Norman Birger

I received a call from a man in Florida a few months ago who told me that his late grandfather was a painter who had traveled to the southwest in the mid twentieth century and painted with a lot of local artists, many associated with Bettina Steinke and the Blair Gallery in Santa Fe. 

He had amassed a nice collection of paintings, many from a well known group of Denver artists who had moved to New Mexico.

He told me that his family was not particularly interested in the artwork and he had noticed that I had sold many of the same artists at the Blue Heron Gallery in the past, would I be interested in selling the collection?

I said that I certainly would and have received some wonderful work from him painted by his artist friends that I am in the process of cataloguing and putting on line for sale. Works by Steinke, Ned Jacob, Dane Clark, Ramon Kelley, John Encinias, Roy Swenson and many others.

But what really intrigued me was the work of his own grandfather, Norman Birger. Frankly, it was exceptional. 

Like this incredible oil crayon drawing of the sanctuary at Chimayo. I love this. Reminds me of Leon Gaspard.

I asked his grandson, just who was this man? Obviously an artist who slipped through the cracks of time and was unknown to the art world at large, regardless of his considerable talent. I have found that this happens more often than you think in this world, regardless of talent. People have to make a living and sometimes they have to make choices.

It was obvious that this man was a talented artist in a variety of mediums, as well as a  remarkable draftsman and renderer.

I started doing some research.

Born to a prosperous family in Minsk, Belarus on October 2, 1901, Birger was a classically trained artist who studied at the University of Kiev, succeeded by studies in both Prague and Vienna.

 This was a pivotal time in Austria, the Vienna Secessionists were in vogue. 

And understand that you did not leave a University art school like Kiev or St. Petersburg without having acquired considerable artistic chops.

After the Bolshevik revolution, he moved to New York in 1921.

In 1921, Birger and his brother were attending college in Vienna, and the buzz was that fortunes were being made in the United States.

"So I decided to go to America and become a millionaire," Birger says.

"My brother decided to go back and be with my mother in Russia." Birger's mother died during the German invasion in World War II, and his brother ended up in a refugee camp. 

In 1922, Birger married his high school sweetheart Rose, who he had lost touch with and had independently moved to New York herself. Within a few years they had two children, Larry of Miami and Nina, who lived in California. To support his family, Birger worked as a trolley driver, factory worker and radiator repairman. 

Birger also was an artist who was obviously enchanted by the southwest and traveled by car through the region, doing portraits and landscapes. 

But he knew that he could not make a living during hard times.

"During the Depression, an artist couldn't earn enough money to buy a ham sandwich," he said.

In 1936, living in New Jersey, Birger fixed a neighbor’s broken lock, found out that he had a knack and became a self taught master locksmith. 

In 1945 he and his wife moved to Miami and carried on with his new career. 

Birger retired in 1970 and evidently went back to his true passion, art, a vocation he had always worked at on the side at a master’s level.

I have a lot of unanswered questions about Norman Birger. He was obviously a friend and admirer of the great Russian artist and teacher Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955). Fechin was from Kazan, Russia and he emigrated to America in 1923, eventually teaching at the New York Academy of Art before a bout of tuberculosis sent him to New Mexico, where he settled in Taos under the watchful eye of Mabel Dodge Luhan.

There are two Birger drawings of Fechin in the collection I received, both executed in 1969 and one of Alexandra Belkovitch “Tinka” Fechin, the wife Fechin had divorced in 1933.

The master’s influence is quite clear. 

And it leads me to believe that Birger was acquainted with the family back in New York, if not Russia or the Ukraine.

I also received a remarkable Fechin charcoal study of Ramon Miraball in the first group, a painting of which later graced a page of Arizona Highways in 1952. 

Was Birger also a one time or past student of Fechin? 

Quite possibly. 

The influence is quite clear in the work, like this piece Carmelita which won the 1976 American Heritage Show first place award.

Or this lovely drawing of the Russian emigre singer Yulia Zapolskaya Whitney (1919-1965), who I assume was a friend or associate.

I look forward to discovering more information about this talented artist. 

I would also like to locate other and pictures or examples of earlier work if it exists.

If you are able to fill in any blanks, please let me know.

after William Sharer