Born in Boston in 1924, Barbara Holtz spent her young adulthood in New York, working for CBS and Young & Rubicam on Madison Avenue. That was during the Mad Men era, when the Village was truly bohemian, and The New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell walked the streets, writing about flea circuses and eccentric characters like Professor Sea Gull. Then, after moving to St. Louis, Holtz studied painting at Washington University, back when the art school still bore the fingerprints of Philip Guston and Max Beckmann (she also studied with abstract expressionist Elaine de Kooning).
Holtz’s bold use of color and line echoes those painters, but her style is entirely her own. Her gorgeous, large-scale mixed-media pieces often incorporate family photographs, though the rest of these dreamlike tableaux are painted in oil, and Holtz loves to overlay that with collage elements, or details added in pastel and charcoal. The result is a set of portraits that depict not just a person’s likeness, but also the atmosphere they radiated through their presence and personality. Holtz paints scenes from her extensive travels in Asia and Europe as well, using a similar mixed-media technique.
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This month, on December 27, she visits The Sheldon’s Bellwether Gallery of St. Louis Artists to deliver an artist’s talk and celebrate her 90th birthday. No doubt she’s had some amazing birthdays before this, but spending this milestone day talking about her art, with the people of her adopted city, surely will rank high. Oh, and yes, there will be cake.
“Barbara Holtz: Retrospective” Gallery Talk and 90th Birthday Celebration. Free, but reservation required. Gallery talk: December 27, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Gallery hours: Noon–8 p.m. Tue, noon–5 p.m. Wed, Thu & Fri, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Sat. 3648 Washington, 314-533-9900 x37, thesheldon.org.
