Edward Biberman and the painting of the post office mural
By Suzanne W.
Zada
After working and studying in Paris
during the late twenties, Edward Biberman returned to the United States. The
European critics had discovered him and it did not take long for the New York
art writers to detect his skill and talent. Then he moved to
California.
Although he is in major museums, like the
Smithsonian and LACMA with several paintings, Biberman was a very, very private
artist, strange when you consider his political
activism.
Even though Biberman was one of the
most important expert in murals, he had painted few of them. This one was
completed in 1941 for the post office, installed during the night just before
the beginning of the war.
He used a wax
and oil mixture to paint this mural. “The wax gives the mural a kind of
egg shell gloss, but doesn’t give it a big shine that you get if you work
with oil directly,” he said. And then he further remarked that “the
technique comes from ancient Egypt,” and “it does give you a
beautiful surface.”
He was paid
the going price of $20/square foot for his work. Doesn’t it give you a
thrill to get the price per square
foot?
What does it matter if the work
of art is priceless?
Biberman was
fascinated by the story of Abbot Kinney, a member of a wealthy tobacco family,
and his dream to build another Venice on the West Coast. Kinney studied in
Europe and fell in love with Venice, Italy. Since Venice, Italy, is an example
of great dreams, a place that attracts me back every year – you have to
dream a big dream to build a church of the Santa Maria della Salute on a
thousand stakes, for heaven’s
sakes.
Speaking about Kinney, Biberman
said “The story of a man’s dream and what the dream turned into was
so fascinating that I decided that this would be a very interesting sociological
study.”
Biberman decided to give
back the atmosphere, and of the people, at the time of the creation of Venice on
this mural, what Venice really looked like at that
stage.
Kinney did pursue that dream. He
brought in Italian architects and built canals and Venetian buildings, and then
brought in gondoliers from Italy, and then invited Sarah Bernhardt and the
finest symphony orchestra of his day for the opening. He was on his way to
create a new cultural metropolis.
Then
the slimy oil stuff showed up. Yes, Venice, California became an oil
town.
The gondoliers went home. They
got homesick. Everybody knows that gondoliers and oil don’t
mix.
The dream is not completely
interrupted, though. Venice shows the beginning of that dreamed artistic
metropolis, with more and more writers, architects, artists and art galleries
around, a true artistic
Renaissance.
Suzanne W. Zada
is the representative of the Edward Biberman Estate.
Posted: Sat
- December
1, 2007 at 07:19 PM