Fred Berman

Fred Berman, born Fred Jean Berman (November 3, 1926 – November 6, 2011), was a Jewish American abstract artist.

Early life Fred Berman was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926 to father Ezra Berman and mother Frances, children of Russian Jews who immigrated to the American Midwest. He was the youngest of four children. Due to a possible heart condition in his youth, he was told to avoid physical exertion and focused his energies on chess and art. In the summer of 1943, he went to work for the architecture firm Eschweiler & Eschweiler, and this experience laid the foundation for his future artistic ventures in architecture. later considered one of the premier art schools in the United States.

Career Berman achieved early success in his career, receiving the Joseph N. Eisendrath prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950 for his encaustic painting titled The Storm. At 29, Berman was the youngest artist featured in the exhibition alongside the likes of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Berman joined the art department staff at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1960. A shift in his art was recognized during this period from gritty and dark urban themes to softer, natural landscapes. Though he continued to paint for the remainder of his life, Berman grew more skilled in other mediums, as well. In 1965, one of his wooden assemblages was displayed at The Box Show at the Byron Gallery in New York. This exhibition was notable for featuring assemblages by Louise Nevelson, Joseph Cornell, and Robert Rauschenberg among others. Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned the title professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for his decades-long contribution to teaching and taught there until 1993.

Style Berman's art shifts between abstract and representational, often merging the two to varying degrees, forming intentionally ambiguous pieces. Dean Sobel, former chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum, noted that even in Berman's most abstract pieces approaching non-objectivity or Abstract Expressionism, he always relies on a subject for inspiration. Like Great Primer (1964), shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Rather than paint from his photos, he would often photograph subjects he had painted in the past. Sobel characterized Berman's photographs as "cool and distant," adding to his formalist approach. Fred Berman: Paintings and Photographs, 1982; Kresge Art Center Photographs by Fred Berman, 1983; Camden Art Centre, London Fred Berman, 1990; Charles Allis Art Museum Fred Berman Retrospective 1949-1994, 1994; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Fred Berman Photographs / Walls and Windows, 2001; Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum Fred Berman: Works Across Seven Decades, 2009; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Group 54th Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, 1950; Art Institute of Chicago 146th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, 1951; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts American Water Colors, Drawings, and Prints, 1952–1953; The Metropolitan Museum of Art The 23rd Biennial Exhibition, 1953; Corcoran Gallery of Art The 11th National Exhibition of Prints, 1953; Library of Congress 1st Annual Dallas National Print Exhibition, 1953; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts The 12th National Exhibition of Prints, 1954; Library of Congress The 24th Biennial Exhibition, 1955; Corcoran Gallery of Art The 26th Biennial Exhibition, 1959; Corcoran Gallery of Art 75 Printmakers from North America, 1960; Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas 65th Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, 1962; Art Institute of Chicago 6th Biennial of Painting and Sculpture, 1962; Walker Art Center The Box Show, 1965; Byron Gallery 84th Annual Exhibition, 1965; San Francisco Museum of Art These Images Exist: Photography by Fred Berman and Diana Peters, 1976; Palo Alto Art Center Contemporary Art - Thursday, November 13th, 1980; Christie's - New York Some Photographic Uses of Color, 1984; David Winton Bell Gallery 100 years of Wisconsin Art, 1988; Milwaukee Art Museum The Jewish Contribution in Twentieth-Century Art, 1993; Milwaukee Art Museum Wisconsin Artists: A Celebration of Jewish Presence, 1994; Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art Wisconsin Moderns, 2010; Dean Jensen Gallery Wisconsin Masters: An Artistic Legacy, 1900-1970, 2012; UWM Art History Gallery ' Founders & Visionaries: Wisconsin Jewish Artists from the Milwaukee Art Museum, 2015; Jewish Museum Milwaukee Wisconsin Modernists: Rebels from Regionalism, 2018; Cedarburg Art Museum

Notable Collections Brown University Chazen Museum of Art Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum Milwaukee Art Museum Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design Museum University of Wisconsin–Green Bay University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee