Alice Baber (August 22, 1928 – October 2, 1982) was an American abstract expressionist painter who worked in oil and watercolor. She was educated in the United States and in the 1950s and 1960s she studied and lived in Paris. She also traveled around the world. Baber, a feminist, organized exhibits of women artists' work.
Contents
Early life
Baber was born in Charleston, Illinois. She grew up in Kansas, Illinois and Miami, Florida. Her family traveled south to Florida in the winters at a doctor's suggestion because of Alice's poor health, starting around the age of two. She was interested in becoming an artist from an early age. Baber remembers that around age five she decided she would either be a "poet or painter." At age eight, she was formally studying drawing and by age twelve became "so advanced she was enrolled in a college-level class."
When World War II, broke out, the yearly trips Florida ended; around that time, Baber was in her early teens. Baber remembers traveling to Florida and staying in a tent: "that had a certain kind of romance. And later I always felt a bit like a nomad".
Education
Baber chose to study art when she attended Lindenwood College for Women in Missouri, where she spent two years before transferring to Indiana University. At Indiana University, she studied under the figurative expressionist, Alton Pickens. She received her Master of Arts in 1951 and then began to travel through Europe. She studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts and lived in Paris in the late 1950s and 1960s. During her travels in Europe, she made a living through her writing and was the art editor of McCall's.