Baranceanu, Belle

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Baranceanu, Belle

Born to immigrant parents who separated when she was a youngster, Belle Baranceanu lived with her maternal grandparents on a farm in North Dakota and then attended high school and the Minneapolis School of Art in Minneapolis. She studied with Anthony Angarola, crediting him as being a major influence on her work.

They also had a romantic relationship, which offended her orthodox Jewish father because Angarola was Italian-Catholic. However, the couple made plans to marry, but Angarola died in 1929 before the ceremony. In 1932, bitter with her father, she changed her name from Goldschlager, his surname, to Baranceanu, which was the name of her mother.

Meanwhile Baranceanu had left Minneapolis in 1924 for Chicago, where she studied at the Art Institute. Although she gave much credit to her style to Angarola, she had a mature style that was distinctively her own. She did abstract, flattened designs of scenes of Chicago creating "simplified shpaes of ghe buildings into a balanced interplay of form and color." (Kennedy 87)

Source:
Elizabeth Kenndy, "Chicago Modern 1893-1945"

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