Edward Biberman (1904 - 1986)

Five Potted Plants, 1929, oil on canvas, signed and dated upper right, 38 ½ x 47 inches, titled verso, label with “#13” verso, noted “#9” verso; exhibited: 1) 45 Painters and Sculptors under 35 Years, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, April 11 to 27, 1930 (label verso from this show includes Biberman’s address: “58 West 57^th St., NYC”);  2) Edward Biberman Exhibition, Montross Gallery, New York, NY, January 19 to February 7, 1931 (see brochure and Harris, Ruth Green, A Round of Galleries Biberman, Aronson, Mme. Barjanski, Lahey and Other Artists Show Their Work, The New York Times, January 25, 1931, p. X13 – “the five potted plants are as many as you like to make them . . . .”); and 3) Paintings by Edward Biberman, Mellon Galleries, Philadelphia, PA, March, 1934 (see Bonte, C.H. In Gallery and Studio, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 1934, p. A21 “The various florals, too, are strongly individual. ‘Five Potted Plants’ being, in our estimation, the best of this group.”), presented in its original frame

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Five Potted Plants is among Edward Biberman’s most important early paintings. Executed in New York soon after his return from three years painting and exhibiting in Paris and Berlin, Five Potted Plants helped establish Biberman’s reputation in the United States as a significant modernist. As Biberman recalled, “During my first year in New York, two things happened which were to prove of great importance to me. Friends brought Alfred Barr and Jere Abbott, the co-directors of the newly-founded, but already highly influential Museum of Modern Art, to see my work. They liked the paintings I showed them and invited me to participate in a show at the Modern Museum called ‘Forty-six Under Thirty-five’ [An Exhibition of Work of 46 Painters & Sculptors Under 35 Years of Age]. This exhibition was a showcase for a group of younger artists, and inclusion in it carried great prestige.”  From today’s vantage point, the exhibition’s roster reads like a who’s who of the artists who would go on to define the look and feel of American art during the 1930s and beyond, including, Biberman’s close friend, the sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, the Precisionists, Virginia Berresford, Elsie Driggs, Charles Goeller and Stefan Hirsch, the Magic Realist, Peter Blume, the Expressionist, Arshile Gorki, the social realists, Reginald Marsh and Ben Shahn, and the classicist, Luigi Lucioni. When it was later exhibited at Biberman’s first solo exhibition at Montross Gallery in New York and in Philadelphia’s Mellon Galleries, Five Potted Plants was critically acclaimed as Biberman’s best still life. The work is a prime example of early American modernist still life painting and calls to mind works by Marsden Hartley and Joseph Stella from the same period, which were often characterized by a simplification of forms which seem to float in space, an unconventional palette, and an overall mysterious quality.

Edward Biberman was born in Philadelphia, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. His 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 lived 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.  Although he continued to paint and show his work professionally until his death, Biberman’s relocation to Southern California and his devotion to progressive politics no doubt slowed the recognition he deserved and has received since his death.   

During his long career, Biberman showed at the Salon d’Automne (Paris); Whitney Museum of American Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and dozens of other museums and galleries across the US and in Europe.  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 Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, National Portrait Gallery (of the Smithsonian Institution), Butler Institute of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, LACMA, and Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.  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 twenty 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 To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America  at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and other institutions (2011), Pacific Standard Time (2012), Contraption: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists (2018), Black American Portraits (2021) at LACMA, Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism (2022) at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Art for the People WPA Era Paintings from the Dijkstra Collection (2023 – 2024) at the Crocker Museum, the Oceanside Museum and the Huntington Art Museum, Library and Botanical Gardens, The Whitney's Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965 (2025) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Staging California in Early Hollywood at UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art (2026)

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 man; 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 20^th century America and its art. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and all other standard references.