MIREL BERCOVICI paintings/drawings

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

Lincoln Center/Avery Fisher Hall, Westbeth Gallery, Hotel Algonquin,
City Center Gallery, Silvermine Guild, The Actor’s Studio, Kamin Dance Gallery, Venezuela Consulate, Times Square Lobby, United Nations Commission/ Geneva, Pen & Brush, Salmagundi Club, Caravan Gallery, Harkins Gallery, Progressive Artists, Zeitlin/Hollywood, Ben Robbins/Tel Aviv, 50 American Artists/Schoenman, Knickerbocker Artists, Independent Artists/Grand Central Palace, NYC

REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

“Few artists can boast an 80-year retrospective. Mirel Bercovici, who started painting as a child prodigy, covered that time span in this show. Her portrait of Leonard Bernstein is one of our favorites. A Byronic figure looming over a background of somber yet vibrant color, the compostion has a symphonic sweep with the figures elongated in the manner of El Greco for a highly effective synthesis of specific portraiture and vigorous Expressionism. Although she has painted every sort of subject in the course of a long and productive career, Bercovici is an especially exceptional portrait artist with an ability to both capture a likeness and give us something even more essential of the sitter’s character by virtue of her bold distortions and intrepid color sense. Rather than flattering her subjects, Bercovici, like Alice Neel, does them the even greater honor of laying bare their slightly tarnished souls…some as roguishly deft as the terse prose portraits of the noir mystery novelist Raymond Chandler.”
Gallery & Studio Magazine, 2002

“Apart from her recognition as an artist, Mirel’s background encompasses a span of the liveliest cultural advances of our time. Her father, Konrad Bercovici, a leader of this advance had a profound influence on his time and family across this exceptional creative period in our cultural history. I know Mirel and her work across the years and her contributions as a serious artist.
Her graphic drawings speak for themselves and require no further accolades from me.”
*Al Hirschfeld, 1994

“As a painter, I own a portrait of Barrymore by Mirel that he sat for in Hollywood, Mirel is a poet. And as a poet and actress, Mirel is a painter, creating images of people, places and feelings that are vivd and powerful and totally original. She is an artist in every sensibility of her being.”
William Hickey, Actor/Director, 1994

“This is music in painting!”
Suzanne Bloch, Daughter of Composer Ernst Bloch

“Your ‘Pegasus’ is a masterpiece.
“Your ‘Los Gitanos,’ fantastic!”
You are a great artist who always says something that matters.”
Maxa Nordau, Painter, Art Professor NYU 1965, 1967

“Overpowering thrill in the lobby of
the Algonquin, a painting of wild horses called ‘Against the Sky’ by
Mirel Bercovici.”
Harry Hirshfield, The New York Mirror, 1959

“The new Gilbert Stuart.”
Arthur Miller, The Los Angeles Times, 1939

“Fire and excitement in portraiture.
She senses the line of the other person because she lives inside of it herself. All of her paint loves the canvas…it loves the places she chooses to put it At once complex and coherent, it is tight placed, completely about itself. Involuntary, yet completely conscious of what it is doing.and it is always doing something exciting.”
George Antheil, Art Critic, Composer, 1939

“The future hope of American art.”
Thomas Craven, Art Editor,
The New York Times, 1933