Janice Biala

(American, 1903–2000)

Janice Biala was a Polish-born American artist known for her subtle paintings of courtyards, interiors, and cityscapes. Composed with idiosyncratic brushstrokes and specific color harmonies, the artist veered in and out of abstraction as she portrayed a given scene. “Just as in writing a novel—no word or phrase must be there just because you happen to like it, so each spot of paint in your picture must lead up to some definite movement and must connect with every other spot of paint in the picture,” she once explained. “Because red is not red itself, its full quality of redness only becomes apparent when it has green beside it or the full quality of green is brought out only when it has purple beside it and so forth.” Born Schenhaia Tworkovska on September 11, 1903 in Biala Podlaska, Poland, she and her family emigrated to New York in 1913. With the entire family Anglifying their names, Schenhaia became Janice, while the artist’s brother Yakov changed his name to Jack. He would go on to become Jack Tworkov, the celebrated painter of the New York School. Biala went on to study under Charles Webster Hawthorne at the National Academy of Design and later under Edwin Dickinson at the artist colony in Provincetown, MA. In 1930, she made her first trip to Paris, where she felt immediately at home. Over the years, Biala worked odd jobs and continued painting in both Europe and America. It wasn’t until the 1940s that her work began to attract the attention of critics and collectors. The artist would continue to exhibit her paintings until her death at the age of 97, on September 23, 2000 in Paris, France. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others.