MODERN

Henrietta Berk - "Landscape"

Painting, Oil on Canvas, 33.5" x 35.5".

Born in Wichita, Kansas, Henrietta Berk was the daughter of a seamstress and spent much of her childhood in an orphanage. She moved to the Bay Area in the 1950's and studied at the California College of Art in Oakland. Berk was famed for her still-life paintings of flowers, interiors and abstract landscapes, and her work was exhibited in galleries from New York to Tokyo. Celebrities including Julie Andrews, Blake Edwards, Kim Novak and Edward G. Robinson collected her works. One of her paintings, which was shown in the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?," still hangs in the U.S. Embassy in Peru.

Berk is still remembered in the Bay Area for a 1972 publicity stunt benefitting the Oakland Symphony where she dressed as Lady Godiva and rode through Jack London Square wearing a body stocking and several wigs to "cover the entire situation," as she put it. In her later years, Henrietta Berk suffered from blindness caused by diabetes.

Subject: Landscape       Back to Previous Page