Bernarda Bryson Shahn
Template:Short description Template:Infobox artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn (March 7, 1903 – December 12, 2004)<ref name=fox>Template:Cite news</ref> was an American painter and lithographer. She also wrote and illustrated children's books including The Zoo of Zeus and Gilgamesh. The artist Ben Shahn was her "life companion" and they married in 1969, shortly before his death.<ref name=fox/>
Personal life
Bernarda Bryson was born in Athens, Ohio, where her father owned the Athens Morning Journal and her mother was a Latin professor.<ref name=":0">Kirwin, Liza. Oral History Interview with Bernarda Bryson Shahn. "Archives of American Art." 29 April 1983. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-bernarda-bryson-shahn-11655 Template:Webarchive</ref> Both of her parents were politically active and liberal.<ref name=":0" /> Her maternal grandfather was also politically active, with his home a stop on the underground railroad.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In Ohio, she studied art, including etching, and art history at several schools including Ohio University, Ohio State University, and the Cleveland School of Art, and learned lithography from a friend.<ref name=":0" /> She married young, divorced, and then worked for a newspaper in Columbus, the Ohio State Journal, writing about art news, and teaching printmaking for the museum school at the Columbus Museum of Art.<ref name=fox/><ref name=":0" /> On a trip to New York in 1932 (or 1933)<ref name=fox/> to interview Diego Rivera, during the production of his Rockefeller Center murals, she met his assistant Ben Shahn.<ref name=FA>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> After moving to New York shortly after completing the interview, Bryson reconnected with Shahn and they moved to Washington, DC.<ref name=":0" /> Bryson and Shahn had three children together and eventually settled in Roosevelt, New Jersey.<ref name=fox/> She died at her home in Roosevelt at the age of 101 on December 12, 2004.<ref name="fox"/>
Career
Already a trained printmaker, Bryson worked for the Depression-era Resettlement Administration, later part of the Farm Security Administration on a project with Shahn in the 1930s to document rural life. Her lithographs from this series were first printed in the studio she and Shahn established in Washington for the Resettlement Administration and published in full in 1995 as The Vanishing American Frontier.<ref name=fox/><ref name=":0" /> In 1939, Bryson and Shahn produced a set of 13 murals for the Treasury Department Art Project's Section of Fine Arts entitled Resources of America inspired by Walt Whitman's poem "I See America Working" and installed at the United States Post Office-Bronx Central Annex.<ref name="nrhpinv_ny">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Bryson worked primarily as an illustrator beginning in the 1940s, producing works for Harpers as well as Life, Seventeen, and Scientific American, and later for several children's books.<ref name="fox" /><ref name=":0" /> These included "Zoo of Zeus" in 1964 and "Gilgamesh in 1967". Her illustrations of the Princeton University Eating Club and of Senator Taft as he is groomed for his 1948 Republican Presidential Candidacy exemplify her minimalistic representation of satire and straightforward style.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She continued painting throughout her life in a figurative style often with references to Classical mythology, and she worked was exhibited in solo shows at galleries in New York and New Jersey.<ref name="fox" /> Her paintings are owned by collections including the Whitney Museum of Art.<ref name="fox" />
Further reading
- The Vanishing American Frontier: Bernarda Bryson Shahn and her historical lithographs created for the Resettlement Administration of FDR, a catalog of the artist's lithographs, drawings, and poster published on the occasion of a traveling exhibition curated, and with an introduction and 18 image essays, by Jake Milgram Wien, 1995, Template:OCLC
References
External links
- 1903 births
- 2004 deaths
- American children's book illustrators
- People from Roosevelt, New Jersey
- American women children's book illustrators
- Section of Painting and Sculpture artists
- 20th-century American painters
- 20th-century American women painters
- American women printmakers
- 20th-century American printmakers
- People from Athens, Ohio
- Artists from Ohio
- American women centenarians
- Women lithographers
- 20th-century American lithographers
- 20th-century American illustrators