Irene Rice Pereira was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and was considerably influenced by her mother who was an amateur artist. Pereira was forced to begin work in her teens as a secretary to support her family after her father's death. She took night classes at the Art Students League in New York City and at age twenty-one married the first of her three husbands, Humberto Pereira, whose name she kept. She adopted the name I. Rice Pereira because then discrimination that beset women in the arts.
Considered the most avid Bauhaus proponent in the United States during the 1930's and 40's, Irene Rice Pereira's oeuvre reflects her commitment to machine-age materials and a philosophy that called for a merging of technology and the transcendental. Her works emphasize the importance of light, space and its continuum; ideas inherent throughout Pereira's entire career. Pereira experimented with various nontraditional materials such as; painting on plastic and glass, and adding substances such as marble dust to her pigments.
Pereira's works from the 1950's and 1960's are thought to be her most comprehensive and successful attempts at creating works which were both technically satisfying and philosophically transcendental. These works represent Pereira's newly developed vocabulary, one in which philosophy and geometric symbolism was used in place of visually interpretable objects
Her works reflect her interest in light, space, and mysticism She died at the age of sixty nine in Marbella, Spain.
Member: American Abstract Artists, 1939; AEA
Exhibited: Whitney Museum of American Art 1934-67 (biennials), 1953 (retrospective), 1976 (retrospective); Museum of Modern Art, 1944; San Francisco Conference, 1945; Critics Choice, New York City, 1945; Cincinnati Modern Art School; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Pepsi Cola, 1946 (prize); Carnegie Institute; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Annual, 1947-60 (6 times); Art Institute of Chicago; Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris; Tate Gallery Art Institute Contemporary Artists, both in London; Brussels, Berlin, Antwerp, Vienna and other European cities; São Paulo, Brazil; Barcelona, Belgrade, Lille, Tours, Toulouse, etc.; Barnett Aden Gallery, Washington, DC (solo); San Francisco Museum of Art, 1947, 1953; Phillips Academy, 1949; Corcoran Gallery biennials, 1949-63 (5 times); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1950; de Young Memorial Museum, 1950; Memphis Academy of Art, 1951; University of Syracuse, 1951; Baltimore Museum of Art; 1951; Ball State Teacher's College, 1951; Durlacher Brothers, 1951, 1953-54; PC, 1952; Dayton, Art Institute, 1952; Des Moines Art Center, 1953; Vassar Colege, 1953; Adele Lawson Gallery, 1954; Hofstra College, 1954; University of Michigan, 1954; Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1955; Wellons Gallery, NYC, 1956; Nordness Gallery, New York City, 1958, 1959, 1961; Rome-New York Foundation, Rome, Italy, 1960.
Works held: Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Newark Museum; University of Arizona; Howard University; Wadsworth Atheneum; Toledo Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Addison Gallery of American Art; Detroit Institute of Art; Vasser College; New Orleans Museum of Art; Walker Art Center; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smith College.; Ball State Teacher's College; Boston University; Brandeis University; Catholic University Washington, DC; Goucher College; Atkins Museum, Kansas City; University Iowa; Guggenheim Museum; State Teacher's College, New Paltz, New York; Syracuse University; Worcester Museum of Art; University of Minnesota; Cincinnati Art Museum; Museum of Art, Phoenix, Arizona; Houghton Library, Harvard University (original mss of "The Lapis"); Miller Collection, Meriden, Connecticut; Dutch Ministry of Information, The Hague; Museum Non-Objective Painting; WPA artist, 1935-39; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.
© David Cook Galleries, LLC
