Edith Balas (June 20, 1929 - November 16, 2024) was a Romanian-born American Professor of Art History, College of Humanities & Social Sciences at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

, Pennsylvania.

Biography

Balas was born in 1929 in

Cluj Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...

(present-day Romania); she was a

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators before and during World War II ...

. She was the widow of the late mathematician

Egon Balas Egon Balas (June 7, 1922 in Cluj, Romania – March 18, 2019) was an applied mathematician and a professor of industrial administration and applied mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. He was the Thomas Lord Professor of Operations Research ...

, who was a fellow professor at Carnegie Mellon. Balas' main areas of interest were

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradit ...

(1890-1960), painting and sculpture, and the art of the Italian Renaissance. In 2003, she curated an exhibition at the Frick Art Museum, and several in Pittsburgh, Paris, New York and Budapest. She began teaching at

in 1977, where she was also an adjunct professor of History of Art and Architecture at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

. Balas was also a Holocaust survivor, having been sent to the Nazi death camp

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

. In ''Bird in Flight: Memoir of a Survivor and Scholar,'' Balas tells her story of facing grim situations and becoming what she describes as a “professional survivor.” Balas named her memoir “Bird in Flight” after

Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism ...

’s famous sculpture of the same name. “I consider it emblematic of my life,” she said. After the war, her husband was imprisoned by the communist authorities for three years, during which Balas raised their two daughters. She received an M.A. in philosophy from the

University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest (UB) () is a public university, public research university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princely Academy of Bucharest, P ...

in 1952. She then emigrated to the United States with her husband, and received an M.A. in the History of Arts from Pittsburgh University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1973.

Works

* * * * * * * * * * Edith Balas, "Michelangelo's Medici Chapel: A New Interpretation", Philadelphia, 1995

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Balas, Edith Romanian art historians Carnegie Mellon University faculty Auschwitz concentration camp survivors 2024 deaths 1929 births Romanian emigrants to the United States University of Pittsburgh alumni Writers from Cluj-Napoca Jewish women writers American art historians Women art historians University of Bucharest alumni Romanian women writers Jewish American historians

Biography

Works

See also

References