Miriam Beerman – Rediscover Opens at James Yarosh Associates Gallery

By: Community Magazine | April 13, 2022 |  Events |  Holmdel

FEATURED PHOTO: MIRIAM BEERMAN, Sleep of Reason II, 85in x 123in, 1990, mixed media on paper

Beerman, one of the first women to have a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum, and who has had exhibitions worldwide, is the 2022 artist in spotlight at James Yarosh Associates Fine Art Gallery

When acclaimed painter Miriam Beerman passed away in February 2022 at the age of 98, she left a six-decade legacy of humanist expressionist works that are included in the permanent collections of over 60 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney, LACMA, Phillips Collection, National Gallery of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum.

A contemporary maker of painterly power objects, imbuing the paint with profound psychology as well as colorful beauty, Beerman was a female pioneer in the male-dominated artworld of the 20th century.

Fueled by curatorial activism in the recent years, James Yarosh Associates has been hosting shows that re-examine artists who have made a substantial mark during their career in a climate where female artists of the era have been on the verge of being lost to history. On April 23 and 24, the gallery launches Miriam Beerman – Rediscover, a retrospective of this prolific artist that includes many of her larger works created in the 1990s. The show is open from noon to 4.

While male peers dominated the world of 20th-century art, Beerman’s unique artistic voice catapulted her work to critical recognition in museums and solo shows in her own right. In 1971, she made history when her exhibition Enduring Beast became one of the first one-woman shows mounted by the Brooklyn Museum.

She has won awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Beerman is the subject of the 53-minute artist documentary “Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos,” which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube and gives an unflinching look at an artist’s lifelong dedication to her craft.

“Miriam Beerman is a survivor. In her more than 60 years as a groundbreaking artist, she has overcome personal tragedy to inspire friends, family, peers, patrons and students about how to remain defiant, creative and strong,” said Jonathan Gruber, the film’s director. “Miriam has struggled with her artistic demons to create haunting images that evoke the suffering of generations of victims.”

Beerman’s work has been compared to that of Goya. It protests injustice and champions the stories of victims—whether they are from Hiroshima, Vietnam or the Holocaust. However, it juxtaposes the anguish of her subjects with vibrant, often ravishing, use of color. Her painterly approach, using layers over layers of color—akin to Jackson Pollock’s action paintings—allows a storyline to unfold on the canvas, one that sometimes blends injustice with a nod to humor in the human condition.

“I first saw Miriam Beerman’s art in 1991 at an exhibition at the State Museum in Trenton, and it resonated with me as important,” said Yarosh, who has been representing her work since 2020. “As a younger artist, I was inspired by how she could paint all those intangible feelings and emotions that haunt artists and sensitive minds. Thirty years later, having rediscovered Miriam’s body of work as a gallery owner and to see the works that came after, I am moved by the gravity and resonance of her art as a medium that can convey such human emotion—from humor to heartbreak—and ultimately still provide optimism.

“Miriam’s colors are pure joy, and her primal markings created larger-than-life paintings that sit next to you and resonate unlike other painters,” Yarosh continued. “Her art may demand to be the focus in a room, but the more time you devote to studying them, you are rewarded by what they reveal and the empowering energy they radiate.  Miriam’s subjects are intellectual—that of an activist as well as an environmentalist as evidenced by her series of animal paintings—and yet her power was in her ability to be fearless on canvas, to somehow always spark magic.”

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About Miriam Beerman

Miriam Beerman studied painting at the Rhode Island School for Design, where she earned a BFA. Afterward, she spent two years in France as a Fulbright Scholar, working in Atelier 17 and having her painting critiqued by Marcel Brion. In New York, she studied with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Art Students League and Adja Yunkers at the New School for Social Research. She has had over 30 solo shows, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the New Jersey State Museum and the Everson Museum.

Beerman’s work can be seen in many major collections, including Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, LACMA, National Gallery of Art, Phillips Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Fitzwilliam Museum in England,  the MEAM in Spain, the Israel Museum and soon the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
 

About James Yarosh

Established in 1996, the James Yarosh Associates Fine Art Gallery in Holmdel, New Jersey, was founded upon and remains loyal to its vision: to represent fine art for art’s sake and to curate gallery collections and thoughtfully present art with an artist’s eye and understanding. Yarosh, an artist and well-published interior designer who honed his eye for selecting and representing artists by managing galleries in Manhattan and New Jersey, offers a full-scale gallery and design center where clients can associate with other like-minded individuals to celebrate art and the talents that create it.

As a designer, Yarosh travels the world, studying how the greatest museums display their art, and visits artists’ homes to understand how the artists themselves live with their art. This study on both grand and small scale, helps inform Yarosh’s work with his clients. His unique approach has led to his designs being featured in regional and national magazines. In addition, his experience in large-scale residential design projects of over 20,000 square feet earned him a guest appearance on HGTV.

As a gallery owner, Yarosh has received national critical acclaim for presenting Russian fine art collections and recognizing significant art movements in their early stages. Drawing upon both international and regional resources, Yarosh represents a variety of artistic voices of our times by showcasing the works of both new and established, museum-recognized, artists of merit in a space designed to replicate the intimacy of an artist’s home.  Recent art fairs include Art on Paper 2021 and the exhibits Sheba Sharrow: History Repeats (2020) and The Humanist Show (2021).