BACKGROUND
Mirel Bercovici was the daughter of artist Naomi LiBrescu and
Konrad Bercovici, acclaimed Gypsy storyteller, journalist and author
of, among other things, the original screenplay for Chaplin’s
“The Great Dictator”...a script Mirel typed. The family’s circle of friends included Melvyn Douglas, Diego Rivera, Brancusi, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Moishe Dayan, Paul Robeson, John Reed, Hemingway, Wilhelm Van Loon, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Gershwins. Portraits of family members by Modigliani, John Sloan, George Bellows and
Robert Henri have been exhibited in, among other places, the
Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to media attention for her own work, her personal reminiscences about them have been featured in such noted books as:
“The Tramp, Charlie Chaplin” – Joyce Milton, Harper Collins
“Paul Robeson” – Martin Duberman, Knopf
“Queen of Bohemia, Louise Bryant” – Mary Dearborn, Houghton Mifflin
“The Modern School” – Paul Avrich, Princeton Press
“Art and Anarchism” – Prof. Alan Antliff, Alberta College
At the age of eight, Mirel became the youngest person admitted to
the adult Academie Julian in Paris. Back in the United States, Mirel subsequently enrolled in both the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, contrary to the advice of family friends Diego Rivera and Abraham Walkowitz, who feared the Academy would stifle her originality. Despite considerable media attention, her parents refused to exploit Mirel as a child prodigy as she continued her studies in the advanced classes of, among others, Luigi Lucioni, George Grosz, Leon Kroll, Kenneth Hayes Miller, George B. Bridgman and Ivan Olinsky .
Heralded as “the future of art in America” by the NY Times and
“the new Gilbert Stuart” by the LA Times, Mirel continued to paint
and show on both coasts, including exhibits at the Gallery at City Center, Café des Artistes, Hotel Algonquin, Actor’s Studio, Silvermine Guild, Zeitlin, Kamin and Schoenman Galleries, Tel Aviv’s Ben Robbins Gallery, as well as noted Progressive Arts, Independent Artists and Knickerbocker Artists group show
Mirel also founded and headed up the Art Information Bureau at
New York’s City Hall under Fiorello LaGuardia, as well as initiating the Artists for Victory Parade with Joe Lilly and Henry Billings at the outbreak of World War II. In the 50’s, Ms. Bercovici also called on to participate in the advent of color television, devising theories and methodology for working with color in initial productions, as well as teaching and lecturing on both the psychological and technological aspects of color in color televsion at New York’s University of Radio and Television.
As an art and social commentator in the late 50’s and early 60’s, Mirel was a frequent guest on various radio stations, including New York’s WEVD, becoming one of the first to focus attention on the lack of recognition and historical inequality of women in the arts.
Feeling strongly that the subject matter determines both the medium and the method, Mirel continued to paint and draw, producing a large body of work in oil, watercolor and pastel, while raising a family in NYC. Among her most notable work is a series of paintings and sketches of Leonard Bernstein. Given special permission to sit with the musicians while they rehearsed with him, the culmination of this series is an 84”X72” painting of Bernstein conducting the Philharmonic. Shown at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in 2004, it was hailed as “Fantastic!” by Philharmonic President Zarin Mehta, as well as by such musicians as violinist Mischa Elmann, composer Suzanne Bloch, and symphonic director Ralph Berkowitz, who wrote Bernstein praising the magnificence of this “impressive portrait.” Other notable work includes her portraits, paintings of dances and horses and watercolor landscapes.
An accomplished poet, as well as a painter, Mirel also performed at downtown poetry slams. She was at work on a series that combined her poetry with her Depression Era drawings, illustrations for the Book of Job, and today’s plight of the homeless when she passed away at her New York studio, at the age of 93, in December, 2010. Paintings from this series have been exhibited at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Noted exhibitions in her later years also included an 80-year Solo Retrospective at the Westbeth Gallery and a Public Spaces series at the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, the Venezuela Consulate and Times Square Lobby.
She was a member and participated in group shows of:
The National League of American Pen Women
Pen and Brush
The Salmagundi Club
The Watercolor Society
Mirel Bercovici was the daughter of artist Naomi LiBrescu and
Konrad Bercovici, acclaimed Gypsy storyteller, journalist and author
of, among other things, the original screenplay for Chaplin’s
“The Great Dictator”...a script Mirel typed. The family’s circle of friends included Melvyn Douglas, Diego Rivera, Brancusi, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Moishe Dayan, Paul Robeson, John Reed, Hemingway, Wilhelm Van Loon, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Gershwins. Portraits of family members by Modigliani, John Sloan, George Bellows and
Robert Henri have been exhibited in, among other places, the
Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. In addition to media attention for her own work, her personal reminiscences about them have been featured in such noted books as:
“The Tramp, Charlie Chaplin” – Joyce Milton, Harper Collins
“Paul Robeson” – Martin Duberman, Knopf
“Queen of Bohemia, Louise Bryant” – Mary Dearborn, Houghton Mifflin
“The Modern School” – Paul Avrich, Princeton Press
“Art and Anarchism” – Prof. Alan Antliff, Alberta College
At the age of eight, Mirel became the youngest person admitted to
the adult Academie Julian in Paris. Back in the United States, Mirel subsequently enrolled in both the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, contrary to the advice of family friends Diego Rivera and Abraham Walkowitz, who feared the Academy would stifle her originality. Despite considerable media attention, her parents refused to exploit Mirel as a child prodigy as she continued her studies in the advanced classes of, among others, Luigi Lucioni, George Grosz, Leon Kroll, Kenneth Hayes Miller, George B. Bridgman and Ivan Olinsky .
Heralded as “the future of art in America” by the NY Times and
“the new Gilbert Stuart” by the LA Times, Mirel continued to paint
and show on both coasts, including exhibits at the Gallery at City Center, Café des Artistes, Hotel Algonquin, Actor’s Studio, Silvermine Guild, Zeitlin, Kamin and Schoenman Galleries, Tel Aviv’s Ben Robbins Gallery, as well as noted Progressive Arts, Independent Artists and Knickerbocker Artists group show
Mirel also founded and headed up the Art Information Bureau at
New York’s City Hall under Fiorello LaGuardia, as well as initiating the Artists for Victory Parade with Joe Lilly and Henry Billings at the outbreak of World War II. In the 50’s, Ms. Bercovici also called on to participate in the advent of color television, devising theories and methodology for working with color in initial productions, as well as teaching and lecturing on both the psychological and technological aspects of color in color televsion at New York’s University of Radio and Television.
As an art and social commentator in the late 50’s and early 60’s, Mirel was a frequent guest on various radio stations, including New York’s WEVD, becoming one of the first to focus attention on the lack of recognition and historical inequality of women in the arts.
Feeling strongly that the subject matter determines both the medium and the method, Mirel continued to paint and draw, producing a large body of work in oil, watercolor and pastel, while raising a family in NYC. Among her most notable work is a series of paintings and sketches of Leonard Bernstein. Given special permission to sit with the musicians while they rehearsed with him, the culmination of this series is an 84”X72” painting of Bernstein conducting the Philharmonic. Shown at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in 2004, it was hailed as “Fantastic!” by Philharmonic President Zarin Mehta, as well as by such musicians as violinist Mischa Elmann, composer Suzanne Bloch, and symphonic director Ralph Berkowitz, who wrote Bernstein praising the magnificence of this “impressive portrait.” Other notable work includes her portraits, paintings of dances and horses and watercolor landscapes.
An accomplished poet, as well as a painter, Mirel also performed at downtown poetry slams. She was at work on a series that combined her poetry with her Depression Era drawings, illustrations for the Book of Job, and today’s plight of the homeless when she passed away at her New York studio, at the age of 93, in December, 2010. Paintings from this series have been exhibited at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Noted exhibitions in her later years also included an 80-year Solo Retrospective at the Westbeth Gallery and a Public Spaces series at the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, the Venezuela Consulate and Times Square Lobby.
She was a member and participated in group shows of:
The National League of American Pen Women
Pen and Brush
The Salmagundi Club
The Watercolor Society