WattsOS
IT
In the Land of the Giants (Spirals and Stars)
2012 · Oil on canvas
Overall (irregular): 58 1/2 × 60 in. (148.6 × 152.4 cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Jo Baer
1929–2025
WA-00004117
PaintingContemporaryFigurationMinimalism
Representation
None documented
0
Institutional Exhibitions
5
Works in Collection
84
Assets Indexed
19
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
80%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Authority Records (2)
Field Verification (8 fields)
7 cross-verified · 1 single-source
- NationalityWikidata + Artsy+2· 92%✓
- Birth yearWikidata + Duplicate Merge+1· 92%✓
- DeceasedWikidata + Unknown· 92%✓
- Death yearWikidata + Unknown· 92%✓
- Primary mediumWikidata + Unknown· 92%✓
- BiographyWikipedia + Unknown· 88%✓
- WebsiteWikidata· 92%✓
- LocationArtsy + Wikidata+1· 85%
Source Registry (3)
- Paula-CooperTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- Pace-GalleryTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- MoMA bulk 2026-05-04Tier 1 · Institutional92%
About
Why this artist matters now
Jo Baer was an American painter who moved from geometric abstraction to what she called 'radical figuration,' layering images, symbols, and text in non-narrative compositions. Her early minimalist work, shown at Fischbach Gallery in New York during the mid-1960s, established her as a rigorous abstractionist before she fundamentally shifted her practice in the mid-1970s. Her later paintings integrated figural and linguistic elements into densely compressed visual fields, refusing easy legibility or symbolic closure. Baer worked between Seattle and Amsterdam until her death in 2025.
Source: Paula Cooper · Trust score: 100% · Updated 2mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Contemporary
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (5)
Artwork sources (5)
5 published of 45 catalogued · 43 with image
- Art Institute Chicago3 published3 img
- Tate1 published1 img
- Whitney1 published
- + 2 more sources · 40 catalogued, not yet published
Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 1)
1 entries · 1 sources
- 1967 · Tate · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Record
Images
39 assets
View all 39 media items →
Relationships
8Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
In collection
Art Institute of Chicago
In collection
Tate
In collection
Whitney Museum of American Art
Market
Auction sale history
Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Background
Education
The New School
Visual Arts
Record
Exhibitions and timeline
No exhibitions or timeline entries yet