VRATA 1
Alexander Liberman, (1912-1999, Russian-American)
Collage and acrylic on canvas (72" x 96")
On loan to Kentucky Performing Arts from Mr. Henry Heuser
Liberman was a magazine editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor. Only in the 1950s did Liberman take up painting and, later, metal sculpture. His highly recognizable sculptures are assembled from industrial objects, often painted in uniform bright colors.
In a 1986 interview concerning his formative years as a sculptor and his aesthetic, Liberman said, "I think many works of art are screams, and I identify with screams." Beginning in 1948, he spent his summers visiting and photographing a generation of modern European artists working in their studios including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Maurice Utrillo, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, and Pablo Picasso. In 1959 the Museum of Modern Art exhibited Liberman's photographs of artists and their studios. A year later the images were collected in Liberman's first book,
The Artist in his Studio. His second wife, Tatiana Yacovleffdu Plessix Liberman, had been a childhood playmate and baby-sitter. In 1941, they escaped together from occupied France, via Lisbon, to New York. Liberman passed away in 1999 at age 87.
