Irene Rice Pereira (August 5, 1902 – January 11, 1971) was an American abstract artist, poet and philosopher[1] who played a major role in the development of modernism in the United States.

[3] Pereira was born Irene Rice[4] on August 5, 1902 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, the eldest of three sisters and one brother.

In her 1929 class Matulka provided Pereira with her first exposure to the artistic principles of the European avant-garde that would shape her work; most notably those of the Bauhaus, Cubism, and Constructivism (art).

[2] Her friends and colleagues were Burgoyne Diller, Dorothy Dehner, David Smith, Hilla Rebay, Arshile Gorky, John D. Graham, and Frederick Kiesler.

[3] She continued teaching at the Design Laboratory when it lost its financial support from the Works Progress Administration on June 27 of 1937.

Her paintings first gained recognition in the early 1930s, when she exhibited at the ACA Galleries and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

With the showcase at the Whitney, she became one of the first women (along with Loren MacIver and Georgia O'Keeffe) to be given a retrospective at a major New York museum.

[3] In 1943, Pereira was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.

[3] During the latter part of her career, Pereira rejected abstract expressionism and experienced difficulties with gallery owners and museum directors.

She created "machine paintings" that incorporated images of technological components, including ship's ventilators, generators, and funnels, as well as hinges, levers, and gears.

[3][7][10] In a 1950 statement, she said "My philosophy is the reality of light and space; an ever flowing--never-ceasing--continuity, unfettered by man made machinery, weight and external likenesses.

[3] They divorced in 1938 and in 1941, she married George Wellington Brown, a naval architect who shared her interest in applying new materials to art.

[3] The original manuscript of The Lapis, 1954-1955, is housed at Houghton Library, Harvard University, and was a gift of Mrs. Irene Rice Pereira in 1958.