Tom Lieber

A line in a Tom Lieber painting rarely stays still. It gathers speed, breaks apart or sinks beneath another layer, while broad areas of color hold the surrounding space open. This exchange between concentrated gesture and quieter passages gives his abstractions their rhythm. Rather than settle into a recognizable scene, the image asks the eye to move through it, discovering how one mark changes the force of another.

Born in St. Louis in 1949, Lieber earned a BFA in 1971 and an MFA in 1974 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He subsequently established himself in the San Francisco Bay Area. His engagement with printmaking grew alongside painting, including large-scale monotypes made with Garner Tullis at Experimental Press from 1983. Working across canvas and paper extended his investigation of gesture, layering and the possibilities of a single image.

Lieber moved to Kaua‘i in 2000, adding Hawaii’s environment to a practice already shaped by California. His paintings do not offer straightforward descriptions of either place. Light, density and movement become relationships within the composition: a dark stroke cuts across a pale field, or a translucent passage allows an earlier decision to remain visible. The surface records adjustment as well as impulse.

Institutional recognition accompanied his development. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum included him in New Perspectives in American Art in 1983 and Emerging Artists 1978–1986 in 1987. More recent presentations include Abstraction×3 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in 2021 and Accession at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum in 2023–2024. The latter followed the acquisition of his painting Contact for Hawaii’s Art in Public Places Collection.

Markowicz Fine Art presents original paintings by Lieber, with attention to the individual work’s scale, surface and composition. His museum history provides context, while the painting itself remains the starting point: an encounter between color, space and the viewer’s own movement through the image.

Museum & Public Collections

Museum records provide specific points of reference within Tom Lieber’s career. The works below are documented in institutional collections or historical acquisition records, independently of the paintings offered by Markowicz Fine Art. Collection membership does not mean that a work is currently on public display.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — Two Attentions, 1983, acrylic on canvas (1983.390)
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — Spats, 1981, acrylic on canvas (83.113)
• The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles — Curb Your Dismaying Urges, 1981, acrylic on canvas (83.7)
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York — Rising, 1983, acrylic on canvas, Exxon Corporation Purchase Award (83.3105)
• Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Art in Public Places Collection — Contact, 2020, oil on canvas