Independent 20th Century: Alice Trumbull Mason

In Mason's practice, the late 1950s through the 1960s were a period of renewed formal rigor, as increasingly hard-edged forms, sharpened geometry, and spatial economy came to define her compositions. As these developments emerged, Mason established a professional relationship with the influential dealer Richard "Dick" Bellamy, whose program at Green Gallery helped introduce the nascent language of Minimalism and other new tendencies in postwar American art. Bellamy and Mason met in 1958, when she was already an established figure in American abstraction and he was a young dealer at the outset of his career. Bellamy staged a solo exhibition for Mason at Hansa Gallery the following year, and would go on to include her in two group shows at his influential Green Gallery over the following decade. The works on view passed through his inventory across these two galleries.

Seen together, these works reveal Mason working at a critical juncture, sharpening a geometric vocabulary built over decades even as a new generation of artists began redefining the terms of abstraction around her. The presentation offers a timely opportunity to reconsider that exchange, and to recognize Mason not as a precursor sidelined by the movements that followed, but as an active participant in their formation.

A full-scale solo exhibition of Mason's work will open at Galerie Lelong, New York on January 7, 2027.