Victoria Barr, Spirit, 1974

Signature: Signed, and dated on recto lower right

This bright, abstract 1970s artwork was created by Victoria Barr, daughter of the legendary developer of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr. There is a Fischbach Gallery label on the back of the frame. The Fischbach Gallery was, for many years, the gallery of record for the American artist Alex Katz. It is not easy finding Barr's work on the market at this time.

Victoria Barr was born in New York, NY, in 1937 to the legendary MOMA curator and art historian Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and art historian Margaret Scolari Barr. Barr often traveled to Europe with her parents from the age of 14 onwards, meeting influential artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall and collectors like Peggy Guggenheim. For high school, she went to Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. After high school, she briefly attended Radcliffe College (1955–1956). Then she studied at the Parsons School of Design, and took classes in art history from Leo Steinberg and in color theory from Si Sillman, who was Josef Albers' studio assistant at Yale After meeting Sillman, Barr decided to attend the Yale Art School, graduating in 1961 and took painting classes from Neil Welliver, then with Albers, another one of his assistants Cy Twombly, as well as Bernard Chaet and William Bailey. In 1964, she traveled to Paris, France on a Fulbright scholarship, along with fellow artist and Fulbright scholars Nancy Graves, who would later marry Richard Serra who joined their group in Paris, and Philip Glass After two years in Paris, she returned to the US in 1966 and got a job at the Museum of Natural History in the exhibition's department for a year. Barr later taught courses at Hunter College and at Barnard.