Date: Fri 03-Apr-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Bernstein

Full Text:

Theresa Bernstein Celebrated

w/2 cuts

NEW YORK CITY -- On February 25, American Modernist Theresa Bernstein attended

her 70-year retrospective at Joan Whalen Fine Art. In a jampacked gallery,

fans applauded this extraordinary artist as she entered, waving and blowing

kisses to the crowd.

With cameras flashing, Bernstein gave a sketching demonstration, using

six-year-old Alexandra Marie Valencia as her model. The exhibition continues

through Saturday, April 18.

Among the many guests were Parks and Recreation Commissioner Henry J. Stern,

and Michael Rabin, deputy commissioner of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's

Department for the Aging, who greeted gallery guests and read a letter from

the mayor: "On behalf of the residents of New York City I proudly salute you

for your dedication and faithful commitment to New York Realism. Throughout

this century your work has exhibited an extraordinary humanness that

appropriately depicts the daily life of New Yorkers ... and at the same time

chronicles life in New York City throughout the past 70 years."

Joan Whalen also read letters from President Bill Clinton, extending his

warmest congratulations, and from Joanne Kuebler, executive director of The

Art Students League of New York.

When asked the secret of her longevity, Bernstein replied: "I don't count."

Bernstein, among other realists in this century, has been somewhat

overshadowed by the art world's focus on more abstract artists. Now,

concurrently with the Whalen exhibition, she is receiving public and critical

attention as part of a two-year traveling exhibition: "The Philadelphia Ten: A

Women's Artist Group 1917-1945," which opened at Moore College of Art and

Design in Philadelphia on January 23. The group was formed on February 17,

1917 in response to the male-dominated The Eight, later called the Ashcan

School.

Born in Philadelphia in 1890, Bernstein showed early talent and interest in

art. At the age of 17, she won a Board of Education scholarship to attend the

Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now Moore College of Art. She

enrolled in the four-year Normal Art Course for training teachers in 1907,

studying under Elliott Daingerfield, Daniel Garber, Harriet Sartain, Henry B.

Snell and Samuel Murray.

Later, she studied with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League in

New York City. One of her earliest works, "Daniel Garber's Studio" (1910), is

included in this retrospective. In the 1920s, along with John Sloan, she

helped form the Society of Independent Artists.

Adhering to Robert Henri's philosophy that "art cannot be separated from

life," Bernstein, a superb colorist, has chronicled decades of American's

urban and seaside life with a passionate intensity and energy of brushwork -

her own expressive realism. Last summer, her friend Jerry Jackson, director of

Smith-Girard, asked Bernstein if she considered herself an expressionist

painter. She replied, "I never thought of myself as a painter. I was someone

trying to paint. In the 1920s, [art] work was going up the abstract ladder but

I kept my feet on the ground. I believe art is human."

Bernstein has captured seven decades of: Americans coping with economic

uncertainty, "Waiting Room - Employment Office," 1917; celebrating religious

rituals, "The Seder," circa 1940; seaside play, "Good Harbor Beach," 1960; or

marching in parades, "Four Freedoms Parade, July 4, 1944."

Since her first solo exhibition at the Milch Gallery, New York City in 1919,

Bernstein has enjoyed many exhibitions and is represented in the permanent

collections of more than a dozen museums in the United States. She has

established herself as a uniquely American realist - a genre painter whose

work spans the Twentieth Century.

Joan Whalen Fine Arts is in the New York Gallery Building, 24 West 57th

Street, Suite 507, and is open Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. For

information 212/397-9700.