Eugene Gustavovitch Berman (Russian, 1899-1972), "Pisan Fantasy", 1951, an original black and white lithograph on blue paper, edition 7/100, blind stamp lower left, signed and dated by the artist in pencil on lower right. Numbered 7/100 and titled in pencil by the artist on the lower left. A painstakingly detailed rendering of Pisa with its iconic Leaning Tower to the left of the famous Baptistry. These Romanesque landmarks are printed on paper of a pleasing pale blue hue that contributes to the romance of the composition. Of all his teachers in Paris, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard - leaders of the Post-Impressionist avant-garde Les Nabis - were two of the greatest influences on his work. Berman also traveled to Italy, where he gained inspiration from Baroque architecture, and artists such as Bernini, Tiepolo, and Guardi. His work began to take on a decidedly Romantic quality, retaining sensitivity towards life’s fragility and nostalgia for European civilization. Size: 18" L x 13" W (45.7 cm x 33 cm)

In 1932 Berman was offered an exhibition at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York. He had often depicted architectural forms in vast, deserted vistas with classical allusions providing a visual commentary on the decay of the modern world that he felt was in ruins. Berman moved to the United States in 1935 and began turning his artistic abilities to endeavors such as covers for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Town and Country magazines. He began to design stage sets for the Hartford Music festival and combined his talent for set design with his love of architecture by creating sets for several ballet companies, as well as the Metropolitan Opera. Many of these theatrical projects brought him into collaboration with Igor Stravinsky.

Finding a particular affinity for California and the Southwest, the artist settled in Hollywood in the early 1940s. In 1947 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for a tour of the Southwest, which he used to study desert landscapes, finding there a correlation with the vast, barren landscapes he had been painting from his imagination. From the loneliness and isolation Berman often expressed in his works he created new commentaries on materialism, fame, and the disparities of post-war prosperity, in a complete departure from many of his contemporaries who were working with Abstraction, Cubism and Futurism. In 1949 he received another Guggenheim fellowship that allowed them to travel to Italy where some of his paintings were in galleries alongside the works of Dali and Duchamp.

Upon returning to the United States, he continued painting and designing theater sets. The loss of his wife to suicide devastated Berman in the process of publishing a book of drawings and writings about their time in Italy; after Imaginary Promenades in Italy was published, Berman left the States to settle permanently in Rome, only returning to renew his citizenship, and once to design sets for Stravinsky's opera ballet, Renard.

In 1962 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A retrospective, "High Drama: Eugene Berman and the Legacy of the Melancholic Sublime" at the McNay Art Museum, Texas, in 2005, gave the public an opportunity to see the unique world he had created--sorrow softened by whimsy. Eugene Berman's style literally "set the stage" for modern audiences to examine the human condition.

Provenance: ex-Denenberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, California, USA

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#136702

Blind stamp at lower left, signed and dated by the artist in pencil on lower right. Numbered 7/100 and titled in pencil by the artist on the lower left. Slight area of discoloration to upper left margin. Inventory numbers in pencil on verso.