Kerry Schuss Gallery

Press Release

Robert Barber

 

Small Paintings (1965-1975)

 

January 18 - February 15, 2025

 

 

This selection of twelve small oil paintings, dating from the 1965-1975, encapsulate Robert Barber’s explorations in form and color. Presented in five pairs, the works correspond to distinct series within his vast artistic output. This exhibition marks his fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, following his passing last year at the age of 101.

 

In Barber’s playful and vibrant paintings, the same composition is often repeated, though subtly —and impactfully-- transformed by shifts in chroma and scale. In his “Freeway Paintings, inspired by highway underpasses and overpasses observed during a family trip to San Francisco, Barber turns quotidian construction into masterful geometric canvases. His “Mountain Forms” meld landscape painting with lyrical applications of color and gesture, resulting in entirely abstract works that nonetheless offer sweeping impressions of the mountains and valleys of Tucson, where the artist resided for almost seventy years.

 

Who Robert Barber was remains just as fascinating as his work. Born in Minneapolis in 1922, Barber served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a surgical nurse in Okinawa and Saipan. He received an undergraduate degree from the Minneapolis School of Art and an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he studied under Phillip Guston, alongside the artist Ray Parker. After receiving his degrees, he taught at Illinois University of Wesleyan for three years before moving to Tucson, Arizona in 1956, where he became an educator in public schools for nearly three decades. Barber produced art from his teens until his passing, yielding a vast array of extraordinary work spanning over 80 years. Yet beyond a few local Tucson exhibitions, Barber was virtually unknown until a 2015 full-scale retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, co-curated by Anne-Marie Russell and Jocko Weyland.

 

Barber once stated that he was "always looking for abstract shapes in representation" and used a palette meant to evoke "Arizona sunrise and sunsets along with subconsciously being influenced by Mexican and Native American art.” An avid cyclist for the majority of his life, Barber’s pastime allowed him to fully experience the natural beauty surrounding him, which pulsates in his paintings. Ever curious and on the hunt for inspiration, his later work expanded into still-life and realistic figuration, with inspiration often found during his regular “dumpster dive” outings, where he scavenged for car parts, cardboard cartons, and beer boxes.

 

The final decade of Robert Barber’s life was filled with recognition, exhibitions, and accolades, and a prolific creative output. He was featured in group exhibitions as well as a two-person show with Ray Parker at Del Den & Barzune, New York. In 2018, his work was included in the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual "Invitational" exhibition. Barber also began to captivate the public eye: Arizona Public Media made a short film profile on his work and life on the occasion of his retrospective and he was featured in the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Apartmento Magazine. Additionally, several of Barber’s paintings were placed into important collections including the collection of the Minneapolis Museum of Art. This beautiful last chapter spoke to who he was as an artist as much as who he was as a person: ever-engaged, humble, industrious, and making drawings up until his last days.

 

When interviewed by Jocko Weyland at age 100, Weyland asked:  To sum up, do you have any overarching or all-encompassing theoretical underpinnings to propound, or thoughts on painting and art that ties it all together and articulates a personal credo?

 

Barber replied:  I don't have a philosophy about art. I see a shape of something that interests me, and I want to, I need to draw it. Doesn't matter if it's a car part, a hat, or a banana. And to put these disparate parts into a painting so that they work together, for me that's the greatest satisfaction. Really it comes down to, and how you can describe my work in three words is, shapes and colors.^[1]

  

^[1] “Robert Barber”, Apartmento (Issue 31), Spring/Summer 2023, p. 177