Jo Baer, Camden Arts Centre

It’s hard to believe that artist Jo Baer began her career over seventy years ago. The work at her latest exhibition at Camden Arts Centre is just as fresh and contemporary as that of her pioneering Minimalism days in the 1960s.

Jo Baer Camden Arts Centre exhibition

Amongst the Camden Arts Centre exhibitions this spring, Baer will be displaying work from her most recent series, In the Land of the Giants. While mysterious, the works trace a lineage from the roots of Jo Baer Minimalism, through to her experiments in ‘radical figuration’ in the 1990s – together, they demonstrate the fascinating twists and turns that Baer has taken in her long and illustrious career.

Who is Jo Baer? Art and biography…

Baer is considered one of the few true champions of Minimalist painting; by 1960 the mature style of Jo Baer painting had emerged, marking monochrome canvases with recognizable abstract markings. She swapped the minimalist world of New York in 1975, for a Norman Castle in Ireland, leaving the rumours that she destroyed her work behind when she left the States. In Ireland, she adopted a mode of expression she termed ‘radical figuration’, which used images, symbols, words, and phrases in a non-narrative manner. In 1983, she famously declared that she was no longer an abstract artist, saying that metaphor, symbolism, and hierarchical relationships were the necessary building blocks of modern works. She began to incorporate fluid, organic motifs sourced from prehistoric sculptures and cave paintings into her work, leading to the current style to be found in this Camden art gallery. Despite the radical changes in style and content, Baer has continued to follow strict parameters that define the fundamental aspects of her painting.

Baer’s canvases are beguiling, if not sometimes baffling, and viewing these works feels like reading an ancient legend. Critic James Cahill has written, ‘the works from this series, propels us out of the present into a mythic age when gods and men walked the earth together.’ If you are looking for things to do in North London pay a visit to Jo Baer, but prepare yourself for a journey into the esoteric…