Alexander Semeonovitch Liberman (1912 – 1999)

Born in 1912 in Kiev, Russia, Alexander Liberman became an academic and post-Impressionist painter in Europe before moving to the United States in 1941. From that time, he painted and sculpted in abstract styles, often using the circle, which he asserted was the ideal shape. In his sculpture, he was revolutionary because of his use of industrial materials, factory building methods, and large-scale size.

The first nine years of his life, he lived in Kiev with his family where the father was in the lumber business and his mother was devoted to the theatre. The Libermans left Russia in 1921, and Alexander studied in England and France, first in London and then in Paris with Andre Lhote from 1929 to 1931. He studied philosophy and mathematics at the Sorbonne and architecture at Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In the 1930s, Liberman designed stage sets, and worked briefly with a landscape architect. He earned money by working as an assistant to the poster designer Cassandre, and did editorial and technical work for the magazine Vu, one of the earliest illustrated periodicals and the first magazine to include photographs. Eventually he became managing director, but left the business in 1936 to focus on painting, writing and film making.

In 1940, he escaped with his family to an unoccupied zone in France, and via Spain, the family arrived in New York in 1941. Again he took employment in the publishing business, this time at Vogue magazine. Twenty years later, he became Editorial Director of all the Conde Nast Publications, and he held this job until 1994, when he retired.