Biography

KEN BERMAN was born in 1955, the grandson of an immigrant photo-engraver/printer who painted as a hobby. Berman's father studied fine arts and majored in medical illustration. With this artistic heritage, Berman found himself copying Michelangelo at age 10. By age 15, Berman was attracted to and copied European Modernist works at the Cleveland Museum of Art, set up a ceramics studio in his basement and made numerous original Modernist drawings, paintings and sculptures.

Berman graduated from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in Classics. After a 20 year career in law and business, Berman rediscovered his passion for making art and took courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he met Argentine-born artist and art professor Osvaldo Romberg. The ancestors of both Berman and Romberg emigrated from Russia in 1904. Berman helped Romberg develop a studio on the University of Pennsylvania campus and continued to study art history and figurative painting with Romberg. Berman subsequently taught art history at a local university. 

Thematically, Berman's work explores age-old topics such as violence and identity. From a technical aspect, Berman's work inquires into the interplay between photographic processes and painting in an effort  to preserve and re-contextualize painting tradition in a way that is relevant today.