Edward Biberman
Exterior Stairway
c. 1970s

About the Item

Exterior Stairway, c. 1970s, oil on masonite, signed upper right, 12 x 24 inches; illustrated (film) Kaufman, Jeffrey, Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman, 2007, (DVD release 2010), 85 minutes This work is part of our exhibition The Architectural World of Edward Biberman (1904 - 1986) About the Painting Exterior Stairway is a prime example of Biberman’s post-war precisionist scenes of Southern California, similar in feeling to The White Fire Escape, which has been in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for more than fifty years. Biberman began working with a precisionist vocabulary in New York during the early 1930s upon his return from Paris. During his long career, Biberman consistently depicted architectural subjects as part of his practice. Critics have favorably compared these paintings to 1920s and 30s precisionism as practiced by Charles Sheeler, Louis Lozowick and Ralston Crawford, and noted that Biberman’s early Southern California modernist scenes anticipated those of Ed Ruscha and David Hockney. In a rare commentary on the work of other artists, Biberman himself acknowledged a debt to the great precisionist painter, Charles Demuth. In a 1975 interview, likely around the same time he painted Exterior Stairway, Biberman explained, “[T]here was a painter who deserves to be much better known, the American painter Charles Demuth. [He] painted a canvas that I saw when I was quite young. It was a painting of two great wheat silos, probably someplace in Kansas, and he titled that painting My Egypt. Now, I knew exactly what he meant by that. When I say I've always been fascinated by cities, engineering, [and] structural forms, I speak of something that has, emotionally, touched me very deeply. This interest has always been present in my work when I am not impelled, let us say, to paint things with an overtly social quality. You see, I think of myself as a very lyric painter. I love the look of nature, and I also love the look of many of the things that men build. I find both of these very wonderful, stirring, lyrical experiences.” In Exterior Stairway, we see the lyricism that Biberman found in both the structure of a conventional Southern California parking garage and Los Angeles’ iconic palm trees. About the Artist Edward Biberman was one of California’s most important modernist painters. He was born in Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Biberman’s artistic career started at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts followed by three years of study in Paris, where he associated closely with Calder and Noguchi and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, in 1927 and the Salon des Independents in 1929. Upon his return to the United States, Biberman spent time in New York City, where he showed at many of the city’s premier galleries and museums. His works were selected for several of the Museum of Modern Art’s early exhibitions of American artists, including 46 Painters and Sculptors Under the Age of 35 (1930) and Murals by American Painters and Photographers (1932). Hoping to escape the pressures of the New York art world, Biberman moved to Los Angeles in 1936 where he could be close to his family, including his film director brother, Herbert Biberman, and his sister-in-law, the Academy Award winning actress, Gale Sondergaard. During the course of his long career, Biberman showed at the Salon d’Automne (Paris); the Whitney Museum of American Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and dozens of other museums and galleries across the US and in Europe. He enjoyed over forty-five solo exhibitions and his works were included in over one hundred group shows. Biberman completed three murals for public works projects, including his work Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice for the Venice Post Office, which was installed for six months at LACMA in 2014. His works are in the permanent collections of more than a dozen museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, National Portrait Gallery (of the Smithsonian Institution), Butler Institute of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and LACMA. Several books are dedicated to Biberman’s art, as is a feature length documentary, Brush with Life: The Art of Being Edward Biberman (2007). Biberman’s art has undergone a resurgence of popularity during the past fifteen years with four solo or focused exhibitions, Edward Biberman Revisited (2009), Edward Biberman (2011-12), Lost Horizons: Mural Dreams of Edward Biberman (2014) and Edward Biberman, Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice (2014), and representation in a number of other exhibitions, such as George Ault and 1940s America at the Smithsonian Institution (2011), Pacific Standard Time (2012) and Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists (2018). He is listed in Who was Who in American Art and all other standard references. Biberman’s portrait of Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream, is currently on view at LACMA at part of Black American Portraits, a companion exhibition to the Obama presidential and first lady portraits. Biberman’s brand of modernism can fairly be divided into four categories 1) precisionist urban scenes of New York and Southern California which celebrate the creations of humanity; 2) portraits which expose not only the historical context, but also the souls, of his subjects; 3) rural landscapes and still life paintings which portray the beauty of America and its flora; and 4) social realist works which explore the struggles, hopes and shortcomings of our society. Regardless of genre, Biberman had a unique sense of structure and color. His figures are at the same time specific and universal. Taken as a whole, Biberman’s body of work presents the viewer with a compelling and often daring vision of 20th century America and its art.

Creator:
Edward Biberman (1904 - 1986, American)
Creation Year:
c. 1970s
Dimensions:
Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 12 in (30.48 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
Medium:
Oil
Movement & Style:
American Modern
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Los Angeles, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1859210018112

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