Image Source: WIKIPEDIAJANICE BIALA
1903-2000
A painter who lived both in America and Europe, Janice Biala was considered a representational artist, but she was closely associated with abstract painters and incorporated elements of that style into her work. Her canvases have broad bands of luminous color and focus on the effects of light.
In the 1950s, she was active in the New York art scene and participated in the Abstract-Expressionist discussion group at Studio 35. However, most of her career she lived in Europe, especially Paris where she died on September 24, 2000 at age 97.
Many of her paintings were interiors and street scenes of Paris, views of Venice, and the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Biala's brother was painter Jack Tworkov. She was born in Biala, Poland, the town whose name she adopted. As a child, she emigrated to New York City with her family. In the 1930s, she became the companion to writer Ford Maddox Ford, and she illustrated several books for him. After Ford's death, she married painter Daniel Brustlein.
JANICE BIALA BIOGRAPHY
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Biala (b. 1903; d. September 24, 2000) was a Polish born American painter well regarded in France and the United States for her paintings of intimate interiors, portraits of famous friends, and the places she traveled.
In 1930, on a trip to Paris, she met and fell in love with the English Novelist, Ford Madox Ford. Remaining with Ford until his death in 1939, Biala became the perfect representative of American bohemia in France signing her paintings simply as Biala. She returned to New York City where she became one of the few women associated with the New York School. She befriended painters Willem de Kooning and critic Harold Rosenberg among others. In the early 1940s she married Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein, a noted cartoonist for the New Yorker and the couple soon began a life long process of spending their time living between Paris and New York.
Biala’s unique contribution to the rise of modernism was celebrated throughout her lifetime from New York City to Paris. The albums of art history will forever remark on her sublime assimilation of the School of Paris and the New York School of abstract expressionism.
Source: Estate of Janice Biala
1991
Oil on canvas
11 x 7 1/2 inches
Signed lower right
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