Jason Andrew 1/18/22 Jason Andrew 1/18/22

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Biala's first major group show in Paris — 90 years ago

Exhibition catalogue: *1940*, Parc des Expositions, Porte de Versailles, Paris, January 15–February 1, 1932. Biala’s entry in highlighted text.

90 yrs ago this week: In the first weeks of 1932, Biala was invited to participate in a group exhibition titled “1940” at Parc des Expositions at the Porte de Versailles. This was Biala’s first major group exhibition in Europe and her inclusion signaled her acceptance into the Parisian avant-garde.

Alexander Calder, who had made Paris his home since 1926, was the only other American included. The tone of the exhibition, like so many presented by the Association Artistique, was provoking—wagering on the momentum of hard-core abstraction. In fact, the exhibition included many of the newly founded Abstraction-Création artists, including Piet Mondrian, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and George Vantongerloo. The exhibition also included a major retrospective exhibition of Théo van Doesburgh, who had died the year prior.

The exhibition reverberated across the pond and was all but panned by a critic for The New York Times. The headline read, 1940: Looks Singularly Out of Date:

If the Association Artistique intends that “1940” should represent a future date and that the present work presents a prophecy, they are unaware of the present trend. Many of the exhibitors have contributed compositions of squares and angles and triangles in bright colors that are no doubt the result of speculation and study in the realm of color and form. The present tendency is away from cubes, however. The present seems to be less self-conscious about the human figure and the familiar landscape and less afraid of both. Considering the times and immediate tendencies in art, Biala held true to the themes that would define her career those being the traditional subjects as still-life, portraiture and landscape. In fact the titles of the four paintings: “Le Focher” (The Rock), “Nature Morte” (Still Life), “Tete Verte” (Green Head), “Couleur de Rose” (Color of Pink).

The reviewer singled out Calder and Biala in her review. About Calder, she reported:

Alexander Calder’s metal bar and small wooden balls, a contraption looking as if it might have something to do with television, is called “January 3,” but this writer is too ignorant to appreciate the historical significance of the date.

About Biala she wrote:

Janice Ford Biala is of G. R. D. fame. The things and figures in her painting gravely turn about as if in some slow and harmonious dance of joy. Not a hilarious joy nor a country dance. Something much richer and more contemplative than hilarity.

Receiving news of her mention in the review in the form of a letter from her brother, Jack Tworkov, in true Biala fashion, she penned an aggressive response to the review back to Jack,

The damn poof had to give me the wrong name (I do not sign myself Janice Ford Biala) and what hope is there when someone thinks one paints like a slow dance of joy or some such twoddle.

At the time Biala was splitting her time between two addresses: 32, rue de Vaugirard, Paris and 5 chemin du Petit-Bois, Toulon. In both locales, she was with the English Novelist Ford Madox Ford, who she met on May Day 1930. In her letter to Jack, Biala relayed the challenges she was facing in Paris:

There are few people who think my painting is very good […] but they aren’t people of any importance. Several of them paint themselves and are most uninteresting. I’m frightfully handicapped here for being a woman and a young one at that.

While very little work dating from the time of this exhibition has survived, we know that Biala aligned herself with the modernism being generated by the likes of Picasso and Matisse, after all, it was around this time that Ezra Pound would declare her “rather modern.”

— Jason Andrew for the Estate of Janice Biala, January 2022

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Download Exhibition Catalogue: Parc des Expositions, Porte de Versailles, Paris, 1940, January 15–February 1, 1932

Download Exhibition Review: Harris, Ruth Green. "'Les Americains' in Paris: Three Large Shows of Expatriate Painters—'1940' Looks Singularly Out of Date." The New York Times, Sunday, February 28, 1932.

Jason Andrew 1/6/21 Jason Andrew 1/6/21

FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Rash Acts of Rescue and Escape

This virtual event took place on Wednesday, January 6 at 12pm EST

Presented by the Fritz Ascher Society in New York
Lecture by Jason Andrew with Julia K. Gleich
Introduced by Rachel Stern, Exe Dir of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York

Have a question or comment about this lecture?

Supplemental information (click to download):

“Ford Madox Ford and Janice Biala,” by Jason Andrew, PN Review, July-August 2008
This article discussed the first meeting and subsequent life of English novelist Ford Madox Ford and American painter Janice Biala.

“No more Parades End,” by Sara Haslam, Times Literary Supplement, June 2018
This article discusses Ford Madox Ford’s last library and what it tell us about ‘the Tietjens saga.”

About this event:

Biala (1903-2000) was a Polish born American painter whose career stretched over eight decades and spanned two continents. Through it all, she retained an intimacy in her art rooted in Old World Europe—sensibilities that began with memories of her childhood in a Polish village, shaped by School of Paris painters like Bonnard, Matisse and Braque, inspired by Velázquez and the Spanish Masters, and broadened by the community of loft-living artists in Post World War II Downtown New York.

Her arrival in Paris in 1930 from New York City marked the beginning of an extraordinary life: one full of adventure, a passion for literature, and an appetite for art. On that fateful trip she met and fell in love with the English Novelist Ford Madox Ford. Ford shared with her all he knew and introduced her to the many artists forging a new Modernism including Brancusi, Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein among others. Biala became Ford’s most fierce advocate remaining devoted to him, at his side, until his death in Deauville, France on June 26, 1939. Biala’s commitment to Ford did not soften at his death.

In this lecture, Jason Andrew shares his research and insight into Biala’s harrowing effort to traveled back to the South of France, which was in Mussolini’s crosshairs, to make the daring rescue of Ford’s manuscripts and library, just as war would consume all of Europe. Joining Andrew in this presentation is choreographer Julia K. Gleich, who will bring voice to the letters of Janice Biala.

Jason Andrew 1/3/21 Jason Andrew 1/3/21

Virtual Event (Jan 6): Biala: The Rash Acts of Rescue and Escape

January 6, 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm | Free

Watch the Recording

Lecture by
Jason Andrew, Independent Scholar, Curator and Producer in New York

with
Julia Gleich, Choreographer

Introduced by
Rachel Stern, Executive Director of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York

Her arrival in Paris in 1930 from New York City marked the beginning of an extraordinary transatlantic life: one full of adventure, a passion for literature, and an appetite for art. On that fateful trip she met and fell in love with the English Novelist Ford Madox Ford. Ford shared with her all he knew and introduced her to the many artists forging a new Modernism including Brancusi, Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein among others. Biala became Ford’s most fierce advocate remaining devoted to him, at his side, until his death in Deauville, France on June 26, 1939.

Biala’s commitment to Ford did not soften at his death. In this lecture, Jason Andrew shares his research and insight into Biala’s harrowing effort to traveled back to the South of France, which was in Mussolini’s cross-hairs, to make the daring rescue of Ford’s manuscripts and library, just as war would consume all of Europe. Joining Andrew in this presentation is choreographer Julia K. Gleich, who will bring voice to the letters of Janice Biala.

Jason Andrew

is an independent scholar, curator, and producer. He is the founding partner at Artist Estate Studio LLC, the entity that represents the estates of Jack Tworkov, Janice Biala, and Elizabeth Murray among others. He has written, lectured, and curated extensively on the life and art of Janice Biala and her contemporaries including a retrospective of the artist’s work at Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 2018, as an exhibition focused on Biala’s work 1952-1962 on view at McCormick Gallery, Chicago through January 2021.

Julia K Gleich

is a choreographer, teacher, scholar and mathematics aficionado with an MA from the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA from the University of Utah. In 2004, Julia Gleich, in partnership with Jason Andrew, founded Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts with a mission to renew and refresh the exchange within the interdisciplinary arts. She then became a partner in Artist Estate Studio, LLC. Ms. Gleich is the founder and Artistic Director of Gleich Dances, which has received critical notice in The New York Times, DanceInforma, DanceInsider, Village Voice, The New Criterion, The Brooklyn Rail, among others.

The event is part of the monthly series: Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression, which is generously sponsored by Allianz Partners. Future events and the recordings of past events can be found HERE.

Originally published by Fritz Ascher Society