Figural Abstraction
Baizerman, Eugenie
about 1945
Artwork Information
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Title:
Figural Abstraction
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Artist:
Baizerman, Eugenie
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Artist Bio:
American, 1899–1949
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Date:
about 1945
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Medium:
Oil on canvas
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Dimensions:
53 7/8 x 43 7/8 inches
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Credit Line:
Wichita Art Museum, Museum purchase with funds donated by Howard and Rose Marcus
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Object Number:
2002.1
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Display:
Not Currently on Display
About the Artwork
Eugenie Baizerman, of Polish-Jewish birth, was subject to the traumatic and unsettled circumstances of the first half of the twentieth century. Yet one would never suspect distress in the life of a painter whose use of color was so keen that her husband, the sculptor Saul Baizerman, discerned 826 color gradations in one painting alone. Her juxtapositions of bright, high-key color result in a vibrancy and beauty that make her one of the great colorists of the twentieth century.
Her interest in color began in the 1920s, when she discovered that it could be treated as more than a mere product of light; color could have its own justification as pure expression. Her devotion to the human figure, however, prevented her from abandoning representation for total abstraction. The balance Baizerman attempted to strike between the use of color for its own sake versus representation created a palpable energy in her paintings.