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Eugenie Baizerman

October 14, 1899–1949

by Susan Chevlowe

Eugenie Baizerman - “A Quiet Scene,” c. 1947.

In Brief

Eugenie Silverman Baizerman never sold a painting in her short lifetime, but her paintings have been regularly exhibited and praised in the years since her death. Baizerman studied art with private tutors and at the Odessa Art School before her family immigrated to the US, and continued studying at the National Academy of Design and the Educational Alliance settlement house after their arrival in New York. Her subjects were usually flowers, fruit, or nudes, although towards the end of her life, she painted Arizona landscapes. During her lifetime, she had several shows at the Artists Gallery: two one-woman shows and a husband-and-wife show, as well as a retrospective in 1961, after her death. Her work is also in the collections of the Whitney Museum and MOMA.

Artist Eugenie Baizerman rarely exhibited her work and never sold a painting during her lifetime. According to her husband, sculptor Saul Baizerman, although she sought a quiet life to focus on her work, she nevertheless experienced an inner turmoil that manifested itself in the free, expressionistic colors of her canvases.

Early Life & Education

Born Eugenie Silverman on October 14, 1899, in Warsaw, Poland, the artist grew up in Bessarabia and Odessa, Russia. Her family, from the Caucasus region, had artistic inclinations. Her grandfather collected Near Eastern art objects, while her mother was a semiprofessional actor. Her father, a language teacher, would habitually desert the family for long periods of time.

To encourage her artistic talent, the Silvermans hired an art teacher who taught Eugenie a fine style of drawing and shading influenced by the ornamental design work then in vogue. She also studied at the Odessa Art School. When she was fourteen, the family immigrated to the United States. In New York City, she continued to study art at the National Academy of Design and later at the Educational Alliance, a settlement house located on the Lower East Side. Her student work, though finely drawn, was static and subdued in color, showing little of the dynamism that would mark her mature work.

Artistic Style & Subjects

  • An abstract painting featuring two people tumbling in a landscape, done in predominantly shades of blue and olive green view larger

    Eugenie Baizerman - “Tuscan Impressions,” 1947.

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  • An abstract painting of five nude women against a predominantly blue background view larger

    Eugenie Baizerman - “Etude for Women at the Shore #3,” before 1949.

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  • An abstract painting of a woman holding a child on her lap, both in skin tone colors, with a background of predominantly blue, yellow, and red view larger

    Eugenie Baizerman - “Mother and Child,” c. 1949.

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  • An abstract painting of a girl in a warm rainbow color palette, with a mirror image sitting beside her in a slightly cooler palette view larger

    Eugenie Baizerman - “Girl with Mirror,” 1940-1941.

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  • An abstract painting featuring two people tumbling in a landscape, done in predominantly shades of blue and olive green
  • An abstract painting of five nude women against a predominantly blue background
  • An abstract painting of a woman holding a child on her lap, both in skin tone colors, with a background of predominantly blue, yellow, and red
  • An abstract painting of a girl in a warm rainbow color palette, with a mirror image sitting beside her in a slightly cooler palette

In 1920, she met her future husband, the sculptor Saul Baizerman. The couple traveled to Italy and Paris, where Baizerman’s sense of color was awakened. She began to paint in a neo-pointillist style, covering canvases with bright dots. Around 1927, her mature style, characterized by short strokes of vivid color, emerged. She would paint under artificial light in the evenings, since her days were occupied with work in a garment factory and with caring for her daughter, Ugesie.

Fruits, flowers, and childhood memories of naked women bathing in the Black Sea were frequent subjects of Baizerman’s art. The garment factories where she worked were another source of inspiration. Toward the end of her life, she created landscape paintings of the deserts and mountains of Arizona.

In her canvases, the riotous colors create a constant tension between surface and depth, between foreground figures and the background. Recognizable forms such as nudes and still-life objects seem to occupy the same plane as the decorative background created by stippled brushstrokes. The artist often compared painting to music. The dynamic effects of her technique present sensations of color and tone in movement.

Legacy

The Artists Gallery was a great champion of her work, mounting one-woman exhibitions in 1938 and 1950, a husband-and-wife show in 1948, and a retrospective in 1961. A posthumous exhibition was held at the Krasner Gallery in 1964. More recently, her work was displayed at the Zabriskie Gallery in 1988. The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City have paintings by Baizerman in their collections.

Eugenie Baizerman died suddenly in New York City on December 30, 1949, at age fifty.

Bibliography

Baizerman, Saul. “Eugenie Baizerman and Her Art,” April 17, 1950. Artist’s file. Museum of Modern Art Library.

EJ.

Gerdts, William H. Women Artists of America, 1707-1964. Newark: The Newark Museum, 1965.

Hills, Patricia, and Roberta K. Tarbell. The Figurative Tradition and the Whitney Museum of American Art: Paintings and Sculpture from the Permanent Collection. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980.

Obituary. NYTimes, December 31, 1949, 15:5, and January 1, 1950, 43:1.

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How to cite this page

Chevlowe, Susan. "Eugenie Baizerman." Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. 27 February 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on March 28, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/baizerman-eugenie>.