Description
Eugene Berman was a painter as well as a set and costume designer. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, his family fled to Paris during the Russian Revolution, and he studied art in France, Germany and Switzerland. He was aligned with the French Neo-Romantic movement, which included Pavel Tchletichew, painting figures among imaginary landscapes and architectural environments. Although the environments he created in his paintings were surreal, they were based on careful study of Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
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.
Inscriptions:
Signed in matrix in image lower left:: “E.B. 1939”
Margin lower left: “A Triton Publication, 1953″
Margin lower left: “Courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut”
Margin lower right: “Printed in the U.S.A. by Triton Press, Inc.”
Margin upper left: “Catalda Fine Arts, Exclusive Distributor”
Condition: Generally very good, recently professionally cleaned and deacidified with light remaining toning, wear, handling. Very faint dampstain lower right corner. Some scattered pale discoloration in white margins. Some scattered fading or loss to typeface of printed credits in lower margin.
References:
“Curtain Design for “Le Diable s’amuse” (Devil’s Holiday).” Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/404458 (24 February 2025).
“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.
