Thursday, October 13, 2016

Painting with Light: Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu


I recently discovered the artist Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu. Raised by her grandparents on a farm in North Dakota, the young artist attended the Minneapolis School of Art in Minneapolis. She studied under the artist Anthony Angarola, who would become her fiançe. Before the couple Were able to marry, Angarola died in 1929. In 1932 changed her name from her father's surname Goldschlager to her mother's maiden name, Baranceanu.

In 1924 Baranceanu relocated to Chicago, where she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and began to develop a distinctive abstract realist style. She soon made her way West, where she was transfixed by the light of California. She settled in San Diego, where she did murals for the Public Works of Art Project at the La Jolla Post Office and Roosevelt Jr. High School. Her palette was imbued with bright colors and modernist broken planes of color reminiscent of the Fauvists.

Most interesting was her ability to paint portraits in a distinctive technique. Beautifully meticulous, yet with a modern sensibility, her figures represented mid-century California.

Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu's paintings range from $2,000-$5,000 at auction. Like many women artists she is undervalued in the art market, compared to male artist of the same caliber.

Sources: http://www.sdnews.com/view/full_story/9634637/article-Speaker-describes-the-creator-of-a-modernist-masterpiece?instance=update1