Biala and Daniel Brustlein were artists of extraordinary talent and vision who built upon the School of Paris aesthetic to create a unique and colorful language all their own.  This exhibition offers an opportunity to view the work of both artists side by side.  Included in the exhibition are paintings and several rare gouaches created by Brustlein that have never been shown.

(Janice) Biala  (1904-2000) was born in a small village at the Russian-Polish border.  She took the name of her birthplace (Biala) as her own after immigrating to the United State in 1913.  Spending much of her time in France during the twenties and thirties, Biala found a connection with the everyday things in Paris.  She studied the art of Bonnard, Matisse, and Braque, whose work would forever inform her as an artist.  Biala’s paintings capture the essence of a moment: the warmth of a lamp in an interior, the scent of a flower in a still life, and the noise of the streets in a cityscape.  Biala exhibited her work publicly for the first time at the Georgette Passedoit Gallery in New York City in 1936.

Daniel Brustlein (1904-1996) was born in the Alsatian town of Mulhouse.  He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and became a U.S. citizen in 1933.  Brustlein was first recognized as an illustrator and later championed as a painter for his dramatic use of color.  As an illustrator, he worked for many publications but most famously for The New Yorker where he signed his cartoons “Alain.” 

Biala and Brustlein married in 1943 and divided their time between Paris and New York, exhibiting extensively in both.  At a time when both cities were brimming with artistic fervor, Biala and Brustlein retained a style all their own, using flat formal shapes, the figure, and deep saturated color despite the art world’s growing fascination with abstraction.

“They (Biala and Brustlein) belonged to a trans-Atlantic tradition that included French painters like Matisse, Bonnard and Marquet, as well as (Americans) Milton Avery and Edward Hopper.” —Roberta Smith, The New York Times

The Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale would like to thank the Kouros Gallery, Amy Wolf Fine Art, and the Estate of Biala and Daniel Brustlein for making this exhibition possible.