Los Angeles, 1939. Benjamin F. Berlin, an American painter steeped in the avant-gardes, sets his brush to canvas and lets the unconscious speak.
A scene from elsewhere
Look at this central figure, its limbs striped in black and white, one arm reaching toward a blazing solar flower in orange and gold. Above, a face with bulging eyes emerges from a brick wall. Miniature human figures stir and agitate. To the left, a solitary figure walks away. Berlin works in oil with precision. Textures clash: rough brick, smooth flesh, striated metal. The palette oscillates between warm ochres and metallic greys. Each form coexists without apparent logic. Space fragments — at once Cubist and dreamlike.
Surrealism becomes American
European Surrealism crosses the Atlantic. California artists seize it and reinvent it. Berlin does not imitate Dalí or Magritte. He forges an American Surrealism rooted in personal experience. Los Angeles becomes an unlikely crucible of modernity. As early as 1934, Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson publish the only American Surrealist manifesto, issued from California. Berlin belongs to this ferment. His work probes identity, the double, and the repetition of human forms in a fragmented world.
Benjamin F. Berlin
Active in Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s, Berlin (1887–1939) stands as a singular figure within American Surrealism. His style combines formal rigour with unbridled imagination. This canvas, held at LACMA, perfectly illustrates his ability to inhabit the in-between: between dream and reality, between figuration and abstraction.
A question for you
💭 Between Cubist fragmentation and Surrealist dream logic, where would you place Berlin on the chessboard of the 1930s avant-gardes?
About this work
- Untitled (Surreal Abstraction)
- Benjamin F. Berlin
- 1939
- Oil on canvas
- 50.8 × 60.96 cm
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
- https://collections.lacma.org/node/174393
