Vera Berdich, artist , major influence on Imagists
Hyfler/Rosner
October 17, 2003
BY BRENDA WARNER ROTZOLL Chicago Sun-Times Staff Reporter
Vera Berdich came out of night school and a Great Depression support project
for artists to found the Etching Department at the School of the Art
Institute and develop new techniques in art printmaking, intermingling
historic methods with modern technology.
She trained and influenced generations of artists while she created her own
art, full of fantasy and form, that can be found in museums around the
globe.
As her skill grew, her art was purchased by collectors and museums
worldwide. Among many collections where it is found today are those of the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris,
the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.,
the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Art Institute of Chicago,
which has 144 of her works.
Miss Berdich died in her sleep Sunday at her home in the Avondale
neighborhood. She was 88.
She was born in Chicago in 1915, the child of Czechoslovakian immigrants.
Her father was a tool and die maker who longed to be a farmer. He bought
land near Eagle River, Wis., that turned out to be a swamp. There, the
family subsisted for a year on a houseboat, eating fish, game, berries,
buttermilk and her mother's homemade bread.
She was 8 when her parents built a house in Riverside Lawn, an
unincorporated pocket of land across the Des Plaines River from Riverside
and just downstream from the Hoffman Tower in Lyons. She went to Morton High
School in Cicero, baby sitting and doing housework to help pay for her
books. She sang in the school's a cappella choir and was encouraged by her
art teacher to attend the Art Institute school.
Miss Berdich had no money, so she worked at various jobs including photo
retouching at the old Curt Teich postcard factory on the North Side, taking
art classes at night. She joined a Depression-era arts project at Hull House
sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, or WPA, a Franklin D.
Roosevelt administration program that put artists to work in their
hometowns. There she learned etching, which became her favorite medium of
creation.
When World War II came, she studied drafting and worked for the American
Steel Co.
Miss Berdich finally amassed enough credits to graduate from the School of
the Art Institute in 1946 and joined the staff a year later to set up its
Etching Department.
It was a battle. She had to use her own press and cast-off furniture from
other departments to start up the operation in 1947.
Miss Berdich taught there until 1979. She was a major influence on the
Imagists, who came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists
preferred images to abstract expressionism.
Her work is full of objects and images, often with such motifs as eyes,
plants and animals, classical sculptures and iconic heads.
"She was a visionary," said Bob Hiebert of Printworks Gallery in River
North, which handles her art. "Vera's works are very layered. It's like a
good piece of music. You can go back to them time and time again and always
find new things in them."
She introduced the use of the photo image as an art form in etching,
combining a photo image and an etching image on a single printing plate. She
would apply different colors separately to the same plate for many
overprintings to achieve lush or subtle colors that appear to be
hand-painted.
Miss Berdich encouraged the use of print making as a creative means of
expression rather than a means of reproducing many copies.
"Vera made this her second home," said Suzanne Folds McCullagh of the Art
Institute's Prints & Drawings Department. "She told students at the school
to look at the museum as their living room, where they can train their eye
and gather experience for their work."
Folds McCullagh described Miss Berdich as a little fireball with a booming
voice and great enthusiasm, who liked to compare herself to Rembrandt as a
printmaker.
Miss Berdich is survived by her many students and admirers of her work.