ROMANCE
Independent, New York
Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918–2011)
with april april and the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber FoundationMay 14–17, 2026
april april and Romance are pleased to present a selection of sculptures from the 1960s and 1970s by artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918–2011). Through the course of her decades-long practice, deRoy Gruber developed a singular body of work defined by luminous geometric compositions in transparent Plexiglas acrylic. Whether polychromatic and vivid or monochromatic and restrained, they become vessels for light, shadow, movement, and illusion, at times bisected or constrained by hard-edge planes. This presentation recontextualizes an artist whose work has long existed in productive tension with dominant narratives of postwar sculpture. It is conceived in collaboration with the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation and Executive Director, Brittany Reilly, featuring works and archival material from the artist’s estate.
Essay: On the edge of a precipice: the interior cosmos of Aaronel deRoy Gruber
Aaronel deRoy Gruber (b. Aaronel DeRoy, 1918–2011) was a Pittsburgh-based multimedia artist whose practice centered primarily on sculpture. She attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), receiving a BS in Costume Economics in 1940, interacting with art and design departments and continuing to study painting. She was a key member of the Abstract Group (later Group A) in its formative years, joining her past professors in the pursuit and discussion of abstract art. Her paintings were shown in her earliest solo exhibitions at Art Directions Gallery and Monede Gallery in New York in 1959 and 1961 before she turned to sculpture in steel and Plexiglas acrylic and later, photography.
During her lifetime, deRoy Gruber exhibited with Bertha Schaefer in New York and with Juana Mordó in Madrid. Select institutional solo exhibitions included Aaronel at the Everson Museum of Art Syracuse (1973) and Aaronel deRoy Gruber at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (1974). Her work was included in the survey exhibition Made of Plastic at the Flint Institute of Arts (1968), as well as group exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, New York (1969), The Renaissance Society, Chicago (1971), Hong Kong Museum of Art (1973 and 1975), the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (1973), and Carnegie Museum of Art (1977), among others.
deRoy Gruber has begun to receive renewed attention in recent years with solo exhibitions at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art (2023) and 57W57 Arts, New York (2016). Recent group exhibitions have been held at the University Art Gallery, University of Pittsburgh co-curated by Brittany Reilly and Alex Taylor (2025), GAVLAK Gallery, Los Angeles, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody (2023); the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (2021); and the University of Toronto and the Canadian Cultural Centre, curated by the Synthetic Collective (2021). Her work is held in numerous public collections, including the The Butler Institute of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Davis Museum at Wellesley College, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, The Frick Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids Art Museum, O’Brien Art Foundation, Syracuse University Art Museum, and The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, among others.