In 1927 Bry showed portraits and abstractions that she called "imaginative creations" in a solo exhibition at a gallery in
Corsicana, Texas. The portraits showed
George Gershwin,
Rebecca West,
Irwin Edman, and other well-known people. She told a reporter that by expressing her feelings the abstractions helped her to overcome depression and "turbulent moods." A year later the
New York Post included her portrait of
Carl Van Doren in its Saturday Gravure section and two of her drawings were included in a show organized by the Opportunity Gallery. Over the next few years her work appeared in group shows at the same gallery and in the gallery of a printer of limited edition books. In 1932 she exhibited with two other women in the G.R.D. Gallery. The still lifes in that show drew comment from a critic for
The New York Times who praised her "knowing technique" and appreciated her enigmatic titles. ("Atavic," for a still life of red cabbage, beets, and eggplant, was one.) She joined the
National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1934 and contributed paintings to some of its exhibitions, but she did not take an active role in that organization. When she showed line drawings in a 1935 exhibition at the National Association's Argent Galleries, a critic praised her skill, writing that her "drawings might bid Picasso look to his laurels. In October 1935 she held a solo exhibition of oil paintings at a commercial gallery in St. Louis. A notice of the show in the
St. Louis Star drew attention to her versatility. "Her output," it said, "is large, not only in oil, but in etching, lithography, wood carving, and sanguine crayon." The following year she was given a solo exhibition at the Grant Gallery in which she showed still lifes, landscapes, and scenes showing indigenous Mexicans. In 1937 she showed a
lithograph called "Exiled" in the International Print Makers Exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum. The
Los Angeles Times headed its article on the show with a reproduction of the print and its critic said it was "grim." This 1936 lithograph and a 1937 painting she made of the same scene were later purchased by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. The lithograph can be seen at right. Bry joined the nonprofit Studio Guild in 1937. During the next few years she participated in the Studio Guild's exhibitions. She also helped to arrange Guild-sponsored events that raised money for overseas relief work. In 1938, for example, she organized the sale of works donated by 130 artists for funds to support the work of the
Joint Distribution Committee to help European Jews escape Nazi persecution. A year later she contributed works to a Guild exhibition that circulated among museums and galleries around the country. In 1940, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art put "Exiled" on view, a
New York Sun reporter interviewed Bry. In the interview, she said she intended the painting to convey a sense of finality and doom. While she recognized that it was topical, she said there was nothing propagandistic in her intent. In 1941 Bry became active in an artists' advocacy group called the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. She showed in its first and in subsequent annual exhibitions and participated in special exhibitions as well. Her contribution of a collage called "Equations" in the 35th annual exhibition of 1976 seems to have been her last. She served as recording secretary and vice-president of the organization and in 1945 was elected its president. Bry continued to participate in group exhibitions during the war years, but she also volunteered her time in war-related work. In 1942 she began art classes for wounded soldiers, a year later she made war bond posters and made skin-draft drawings for a plastic surgeon, and in 1945 she painted irises for artificial eyes. Before the war Bry had traveled to Guatemala which then became the source of much of her later work. Working from sketches she made then, she finished a lithograph called "Palin" in 1945 (seen at left). Showing Guatemalan Indians grouped around a Ceiba tree, the print was commissioned by a commercial gallery called
Associated American Artists. In the post-war years she continued to show oils, watercolors, and prints in group exhibitions held by the associations of which she was a member and in 1951 was given a solo exhibition at the John Heller gallery. The latter drew critics' attention for what one called a shift in her work from "visual sobriety" to expressionistic feeling. Bry explained the transition as an effort to free herself from the "tyranny of nature." She aimed to move from painting subjects "in the customary sense like a figure or scene" toward a more direct expression of emotion. In these deeply felt works she increasingly showed religious subjects. In the late 1950s Bry began to experiment with works in
fused glass and
vitreous enamel and thereafter began to make fused glass panels mainly for places of worship. After her death in 1991 she was best known for these works of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1983 the Loeb Student Art Center at
New York University gave her a retrospective exhibition.
Artistic style Bry was a versatile artist who painted in oils, drew using graphite and crayon, and produced watercolors, and pastels. She made lithographs, woodcuts, and etchings. She did wood carving, mosaics, and large works in glass employing fused glass and enamel. Although her style evolved considerably during her long career, she avoided
non-objectivism. She deployed degrees of abstraction, beginning with
social realism and proceeding to a nearly free-form
abstract expressionism. The progression was not clear-cut, however. Early in her career she made what she called "imaginative paintings" and in mid-career she made paintings that were, she said, "free harmonies of beautiful glowing colors." Late in her career she was still producing realist work such as the watercolor, "Fire Island 3," shown at right. For the most part her work could be described as semi-abstract. Its subjects were discernible, whether easily so, or only on close examination. She was seen as an expressive artist. A critic noted a tension between two styles of expressive work, one that revealed the "discipline of an inner reticence" and another consisting of a "more dynamic emotional expressionism." Critics saw this expressive content in both her realist and the more abstract paintings. Her collage, "Moonlit Ocean Seascape," at left, shows her late abstract style. She was noted for her skill in composition and handling of color. In 1932 a critic praised three still life paintings for "their good spacial design and pleasing relation of color." Another said she arranged "her subject matter in compositions as interesting for their color harmonies as they are for their harmonies of form." A few years later
Howard Devree, of
The New York Times praised her "growth in compositional conception, and advance in paint values and ... mature and gratifying sureness of approach" and a critic for the
New York Post said she had a flair for composition: "she places the objects in her still lifes in pleasing relations of form and space; the flowers in her bouquets have a spacial existence, air flows between the blossoms and around them." When painting in oils Bry usually used a palette knife rather than a brush. During much of her career, she worked five days a week from about 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. ==Personal life and family==