Edward Biberman was born in Philadelphia in 1904, but left his mark as a California Modernist painter. Now almost forgotten save for aficionados of the California Modernist school, Biberman was the subject of a fascinating 2009 retrospective: Edward Biberman Revisited, held at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park. While the small Biberman exhibit catalog that accompanied the…
Those fortunate to see the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, 1930s: The Making of “The New Man,” will not only have the opportunity to feast their eyes upon some of the greatest artworks of the 20th century – they will be given ample evidence of how artists once responded to calamity and social crisis. On view until…
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is the subject of a major retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, the last venue for a traveling exhibition that included stops at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Encompassing nearly 100 of the artist’s most notable prints and paintings, the exhibit features some of the artist’s most iconic…
Life long social realist painter, printmaker and activist, Pele deLappe (pronounced: “Peelee Dahlap”), died from a stroke on Monday, October 1st, 2007, at the age of 91. Ms. deLappe’s art captured the life and times of her native San Francisco during the depression years and beyond, but the universal themes addressed in her artworks also gave them an eternal quality….
Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman’s Social Surrealism, is an extremely important exhibition of paintings that will be on view at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art in Logan, Utah, starting June 5th, 2007. Until his death in 1989, Irving Norman had painted in California since the early 1940’s – and my having discovered the art works of the brilliant artist…
Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico, is a wonderful survey of paintings by these two promethean artists showing at The Santa Monica Museum of Art until November 25th, 2006. The twenty-six canvases on display reveal the far reaching influence the European Surrealist de Chirico had upon Guston, presenting works from both artists that trace the startling development of…
Ben Shahn was one of my earliest inspirations as an artist. He believed art was “one of the last remaining outposts of free speech,” and his dedication to social realism led him to paint and draw the American experience of the 1930’s as he lived it. Shahn captured the poor and the working class with his pen and brush, and…
Bernarda Bryson Shahn, renowned artist and illustrator and the wife of the famous artist Ben Shahn, has died at the age of 101. She passed away at her artist colony home in Roosevelt New Jersey where she had lived since 1939. Bernarda worked in all mediums, but was perhaps best known for her lithographs. For President Roosevelt’s depression era Resettlement…
