Description
Berman’s first United States exhibition took place at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York in 1929, and he continued to show there until 1947. In 1935, he emigrated to the U.S., settling first in New York and later in Los Angeles, eventually becoming an American citizen. From 1937 to 1955, he designed sets and costumes for ballet and opera companies including the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, American Ballet Caravan, and, most notably, the Metropolitan Opera. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships in the late 1940s, which he used to travel to Mexico and the American Southwest. Berman exhibited widely in American and European museums during the 1950s and ’60s, and retired to Rome in 1957, where he died in 1972. His works are in dozens of art museum collections, including the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Dedicated and dated at top: “À Louis et Lilian Ende avec mes meilleurs voeux N.Y. Jan 1941.”
References:
“Eugene G. Berman.” Askart.com. 2000-2011. http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/biography.aspx?artist=20739 (18 March 2011).
Falk, Peter Hastings, ed. Who Was Who in American Art. Madison, Connecticut: Sound View Press, 1985. p. 50.
