Frieze Masters London

Berry Campbell is pleased to present Janice Biala: An American in Paris, a solo exhibition of paintings by Janice Biala (1903-2000) for the Spotlight section of Frieze Masters 2025. This presentation marks the first solo survey of Biala in London, a city she first visited in the early 1930s with her companion the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. Many of the works are on view publicly for the first time. We will feature seven important paintings from the 1950s and 1960s that are exemplary of Biala’s signature melding of styles and cultures. An American expatriate living in Paris, Biala developed a distinctive artistic language that embraced the formal innovations of the School of Paris while responding to the gestural intensity of postwar American painting. Mary Gabriel, The Ninth Street Women author, aptly described: “She existed between cultures, enriched by and enriching them all.” Likened by many critics to the work of Maurice Utrillo and Albert Marquet for her affinity for painting cityscapes and still lifes, Biala’s work is known for its quiet intimacy and structural harmony. In each work, there is an emphasis on mood, light, and atmosphere, capturing everyday scenes with lyrical simplicity.

 

Among the presentation is Three Figures (Trois personnages) (1952-53), a large dynamic work that contemporizes the genre of history painting. In it, Biala depicts the ballet historian Parmenia Migel Ekstrom, her Paris art dealer Jean-François Jaeger, and his wife in a blend of cubist structure and organic gesture. Untitled (Poitiers) (c. 1957) subtly engages with Impressionism, capturing the charm of a favorite French village on the river Clain. Nature morte au cremier Louis XVI (1952) presents a refined still life featuring a porcelain creamer collected during Biala’s relationship with Ford Madox Ford.

 

Biala’s work has garnered renewed institutional interest. She is currently included in the traveling exhibition, Abstract Expressionists: The Women, organized by American Federation of the Arts from the Christian Levett Collection and FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, France). Her work was also recently featured in Action, Gesture, Paint (2023) at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Americans in Paris at the Grey Art Museum, NYU (2024). These exhibitions have affirmed Biala’s place within the broader narrative of postwar American abstraction, particularly in relation to women artists who operated between geographic and aesthetic boundaries. Biala’s work can be found in the collections of the Musée National d’Arts Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. 

 

This special exhibition is an extension of Berry Campbell’s gallery program, dedicated to the continued advancement of significant women artists.