Harry Lieberman
1880 –1983

Harry Lieberman was born in Gnieveshev, Poland. Nephew of a Hassidic rabbi, he prepared for the rabbinate, but forsook that career, and emigrated to the United States in 1906. First a clothing cutter, then a candy manufacturer, he retired in his late 70s and joined a Golden Age club in Great Neck, New York. One day, when his chess partner failed to arrive, he took a suggestion to try the painting class. Much taken with this new activity, he supplied himself with art materials and began his present career as an artist, painting subjects related to his study of the Talmud, the Gemera, the Cabala, Hasidism, the Old Testament, and Hebrew and Yiddish literature.

He recalled, ’I noticed the teacher, Mr. Larry Rivers, was going around to all the others and talking about what they were doing. But to me, he never came. I felt a little disturbed. Am I so bad? So one day I went to him, ’Mr. Rivers,’ I said, ‘why is it you go to everyone and you don't come to me? What is it? Have I got chicken pox or something, you're afraid?’ ‘No Mr. Lieberman,’ he says. ‘Only, to you, I can't teach you more than what you are already doing.’ ‘So,’ I said, ‘Mr. Rivers, you want I should teach you, then?’ He says to me, ‘Mr. Lieberman, some things I can do that you can’t do. But some things you can do, I can't do. What you do is right the way it is.’”

At 97, Lieberman said, “I do feel painting is my most important work. I don't believe there is a life Upstairs. The life I got now is the heavenly reward because when I die my paintings will be here and people will enjoy.”

Harry Lieberman died in 1983 at the age of 102. His paintings are part of the collection of the Seattle Museum of Art, The Miami University Art Museum in Oxford Ohio, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture garden in Washington D.C., and in many important collections of Jewish ethnic and religious folk art.

[price range: $500-3,500]