Yosl Bergner b. 13 October 1920

  • Artist (Painter)
Melbourne painter and contemporary of Boyd and Perceval and active member of Contemporary Art Society with Noel Counihan and Vic O'Connor. Bergner's paintings were among the 1st to address the specific plight of Indigenous Australians and later work took inspiration from the works of German writer Franz Kafka. In Tel Aviv, a member of a circle of artists centred in the popular Cafe Kassit, where he painted a large mural.
Tags: refugee, communist, social activist

Citations

  • Mellick, Ross (2001), 'Yosl Bergner – A Retrospective: Melbourne, Kafka and disjunctions of the human heart’, Art and Australia, 38/4, pp 530-533.

  • Rubin, Carmela (2000), 'Yosl Bergner: A Retrospective’, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, April-June, exhibition catalogue.

  • David Langsam “YOSL BERGNER 1920-2017”

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/painter-changed-australias-view-of-art-20170120-gtvk7g.html

  • Shachar M. Pinsker. A Rich Brew. How Cafes created modern Jewish Culture, NYU Press, 2018, pp.293-302. [Bergner mural illustration] Extensive summary of role of Cafe Kassit, Tel Aviv in the artists’ community where Bergner was an important figure. Pinsker says “Bergner’s paintings were first seen by Israeli critics as too “diasporic” and too “literary”.(p.295) Anecdote on mural origin included (illustrated in b/w).

    https://www.jewishhistory.fm/cafes-and-modern-jewish-culture-with-shachar-pinsker/

Initial data sources

  • Legacy data. Source 'unknown'