Alice Trumbull Mason, born 1904 in Litchfield CT, was a descendant of the notable 18th century American painter, John Trumbull. Growing up she received a formal, academic education in painting both in Rome and New York. A later tour in of both Italy and Greece provided her with a chance to study archaic Greek sculpture and Byzantine mosaics, which she described as “two main streams of influence in my work”.
After marrying Captain Warwood Mason, a young merchant seaman, Alice Trumbull Mason had two children in the early 1930s: Jonathan, who passed away in 1958, and Emily Mason, who became a prominent painter as well. During this time she took a break from painting and focused on writing poetry, even corresponding with Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams.
Mason became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists in 1936, an organization she took an active role in for much of her life. Her paintings throughout the 1930s incorporated dense, biomorphic forms with surrealist influences. Of this period, she said, “In painting, I developed through a biomorphic period to straight edges and angles, loosely and popularly galled ‘geometric.’”. [1]
In 1944, she joined Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter’s printmaking workshop, in which her soft-ground etchings and aquatints similarly reflected her exploration into geometric forms. Even after the shop relocated to Paris, she continued making prints alongside her painting practice. Throughout the 50s and 60s, her work shifted towards Neo-Plasticism, becoming flatter and more geometric.
Alice Trumbull Mason passed away in 1971 at the age of 67. Two years after her death, the Whitney Museum of Art organized a retrospective exhibition of her work which also traveled. The Washburn Gallery has represented her estate since 1974. Her work is included in many Museum and Public Collections, including The Hirshhorn Museum, The Newark Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. In March 2020, Rizzoli will publish a major book on Alice Trumbull Mason with chapters on her painting, poetry and prints by experts in those fields.
[1] Brown, Marilyn, Two Generations of Abstract Painting, Eaton House Publishers. New York, 1982, pg. 24