Eleanore Berman; Painter of Gardens
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: Myrna Oliver, Times Staff Writer
LA Times
Some of her paintings:
http://www.gloriadelsoncontemporaryarts.com/berman.html
http://www.art-exchange.com/art-exchange/ArtResult.asp?ArtworkID=42356
http://www.art-exchange.com/art-exchange/ArtResult.asp?ArtworkID=42361
http://www.art-exchange.com/art-exchange/ArtResult.asp?index=1&ArtistFN=Eleanore&ArtistLN=Berman
Eleanore Berman, who paired her talents for art and for
horticulture to enshrine her Beverly Hills garden in
impressionistic paintings, has died. She was 75.
Berman died Sunday in her Beverly Hills home of cancer.
Although she was educated as an artist and exhibited her
paintings in galleries and museums around the world, her
artistic expertise also bloomed brightly in the garden she
cultivated for four decades behind the Colonial Georgian
house she called home.
"Take a drawing class," she advised other gardeners, sharing
her gardening wisdom in a Times article about her in
February. Working with artistic tools -- charcoal, pen,
ink -- disciplines the hand and trains the thinking about
what and where to plant, she said.
"I fell in love with the house," she said of her residence
since 1967, "because it already had a studio and the bones
of a great garden. I dig my hands into the ground, replace
plants, prune roses. I even keep a compost heap in back,
which is rare for a Beverly Hills lady."
Berman's carefully organized garden included a formal
section with patterned brick walkways and manicured boxwoods
and roses, and an area of greater profusion -- daisies,
bearded iris, sweet alyssum, lavender, geraniums, begonias,
cherry trees and myrtle hedges.
The garden and its gate were captured in about 200 paintings
and other pieces of art shown as far away as Amsterdam and
represented in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the
UCLA Hammer Museum. One painting Berman did of egg-shaped
stones from her path was reproduced on the cover of a
psychology book because the publisher thought it represented
the beginning of life.
"I spend a lot of time in this garden that I love," she told
The Times in February. "I'm engaged in it, fascinated by it,
stimulated by the light or dark, and I want to see it in a
painting."
Born in New York City, Berman as a child began sketching the
flowers, bridges and ponds of Central Park.
She studied with Modernist painter Josef Albers and sculptor
Ossip Zadkine at Black Mountain College in North Carolina,
earned a bachelor's degree at UCLA and was tutored in Paris
by Cubist painter Fernand Leger and in New York by painter
Manfred Schwartz and printmaker Robert Blackburn.
During one of her many Southern California exhibits, at
Beverly Hills' Janus Gallery in 1975, Berman's work was
reviewed by a Times art critic who commented:
"There is a strange dichotomy in [her] paintings between the
fluidity of some and the solidity of others. What gives them
common ground and provides credence to this artist's idiom
is their desire to abstract and extract from nature in a
highly personal manner. It seems as if in the best of her
work, she tries -- in an essentially romantic, sometimes
lyrical manner -- to penetrate to the core of visual
experience. "
Berman's marriages to arts patron Frederick M. Nicholas of
Beverly Hills and Henri Lazarof of Bel-Air both ended in
divorce.
She is survived by four children, Deborah Nicholas of
Berkeley; Jan Nicholas of Capitola, Calif.; Anthony E.
Nicholas of Beverly Hills; and David Lazarof of Los Angeles;
five grandchildren; and one step-grandchild.
The family has asked that any memorial contributions be sent
to the Eleanore Berman Art Foundation, 5440 McConnell Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90066.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: ELEANORE BERMAN: The impressionistic
paintings she created of her carefully organized Beverly
Hills garden have been exhibited around the world.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Wally Skalij Los Angeles Times