimal compositions.

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