Creator Bio
Henryk Berlewi
1894–1967
The painter, graphic designer, and typographer Henryk Berlewi was born into an acculturated Warsaw family. He trained in Warsaw, Antwerp, and Paris and became known for his theater posters, book jackets, and page designs in Hebrew and Yiddish. In the 1920s, he took up constructivist abstraction, creating paintings that employed simple geometric forms. In 1928, after moving from Warsaw to Paris, he abandoned the avant-garde and began painting portraits and nudes in a figurative style. He survived the war in Nice, serving in the Resistance, and in 1957, he returned to painting abstract works. He is often considered a progenitor of optical art.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
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Cover of Albatros, No. 3
Albatros, a journal of literature and graphic art, debuted in Warsaw in 1922 and published its final two issues in Berlin. The journal was edited by the Hebrew-Yiddish poet Uri Zvi Greenberg and…
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Chair with Red Matter
Chair with Red Matter was painted at a time when Henryk Berlewi was producing figurative art: portraits and still lives inspired by the work of seventeenth-century French artists. By 1957, he had…