Alice Frey (1895 - 1981), My Palette (Ma Palette), 1936 

Oil on canvas 

96.5 x 69.5 cm 

SOLD

Signed Alice Frey and dated 1936 (lower right); titled Ma palette, signed Alice Frey and inscribed 119 rue des deux Eglises - Bruxelles Belgique on the reverse of the stretcher bar 

Provenance Private Collection, Belgium 

Exhibited Venice, Venice Biennale, 1936, no. 270 Budapest, Nemzeti Szalon, 1937, 

no. 39 (titled Az en palletám) 

In My palette (Ma palette) Frey’s self-portrait of 1936, both she and the table beside her seem to be levitating. Dressed in a grey, paint-spattered overall and ballet pumps in a watery brown room, the lack of surrounding details evokes a non-place or dream state. 

She gazes beyond us, as if lost in thought. Her face is elfin, her hair boyish. Her slim left hand touches the edge of the table; in her right hand, she holds a red-tipped paintbrush – a flash of intensity against the brown wash of the wall. The paintwork is loose, swift; her large palette – a mess of vivid smudges – the one animating feature of the picture. (. . . ). In Frey’s captivating self-portraits, both perspective and scale are unpredictable. The implication hovers: reason has not served our planet well – why not supplant it with something gentler, more charming? In periods of great turmoil, art is an escape route. In Frey’s imagination, she roamed at will in borderless lands; a place where youth never fades, women bloom like flowers, solitude is respected and generals are nowhere to be seen. Jennifer Higgie, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in Alice Frey (London, Vendelmans, 2023) 

The figures occupying Alice Frey’s (1895-1981) canvases often seem to be floating, lost in thought, living in a world which appears to be recognizable, yet somehow finer than our own. For despite her active involvement in the interwar avant-garde in Antwerp and Brussels, and the abstract, expressionist and dadaist ideals of her peers, Frey’s own practice always remained figurative, romantic and painterly sound. The encouragement to pursue motifs and develop a style which would be uniquely hers, Frey received through the friendships she kept with fellow artists such as Joan Miro (1893-1983) and her lifelong mentor James Ensor (1860-1949). 

Alice Frey is represented in the permanent collections of Mu.ZEE, Ostend; Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp; Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent; as well as in private collections.