From Hard-Edge Minimalism to Radical Figuration

Jo Baer never painted inside the lines—not artistically, not philosophically, and certainly not within the rigid expectations of the art world. Her career, spanning over six decades, was a masterclass in defiance. First heralded as a Minimalist in the 1960s with her stark, edge-defining canvases, Baer later dismantled the very movement she helped build, venturing into a radical figuration that bewildered critics and delighted those who understood her constant evolution. She refused stagnation, instead choosing perpetual reinvention—a quality that makes her one of the most compelling artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Breaking into the Boys’ Club of Minimalism

Born in 1929, Baer entered the art world at a time when men dominated the conversation. Hard-edge Minimalism, ruled by Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, was a cold, clinical affair—until Baer added her signature optical interplay of black, white, and thin borders of color. These weren’t paintings as much as they were perceptual experiences, works that manipulated light and space with Mach band illusions, creating heightened contrasts that shifted as the viewer moved. By the late 1960s, she was a force in the New York art scene, her work exhibited alongside heavyweights in exhibitions like “Systemic Painting” at the Guggenheim.

But Baer had no interest in being anyone’s Minimalist muse.

People want you to keep doing exactly what you’ve already done, because it makes money.

– By the mid-1970s, she turned her back on abstraction altogether, stating.

The commodification of art disgusted her, and she fled to Europe, trading New York’s pressures for the freedom of Amsterdam.

The Birth of Radical Figuration

Baer’s shift from Minimalism to what she dubbed “radical figuration” was nothing short of artistic whiplash. While others clung to their signature styles, she abandoned the purity of abstraction in favor of something wilder—fractured, semi-mythological, and deeply narrative compositions. These works blended classical imagery with contemporary themes, often challenging traditional storytelling structures. Her 1983 letter to Art in America was a manifesto of sorts, announcing this transformation and openly challenging the limitations of pure abstraction.

Though critics were initially perplexed, Baer’s new work gained momentum, finding its place in major institutions, from Tate London to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. By the 2000s, her creative restlessness led her to digital collage, proving that even in her later years, she remained an artist who thrived on experimentation.

A Legacy of Wit, Defiance, and Relentless Curiosity

Beyond her canvases, Baer was a sharp-tongued writer and thinker, unafraid to take a scalpel to the pompous pronouncements of the art establishment. Her collected writings, Broadsides and Belles Lettres, are as fierce and uncompromising as her paintings. She championed painting at a time when it was repeatedly declared “dead” and called out the industry’s tendency to relegate female artists to the footnotes of history.

Baer worked until the very end, her final solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2023–24 proving that age never dulled her curiosity.

I’m curious, always.

– She told The Brooklyn Rail in 2020.

Her death on January 21, 2025, at age 95, marks the end of a life lived entirely on her own terms. But Jo Baer was never one for endings—only transformations. And the art world will be chasing after her brilliance for generations to come.