These artworks were added to the website in October 2022. To see them in context with other Libbie Mark works, please visit the Artwork pages for the 1960s, 1950s, and 1940s–Early 1950s & Uncategorized Works.
Collage Paintings
Most of these fit comfortably into the realm of Libbie Mark’s characteristic collage paintings of 1960s, with her unique color palette, heavy texture, and vertical format. A rare horizontal here has flashy bits of silver leaf embedded in the rich red surface. Another uses cut paper shapes to create the composition rather than paper mixed into the paint to achieve the thick impasto like her more typical works. The two florals are unusual because they are not abstract, but they are still heavily textured paintings; one humorously has pictures of daisies collaged into the bouquet.
Early Non-Collage Works
These are mostly Abstract Expressionist works dating from the mid- to late-1950s, before Libbie Mark began making her trademark collage paintings. Judging from inscriptions on the back and/or the format, a couple may have been done during her classes at the Hans Hofmann School or the Art Students League. One that appears to be a landscape is likely earlier, from her time at the Great Neck Adult Education fine arts program (Long Island) when she took a landscape painting class.
Ink and Acrylic Works
These relate visually and in technique to other Libbie Mark ink and acrylic works, mostly on paper, from the late 50s. There are just a handful of this type documented. They seem to be influenced by artists such as Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, or Jackson Pollock at a time when she would have been looking at other artists’ work, taking courses, and still developing her own visual voice.
Figural Works
Libbie Mark’s work almost never took a figurative approach in the 1960s so a couple of these are great exceptions: a simple gesture of a seated figure similar to her other abstract ink works, and a deeply expressionistic female portrait with a built up surface of plaster instead of collaged paper and paint. The much earlier portrait of her father is from the same monoprint series as another portrait already catalogued. The “multiple exposure” horses stand out as a unique and dynamic work from the early 50s, likely a class assignment at GNAE. The early family group we can assume dates from before she began her formal training.
