The Evolution of Jo Baer's Vision
Jo Baer was an American painter, draftsperson, photographer, architectural drafter, and artist. Her early work in the 1960s was characterized by spare, hard-edge non-objective painting. During this period, she developed the Korean series, which consisted of sixteen canvases featuring a dominant field of densely painted white enclosed by bands of sky blue and black. These works were designed to explore the notion of light through optical illusion. As her career progressed, she experimented with color and the edges of the canvas, creating the Wraparound paintings where thick black bands edged by various colors extended around the sides of the canvas.
In the mid-1970s, Baer moved away from non-objective painting, a transition captured in works such as The Old Year. She began a period of "radical figuration," where she fused images, symbols, words, and phrases in a non-narrative manner. Her later paintings often featured layered fragments of animal, human bodies, and objects in muted, translucent colors, alongside symbols from various civilizations and quotations from literature.
Artistic Style and Legacy
Baer's approach to painting underwent significant shifts throughout her life. Her work moved from the strict boundaries of Minimalism toward a style that embraced metaphor, symbolism, and hierarchical relationships. In her later years, her paintings became more declarative, utilizing richer colors and sharper light-dark contrasts to address themes such as war, sexuality, and the natural world.
Her notable works include:
