Marjorie Liebman Original Water Color Signed and Framed

Over her lifetime, Marjorie Liebman developed a substantial following for her atmospheric, organic abstracts and semi-abstract oil-on-canvas paintings. The versatility of her expressionist and figurative styles and of her media-- which included portraits, sculpture, and constructions/collages -- earned her accolades as "an incipient Rothko," an "abstract Turner," and "a female de Kooning." Her work suggests that painting is preeminently an arrangement of abstract qualities and, after that, a description of some aspect of reality. Thus, she has been seen as "dreaming with her eyes open, looking at nature and the world around her and, finally, painting her dreams."

Feeling is central to Liebman's art. "What I have always tried to do," she said, "is to reproduce feelings on canvas... I've tried to come up with an emotional equation." Michael Milkovich said "her work reveals her continuing search to achieve a harmony of colors and motion with nature. Her garden scenes remind us of Monet, and her ballet scenes capture the essence of the graceful movements for which Degas is so much admired."

Liebman received her B.A. from Memphis State University and her M.A. from the University of Mississippi. In addition, she studied at the Art Students League, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Washington University of Art in St. Louis. She was a pupil of Vaclav Vylaticil and taught art at Memphis State University and in Mexico. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and numerous galleries in New York, Memphis, and in Mexico. She was represented by the well-known Betty Parsons Gallery in Manhattan for many years. Liebman was the last surviving member of the original five founders of Art Today, a group formed to raise funds to purchase works of contemporary art for the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.