?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
HANNELORE BARON Abstract Assemblage.
Mixed media collage with ink, watercolor, paper and fabric on paper, 1983. 261x208 mm; 10 1/4x8 1/8 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "C-83070" in pencil, verso.
Ex-collection private collection, New York.
An Abstract Expressionist in a psychological sense, Baron's (1926-1897) works served as her release of trapped emotions, political beliefs and anger. Like many proponents of the New York School, the majority of Baron's oeuvre tend to reflect on the human condition and moral crisis in the post-World War II era. These views stem from her traumatic and violent childhood facing Jewish persecution and displacement in Nazi Germany. When Baron was a teenager, her family fled the intensifying horror and in 1941 ultimately settled in New York. Despite psychological breakdowns that continued into adulthood, she persisted to study art informally, later becoming a member of the National Association of Women Artists. Baron began incorporating collage elements into her work in the late 1950s. Like other Abstract Expressionists, Baron placed an importance on experimentation with materials, texture, and her artistic process. Her materials were carefully chosen, believing that old, found material gave her work its soulfulness. Box constructions and assemblage lent her work a sense of mystery and displaced time.
In the 1970s, Baron's works became more political, rejecting the wars and violence playing out in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. During this time period, she transformed ordinary objects into statements of empathy, hope and survival. Though Baron had regularly exhibited her works since the late 1960's, it was during her later career and after her death, that her work became the subject of several major museum exhibitions, including a traveling solo exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institute in 2002.
