Irene Rice Pereira (August 5, 1902 – January 11, 1971) was an American

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...

ist, poet and philosopherGuide to the Irene Rice Pereira Papers
, 1928-1971, Archives and Special Collections, National Museum of Women in the Arts, accessed March 29, 2013 who played a major role in the development of

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

in the United States. She is known for her work in the genres of

geometric abstraction Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Although the genre was popu ...

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

and

lyrical abstraction Lyrical abstraction arose from either of two related but distinct art movement, trends in Post-war Modernist painting: * European ''Abstraction Lyrique'': a movement that emerged in Paris, with the French art critic Jean José Marchand being cr ...

, as well as her use of the principles of the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

school. Her paintings and writings were significantly influenced by the complex intellectual currents of the 20th century.

Early life

Pereira was born Irene Rice on August 5, 1902 in

Chelsea, Massachusetts Chelsea is a city in Suffolk County, Massachusetts Suffolk County ( ) is located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 797,936, making it the fourth-most populous county in ...

, a suburb of Boston, the eldest of three sisters and one brother. Her sister Juanita Rice Guccione was also a painter. During her career, she often gave her year of birth as 1907, which appears on some legal documents. She spent her childhood in

Great Barrington, Massachusetts Great Barrington is a New England town, town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,172 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Bot ...

, where she spent time reading and writing poetry. After her father died in 1918 she and her family moved to

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York. In 1922 she began working as a stenographer in an accountant's office to help support her family in the wake of her father's death. She briefly attended courses in fashion design at the Traphagen School of Fashion and night courses in literature at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

, and began taking evening art classes at Manhattan's Washington Irving High School. She immersed herself in the

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, originally practised by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers. * Bohemian style, a ...

world of

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

and had a brief affair with the poet and novelist Maxwell Bodenheim.

Beginnings as an artist

In 1927, she enrolled in night art classes at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

in New York City. Among her instructors at the Art Students League were

Jan Matulka Jan Matulka (7 November 1890 – 25 June 1972) was a Czech-American modern artist originally from Bohemia. Matulka's style ranged from Abstract expressionism to landscapes, sometimes in the same day. He has directly influenced artists like Dor ...

and Richard Lahey. In her 1929 class Matulka provided Pereira with her first exposure to the artistic principles of the European avant-garde that would shape her work; most notably those of the

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

, and

Constructivism (art) Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected dec ...

. In 1931, she traveled to Europe and

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

to further her painting studies, attending sessions at the Académie Moderne and studying with

Amédée Ozenfant Amédée Ozenfant (15 April 1886 – 4 May 1966) was a French cubist painter and writer. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier) he founded the Purist movement. Education Ozenfant was born into a bourgeois ...

in Paris.artist biography from Smithsonian American Art Museum
, accessed March 29, 2013 She also spent time in Switzerland and Italy. After returning to New York in 1933 she studied briefly with

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

at the Art Students League. Her friends and colleagues were

Burgoyne Diller Burgoyne A. Diller (January 13, 1906 – January 30, 1965) was an American abstract painter. Many of his best-known works are characterized by orthogonal geometric forms that reflect his strong interest in the De Stijl movement and the work of ...

Dorothy Dehner Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994) was an American painter and sculptor. Early life Dorothy Dehner was born on December 23, 1901, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother was a passionate suffragette. When Dehner was ten years o ...

, David Smith, Hilla Rebay,

Arshile Gorky Arshile Gorky ( ; born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, ; April 15, 1904 – July 21, 1948) was an Armenian Americans, Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his life as a national of the ...

John D. Graham John D. Graham (, Kyiv, Ukraine – June 27, 1961, London, England) was a Ukrainian–born United States, American Modernism, modernist and Figurative art, figurative painter, art collector, and a mentor of modernist artists in New York City. B ...

, and

Frederick Kiesler Frederick Jacob Kiesler (September 22, 1890 – December 27, 1965) was an Austrian-American architect, theoretician, theater designer, artist and sculptor. Biography Kiesler was born Friedrich Jacob Kiesler in Czernowitz, Austro-Hungarian Empir ...

The Design Laboratory

In 1935, Pereira helped found the Design Laboratory, a cooperative school of industrial design established under the auspices of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

. The curriculum of the Design Laboratory was similar to that of the

. All students were required to take a basic course that included an introduction to chemistry, physics, and art materials. Students experimented with materials in laboratories in order to understand their physical properties. There was an emphasis on social considerations, and students were taught the social implications of technological developments alongside classes in art, music, and literature. Pereira taught classes in painting, composition, and design synthesis. She continued teaching at the Design Laboratory when it lost its financial support from the

on June 27 of 1937. On July 1, 1937 the Design Laboratory became part of the FAECT School, located at 114 E. 16th St. New York. When classes resumed on September 27 of 1937 the school was known as The Laboratory School of Industrial Design. She resigned her position in October 1939.

Mid and later years

Pereira painted throughout her life. Her paintings first gained recognition in the early 1930s, when she exhibited at the ACA Galleries and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in New York. With the showcase at the Whitney, she became one of the first women (along with Loren MacIver and

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 March 6, 1986) was an American Modernism, modernist painter and drafter, draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "M ...

) to be given a retrospective at a major New York museum. In the late 1930s, she started to move away from realistic work toward abstraction and experimented with painting on layered glass. In 1943, Pereira was included in

Peggy Guggenheim Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemianism, bohemian, and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who we ...

's show '' Exhibition by 31 Women'' at the

Art of This Century gallery The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts d ...

in New York. In 1946, Pereira was included in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

's exhibition '' 1946:Fourteen Americans''. During the latter part of her career, Pereira rejected

and experienced difficulties with gallery owners and museum directors. She believed that art and literature were being swallowed up in "a chaotic void of mindlessness." Eventually, she left New York permanently and moved to Spain. She died of emphysema on January 11, 1971, in

Marbella Marbella ( , , ) is a city and municipality in southern Spain, belonging to the province of Málaga in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is part of the Costa del Sol and is the headquarters of the Association of Municipalities of the re ...

, Spain.

Style

Pereira was interested in exploring the role of the artist in society, believing artists to be on a par with industrialists. She created "machine paintings" that incorporated images of technological components, including ship's ventilators, generators, and funnels, as well as hinges, levers, and gears. ''Boat Composite'' from 1932, in the collection of the

is an example of her "machine paintings". Pereira began to explore abstraction in the late 1930s and her work included fewer references to machines. She became known for the geometric and rectilinear paintings created during this period. ''Abstraction'' from 1940, in the collection of the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. It has one of the largest single co ...

, demonstrates her approach to

. She was interested in finding a way to bring light into her work, and began to incorporate materials such as glass, plastic, gold leaf, and other reflective materials into her paintings. She experimented with radium paint, layers of painted glass, and paint on parchment. In a 1950 statement, she said "My philosophy is the reality of light and space; an ever flowing--never-ceasing--continuity, unfettered by man made machinery, weight and external likenesses. I use geometric symbols because they represent structural essences and contain infinite possibilities of change and dynamics." Pereira signed her work as "I. Rice Pereira," which caused many people to assume that she was a man. Cataloging of her works can be problematic as she frequently left works untitled and reused titles.

Personal life

Irene Rice Pereira's first husband was the commercial artist Humberto Pereira,Biography at official site
, accessed December 2011 a painter, whom she married in 1929. They divorced in 1938 and in 1941, she married George Wellington Brown, a naval architect who shared her interest in applying new materials to art. When this marriage ended in divorce, she married the Irish poet George Reavey in 1950; that marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1959.

Writings

Pereira worked prolifically as a writer, but she never received the same acclaim in this area as she did in painting. She published her first article in 1944, titled ''An Abstract Painter on Abstract Art.'' Her writings included topics such as structure, time, optics, and space. Her self-published book ''The Lapis'' discussed her dreams about the

philosopher's stone The philosopher's stone is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold or silver; it was also known as "the tincture" and "the powder". Alchemists additionally believed that it could be used to mak ...

. The original manuscript of ''The Lapis'', 1954-1955, is housed at Houghton Library, Harvard University, and was a gift of Mrs. Irene Rice Pereira in 1958. ''The Lapis'' was republished in 1957 for a limited 1000 book run. She also wrote poetry and in 1968 she became an Honorary Poet Laureate of the United Poets' Laureate International, which is headquartered in the Philippines. She published her last work, ''The Poetic of the Form on Space, Light and the Infinite'' in 1969. Published writings by Pereira include: ''Light and the New Reality'' (1951), ''The Transformation of Nothing'' (1952), ''The Paradox of Space'' (1952), ''The Nature of Space'' (1956), ''The Lapis'' (1957), ''Crystal of the Rose'' (1959), ''Space, Light and the Infinite'' (1961), ''The Simultaneous 'Ever-Coming To Be (1961), ''The Infinite Versus the Finite'' (1962), ''The Transcendental Formal Logic of the Infinite'' (1966), and ''The Poetics of the Form of Space, Light and the Infinite'' (1968).

Collections

The

Boca Raton Museum of Art Founded by artists, the Boca Raton Museum of Art was established in 1950 as the Art Guild of Boca Raton. The organization has grown to encompass an Art School, Guild, Store, and Museum with permanent collections of contemporary art, photography, ...

, the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

(Washington D.C.),

The Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughli ...

(Washington D.C.), the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

, the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

(Baltimore, Maryland), the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

(New York City), the

Addison Gallery of American Art Addison may refer to: Places Canada * Addison, Ontario, a community United States * Addison, Alabama, a town * Addison, Illinois, a village * Addison, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Addison, Maine, a town * Addison, Michigan, a vil ...

(Andover, Massachusetts), the

(New York City), the

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...

(Dallas, Texas), the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (Utica, New York), the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (Poughkeepsie, New York), the

(New York City), and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) are among the public collections holding work by I. Rice Pereira.

Art works

Listed Chronologically: * (1932) ''Boat Composite''

* (1932) ''Untitled (Boats at Cape Cod)''

* (1936) ''Sketch for Machine Composition #2''

* (1937) ''Machine Composition #2''

* (c.1938) ''Abstract Composition''

* (c.1938) ''Abstract Composition(II)''

* (1939) ''White Rectangles, Number 3''

*(1939) ''Abstract'', Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University * (1939-1940) ''Red Form''

* (1940) ''Abstraction''

* (1940) ''Shadows with Painting''

* (1940) ''Three White Squares'' Private Collection * (c. 1940) ''Untitled (Two Triangles)''

*(c. 1940) ''Transparent Plants'
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University
* (1941) ''White Lines''

* (1942) ''Red, Yellow, and Blue''

* (1942) ''White Lines''

* (1944) ''Green Depth''

* (1945) ''Rose Planes''

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

* (1945) ''Quadrangles in Two Planes''

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

* (1946) ''Transfluent Lines''

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. (1948). ''Painting toward architecture'' (book accompanying 25-venue exhibition organized by the

Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art The Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art (1945) was formed in Meriden, Connecticut, as part of the Miller Company. The collection was formed by then CEO Burton Tremaine Sr. and his wife, Miller Co. art director Emily Hall Tremaine in 1945. Wo ...

). (''Transfluent lines'' on pp. 100-01.) Miller Company: Meriden, CT. Retrieved January 22, 2017. * (1946) ''Transversion''

* (1948) ''Composition''

* (1948) ''Oblique Progression''

* (1949) ''Vacillating Progression'' Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute * (1950) ''Bright Depths''

* (1950) ''Green Mass''

* (1951) ''You''

* (1951) ''Evaporating Night''

* (1951) ''Two Becomes One''

* (1952) ''Shooting Stars''

* (1952) ''Daybreak''

* (1952) ''Somewhere Today''

* (1953) ''Zenith''

* (1953) ''Mecca''

* (1953) ''Roselit Day''

* (1954) ''Threshold of Eternity''

* (1954) ''Heart of Light''

* (1955) ''Landscape of the Absolute''

* (1959) ''Efflorescence Of Space''

* (1960) ''Omega''

* (1961) ''The Celestial Gate Sways on the Ringing Swells''

* (1964) ''Light Extending Itself''

* (No Date) ''Heart of Flame''

* Plates from ''The Lapis'', 1954. This book is held in the collections of many museums and universities, including; the

, the

Yale University Library The Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Originating in 1701 with the gift of several dozen books to a new “Collegiate School," the library's collection now contains approximately 14.9 m ...

, the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, Lamont Library, and Loeb House, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library s ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, and others. * (1954) ''Version No 2, 12/25/54, Image from Dream, 11/29/54''

* (1954) ''II. The Lapis in a Vertical Position, Man - God, Soul - Spirit''

* (1954) ''III. Vertical View of the Lapis from Above, Mediaeval Image of the World-View''

* (1954) ''IV. Renaissance Image of the World-View''

* (1954) ''V. The Image in Perspective''

References

External links

Smithsonian American Art Museum biography

Works in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection

American Abstract Artists

I. Rice Pereira Papers.Schlesinger Library
, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Irene Rice Pereira Papers in the Archives of American Art
Smithsonian Institution
Irene Rice Pereira Papers in the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Baltimore Museum of Art Collection

Irene Rice Pereira Papers
at the

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openi ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pereira, I. Rice 1902 births 1971 deaths American abstract painters Art Students League of New York alumni Writers from Chelsea, Massachusetts Artists from Massachusetts Federal Art Project artists 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters Traphagen School of Fashion alumni