EXTENSIVE FACTS TAKE TIME TO LOAD
J. Z. Jacobson | Art of Today Chicago 1933 | Published by L M Stern, Chicago, 1932
BELLE (GOLDSCHLAGER) BARANCEANU was born in Chicago on July 17, 1905, and studied at the Minneapolis. Art Institute and in Chicago with Anthony Angarola. Her outstanding teachers were Anthony Angarola, Richard Lahey and Morris Davidson. Aside from Chicago, she has painted in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Chicago Society of Artists and the Chicago No-Jury Society of Artists. Her work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles Art Museum, the Kansas City Art Institute, the John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis, the Nebraska Art Association and the Des Moines Association of Fine Arts. She has had oneartist exhibitions at The Little Gallery and the Chicago Woman's Aid. She was awarded the Clyde M. Carr prize at the 1931 Chicago and Vicinity Show in the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been written about in The American Magazine of Art, Dawn, The Christian Science Monitor, The Reflex and various other publications, by Charles Fabens Kelley, S. P. Rudens, Karen Fish, Tom Vickerman and Peggy Wolf.
I paint because it gives me pleasure-the pleasure of creating and discovering-and whether it is a contribution to society I do not know and do not greatly care. I have never stopped to consider whether it is an expression of age, or of the spirit of any national, racial, religious, political, social or economic group, body or background, nor whether it is peculiar to America or Chicago. Limiting oneself with theories is fatal. It makes little difference how I accomplish my end, whether it is the transposition of nature into a composition of line and color to create and intensify the sensation of rhythmical movement and depth-instinctively reflecting a personal reaction-or by bringing out the emotional and psychological effect of pure abstraction. Nor is subject matter very important ; or, I should say, it is important only in so far as it is recreated to stimulate the imagination to the awareness of beauty, since there is beauty in all things. Though my "realistic" paintings far outnumber the abstractions, I have been able to express as much, if not more, at times, through abstraction than through realism. I feel that it is possible to reach the same high emotional pitch through composition in painting, "realistic" or abstract, as in music, though music is a more intangible art. I cannot help but compare Leger's painting with Mossoloff's tone-picture "The Iron Foundry," both have powerfully created the illusion of the machine age, and Cezanne with Brahms, in their impersonal moods, when they reach an illusion of infinity-one with movement and space composition, the other with rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint. Just how much abstraction will be accepted or understood, and whether it will eventually· be the only means of pictorial expression I do not know. The artist who has influenced me most was Anthony Angarola, with whom I studied and through whom I learned to understand Giotto. El Greco, and Cezanne, who have been, if not conscious, no doubt, unconscious influences in my work.
Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu.