Mala Breuer

Mala Breuer (December 21, 1927 in Oakland, California – January 1, 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico) was an American Abstract Expressionist. Her work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Early life and education Born in Oakland, California, Mala Breuer grew up attending courses in painting and drawing at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Upon graduating from high school she was accepted to the, now, San Francisco Art Institute with a scholarship. There, she studied under many notable artists and faculty members, including Richard Diebenkorn, Clyfford Still, David Park, and Mark Rothko. She recalls a split between realists and abstractionists in the student body at San Francisco Art Institute. “A student really had to make the choice,” Breuer explained. “I was a beginning student, but by the second or third semester I made a strong decision that it was abstract painting that I wanted to do. From the beginning it felt less materialistic and more spiritual.” During her second year Clyfford Still offered her a small studio space at the school.

Upon settling in New York in 1976, she rented a studio space from Julian Schnabel.

Breuer relocated to New Mexico in 1984. The southwest landscape influenced her use of color, light, and Minimalist aesthetics. While her compositional strategy of placing marks within vertical bands remained consistent, her palette of pale colored brushstrokes of paint and beeswax sparingly spread across white or off-white grounds became standard in her work for the rest of her career. In the last decade of her painting practice she was recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, SITE Santa Fe, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Breuer lived in New Mexico where she painted for over thirty years then retired from her studio.

Critical reception Mary Stofflet of ArtWeek stated, “Breuer…studied under Rothko and Diebenkorn. The relationship to Rothko is obvious – large flatly colored areas, which blend at the edges, pink-to-maroon and red-to-maroon color range. But the pigments in her works are stronger, and the effect is one of deep glowing pools invaded by irregularly shaped fingers of contrasting, crisp colors or washes of paler tones.”

Dean Balsamo of The New Mexican stated, “In selecting New Mexico residents Agnes Martin, Florence Pierce, and Mala Breuer, guest curator Elizabeth Dunham chooses to feature mature visions of artists with decades-long commitments to their individual creative expressions.”

Jo Ann Lewis of The Washington Post stated, “A protégé of Clyfford Still in her native San Francisco, Breuer shines here in a pair of untitled paintings built from short, curving brushstrokes that climb the canvas like espaliered vines. They take their power from the intensity of their calligraphy and the surprising passages of layered color, which read as half-hidden, witty messages to each other. At 66, after years of working as a teacher and a librarian, Breuer appears to be going full throttle.”

Kathleen Shields of Parallaxis: Fifty-Five Points of View stated, "Breuer's paintings are like pages in a visual diary that records, however distilled, her physical surroundings and the very process of mark-making as a means of articulating for herself and others a sense of being in the world".

Selected awards and honors Source: 1996 Visual Arts Fellowship, Western States Art Federation, National Endowment for the Arts 1995 SITE Santa Fe Award 1991 Pollock-Krasner Award

Selected solo exhibitions Source: 2015 Mala Breuer, From New York to Santa Fe, Bentley Gallery, Phoenix, AZ 2008 Mala Breuer: Early Works 1970–1980, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM 1998 Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM 1996 Thomas Blackman Associates, Chicago, Illinois 1995 Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 1993–94 Laura Carpenter Fine Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1988–90 Graham Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 1983 Craig Cornelius Gallery, New York, NY 1981 Hadler/Rodriguez Gallery, New York, NY 1980 SoHo Center for Visual Arts, New York, NY 1976 Source Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1975 Icehouse, San Francisco, CA 1974 Susan Rush Associates, San Francisco, CA 1974 Zara Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1965–67 Labaudt Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Selected group exhibitions Source: 2005 Back to Basics: A Group Show, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM 2005 The Natalie and Irving Forman Collection, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY 2002–04 Emi Winter, Mala Breuer, Roger Walker, James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM 2002 Galerie Albrecht, Munich, Germany 2002 Farm Art Space, Missoula, MT 1998 Artscrawl Summer Group Show I and II, Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 1998 San Francisco International Exposition, San Francisco, CA 1996 Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 1995–96 Award Recipient Exhibition – SITE Santa Fe Honors New Mexico Artists, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM 1994–96 Still Working, National Artists Opening, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC 1993 Three Women – Agnes Martin, Mala Breuer, Florence Pierce, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM 1989 Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1988 Keats Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1988 Marilyn Butler Gallery Invitational, Santa Fe, NM 1979 New Work, Nieuw Amsterdam, New York, NY 1978–81 Hank Baum Gallery Invitational, San Francisco, CA 1977 Davis and Long Gallery, New York, NY 1977 James Yu Invitational, New York, NY 1975 New Works by West Coast Artists, Susan Rush Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1958 San Francisco Museum of Art Annual, San Francisco, CA

Selected public collections Sources: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM FIAC, Paris, France Capital Group, Los Angeles, CA Laura Carpenter Fine Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

Selected reviews and articles Sources: 2015 "From New York to Santa Fe, Mala Breuer Channels her Environment in Abstract Paintings," K Sundberg, Artsy Editorial, Article 2015 "Mala Breuer at Bentley Gallery: A Retrospective in Four Parts," Grant Vetter, The Arts Beacon, Review 2008 "Charlotte Jackson Fine Art Presents Mala Breuer: Early Works 1970–1980," Artnet, Article 1998 "The crowning importance of coruscant color: Mala Breuer paints possibilities," Craig Smith, The New Mexican, Review 1996 "Patterns of Life," Fred Camper, Chicago Reader, Review 1994 "Still Working: Late Bloomers in Full Flower," Jo Ann Lewis, The Washington Post, Review 1993 "Three Women," Dean Balsamo, The New Mexican, Review 1974 "Walsh's Ceramics, Breuer's Paintings," Mary Stofflet, ArtWeek, Review