Bernarda Bryson Shahn

Bernarda Bryson Shahn was an American painter and lithographer. She also wrote and illustrated children's books including The Zoo of Zeus and Gilgamesh. The artist Ben Shahn was her "life companion" and they married in 1969, shortly before his death.

Already a trained printmaker, Bryson worked for the Depression-era Resettlement Administration, later part of the Farm Security Administration on a project with Shahn in the 1930s to document rural life. Her lithographs from this series were first printed in the studio she and Shahn established in Washington for the Resettlement Administration and published in full in 1995 as The Vanishing American Frontier. In 1939, Bryson and Shahn produced a set of 13 murals for the Treasury Department Art Project's Section of Fine Arts entitled Resources of America inspired by Walt Whitman's poem "I See America Working" and installed at the United States Post Office-Bronx Central Annex. Bryson worked primarily as an illustrator beginning in the 1940s, producing works for Harpers as well as Life, Seventeen, and Scientific American, and later for several children's books. These included "Zoo of Zeus" in 1964 and "Gilgamesh in 1967". Her illustrations of the Princeton University Eating Club and of Senator Taft as he is groomed for his 1948 Republican Presidential Candidacy exemplify her minimalistic representation of satire and straightforward style. She continued painting throughout her life in a figurative style often with references to Classical mythology, and she worked was exhibited in solo shows at galleries in New York and New Jersey. Her paintings are owned by collections including the Whitney Museum of Art.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023