Edward Biberman

The announcement of the death of Edward Biberman (Times, Feb. 2) brought to mind my first meeting with this talented artist when he accepted an invitation to participate in a college lecture series of which I was coordinator. From the outset he revealed himself as a person of great inner harmony and self-knowledge.

Like so many others, he was an Angeleno by adoption, a Philadelphian, schooled in Europe, who recognized in this accepting, wide-sweeping city a heterogeneity and a tolerance for variety that appealed to his cosmopolitanism.

Edward Biberman’s understanding of his city of adoption--its history, its environment, and its sometimes hidden beauty--was reflected in his art. His early evocation of Los Angeles included his many murals such as the one that adorns the Venice Post Office comparing developer Abbott Kinney’s dream of a serene city of gondolas and art with the reality--oil wells, oil workers, and a garish amusement park.

In his freeway paintings, the techniques of the hard-edge school were used to convey the architectural rationality of this often bewildering system. His more recent paintings of flowers, trees and sky were suffused with the brightness and sunlight so characteristic of Southern California.

Edward Biberman understood Los Angeles and reflected its changes in his evolving style. All who love this city can only mourn the death of this talented, imaginative man, while taking comfort that one of such sensitivity chose to live among us and to share with us his vision.

GLORIA LOTHROP

LEVERING

Pomona