Janice Biala Oil Painting of Mediterranean Cypress, Circa 1960

Item Details

Janice Biala (New York/France, 1903 – 2000)
Untitled (Mediterranean cypress), circa 1960
Oil on canvas
Signed “Biala” to lower right

Born Schenhaia Tworkovska in Biala, Poland in 1903, she and her entire family Anglified their names after emigrating to New York in 1913. She adopted the name Janice Biala, after her hometown. She studied under Charles Webster Hawthorne at the National Academy of Design before settling into an artist’s colony in Massachusetts and studying under Edwin Dickinson. She traveled to Paris in 1930, where she met her first husband and remained with him until his death in 1939. Soon after she returned to New York and befriended Willem de Kooning and art critic Harold Rosenberg. She was one of the few women who became associated with the New York School. She met her second husband in the early 1940s and the couple spent the rest of their lives living between Paris and New York. Her work is a celebration of her integration of the influence of the School of Paris and the New York School abstract expressionism.
Biala’s works are represented in the collections of numerous prestigious institutions, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Diego Museum of Art, USC Fisher Gallery and University of Wyoming Art Museum, among others.

Condition

- accretion, discoloration and minor abrasions across painting surface; wear and abrasions to frame.

Dimensions

- measures frame; painting measures 39.25″ × 39.25″.

Item #

ITMG090026