Born in the Bronx, having received her advanced degrees from Hunter College, CUNY, Frances Barth has been working and showing her painting in New York and internationally since the 1960’s. While an art student Barth also studied modern dance. She performed with Yvonne Rainer at Lincoln Center and the Billy Rose Theater in 1968-9, and with Joan Jonas in dance and video in 1970.
During the last 15 years she has created two animations, two documentaries, and two short narrative films. Her films have shown in the US, Canada, Europe and South America and have won awards. Barth’s newest film Dreaming Tango premiered in New York at Anthology Film Archives in August 2020. In 2017 she published her first graphic novel Ginger Smith and Billy Gee with settings derived from her paintings. This was expanded as a script for 7 actors with a performance at Silas Von Morisse gallery in 2018. Her first animation End of the Day, End of the Day has also been scripted and presented at Triangle Artists Association in 2019 with 2 actors and projection.
Barth is a member of The Filmmaker’s Cooperative. Her awards include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, an Adolphe and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant, two American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase awards, the Anonymous Was a Woman grant and a Pollock-Krasner grant. She is Director Emeritus of the Mt. Royal School of Art, The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
