Independent 20th Century: Loren MacIver and Edith Schloss

September 7 – 10
Cipriani South Street at the Battery Maritime Building
10 South Street, New York, NY, 10004

Thursday, September 7: 11 AM – 8 PM (By Invitation Only)
Friday, September 8: 12 PM – 8 PM
Saturday, September 9: 12 PM – 8 PM
Sunday, September 10: 11 AM – 6 PM

Alexandre is pleased to present a selection of paintings and works on paper by Loren MacIver (1909–1998) and Edith Schloss (1919–2011), two American artists who each spent an extended period of time in Europe in the mid-late 20th century. Both of these artists elevate quotidian subjects in delightful and unexpected ways: MacIver, through her poetic renderings of fleeting moments and objects collected throughout a lifetime of travel and contemplation, and Schloss, in her whimsical views and still lifes that celebrate the ease and joy of summer on the Mediterranean coast.

Loren MacIver quietly carved out a place for herself in the history of American art through poetic depictions of everyday observations which “succeed in instilling transient entities with a shimmering inner life, at once potent and fragile” (Roberta Smith, New York Times, 2000). Born and raised in New York, MacIver received little formal art training outside of a few Sunday classes at the Art Students League at the age of ten. In 1928, she moved to Greenwich Village, marrying the poet Lloyd Frankenberg (1907-1975). The pair would join the social circle of modernist poets including e. e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, and Marianne Moore. MacIver’s first major sale came in 1935, when Shack (1934) was purchased by the then-director of MoMA, Alfred Barr, and became the first painting by a woman in the museum’s permanent collection. Soon thereafter in 1940, MacIver gained representation from the Pierre Matisse Gallery, marking the beginning of a relationship that would last through 1989. At the time, MacIver was the only woman in Pierre Matisse’s stable. A decades-long career of abundant production and activity would follow, including the acquisition of A Fall of Snow (1948)— included in our Independent presentation—by famed curator Dorothy Miller, and MacIver’s solo presentation at the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962, where she represented the United States.