Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
: הענריק בערלעװי; October 20, 1894 – August 2, 1967) was a Polish-French
painter
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
, graphic designer and art theorist, who is primarily remembered as an abstract artist who paved the way for optical art, but he was also an important figure in
Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
book design and typography in the early 1920s. He drew portraits of many Jewish writers and artists, among them
Uri Zvi Greenberg
Uri Zvi Greenberg (; September 22, 1896 – May 8, 1981; also spelled Uri Zvi Grinberg) was an Israeli poet, journalist and politician who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.
Widely regarded among the greatest poets in the country's history, he was a ...
Berlewi was born in Warsaw to an assimilated Polish Jewish family. He studied art in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
and
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, and was active in Polish art circles. Supported by his mother Helena, who would also later become an artist, Berlewi studied fine art in Warsaw (1904–1909), Antwerp (1909–1910), and Paris (1911–1912), returning to Warsaw in 1913 to study at the school of design. During World War I he discovered
Futurism
Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...
and
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...
, and in 1918 he met the futurist
Aleksander Wat
Aleksander Wat was the pen name of Aleksander Chwat (1 May 1900 – 29 July 1967), a Polish poet, writer, art theoretician, and memoirist. He was one of the precursors of the Polish futurism movement in the early 1920s and is considered one of the ...
and the formist
Anatol Stern
Anatol Stern (24 October 1899 in Warsaw – 19 October 1968 in Warsaw) was a Polish poet, writer and art critic. Born 24 October 1899 to an assimilated family of Jewish ancestry, Stern studied at the Polish Studies Faculty of the University ...
, fellow Jews whose Polish language verse he later illustrated. In 1918-1922 Berlewi focused on Jewish themes.
In 1920 Berlewi attended
El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky (, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ; – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, h ...
's lecture in Warsaw, motivating him to move to
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, where in 1922–1923 he abandoned figurative art for pure constructivist abstraction. In 1922 he participated in the Novembergruppe exhibition. Along with Jankel Adler he was chosen to represent Jewish artists from Eastern Europe at the
International Congress of Progressive Artists
International Congress of Progressive Artists was organised by Young Rhineland (Junge Rheinland), with help from the November Group, the Darmstadt Secession and the Dresden Secession in Düsseldorf, 29-31 May 1922. The aim of creating an intern ...
, where he met El Lissitzky, Viking Eggeling (to whom Berlewi devoted an article published in 'Albatross' in 1922),
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by Constructivism (art), con ...
,
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (; born Christian Emil Marie Küpper; 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch painter, writer, poet and architect. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He married three times.
Personal life
Theo van Do ...
,
Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...
,
Laszlo Peri
Peter Laszlo Peri (born László Weisz; 13 June 1899 – 19 January 1967) was an artist and sculptor.
Name changes
László Weisz was born on 13 June 1899 in Budapest, Hungary. His family Magyarized their family name to "''Péri''". When he mo ...
and
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...
. In May-Sep 1923 he presented his first Mechano-Faktura compositions in the Novembergruppe section of the ''Grosse Berliner Kunstaustellung''.
In November 1923 Berlewi returned to Warsaw, where with Władysław Strzemiński he founded the constructivist group ''Blok''. In his review of the exhibition which accompanied the International Congress of Progressive Artists, published in ''Nasz Kurier'', he stated that
Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
was obsolete and was replaced by Novembergruppe's Dada and by constructivism. In March 1924 Berlewi published his theoretical tract (in progress since 1922) ''Mechano-Faktura'', using mechanical means to create texture, prefaced by the writer
Aleksander Wat
Aleksander Wat was the pen name of Aleksander Chwat (1 May 1900 – 29 July 1967), a Polish poet, writer, art theoretician, and memoirist. He was one of the precursors of the Polish futurism movement in the early 1920s and is considered one of the ...
. Its basic premise rejects the illusion of space in favor of two-dimensionality; color is reduced to black, white, and red, and visual equivalents of images are accomplished by mechanical means using rhythmic arrangements of lines and simple geometrical forms such as circles and squares. Along with the publication he organises the first mechanofaktura exhibition at the Austro-Daimler Automobile Salon.
In summer 1924 Berlewi was invited by
Herwarth Walden
Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin; 16 September 1879 – 31 October 1941) was a German expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discoverers and promoters of German av ...
, founder of the ''
Der Sturm
''Der Sturm'' () was a German List of avant-garde magazines, avant-garde art and literary magazine founded by Herwarth Walden, covering Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, among other artistic movements. It was published between 1910 a ...
'' magazine and gallery to exhibit his mechanofaktura works in Berlin; the German version of his manifesto was published. Later in 1924 he founded the Reklama-Mechano advertising agency with Wat and Stanisław Brucz, which obtained a contract for the Plutos chocolate brochure. In 1926 Berlewi quit his research and returned to figurative art, working as a set designer. In 1928 he settled in Paris along with other Polish and Jewish artists. In 1928-1938 he traveled through Belgium and made a few portraits of the political and literary world until he learned that he was seriously ill and stopped working.
In 1942 Berlewi left Paris for
Nice
Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million He died in Paris.