Michael Biberstein (1948, Solothurn, Switzerland – 2013, Alandroal, Portugal), son of an American mother and Swiss father, moved to the United States when he was 14 years old. He finished highschool in Connecticut, USA and studied Art History at the Swarthmore College of Philadelphia, USA, with David Sylvester (1924, London, United Kingdom – 2001, London), between 1966 and 1967. He came to live in Portugal in 1979, and on that year exhibited his work at Módulo gallery (Lisbon, Portugal).
He had two important retrospective exhibitions in Portugal: Michael Biberstein: a difícil travessia dos Alpes [The difficult crossing of the Alps], Modern Art Centre, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (1995) and Michael Biberstein: X uma Retrospetiva, Culturgest, Lisbon, this last one after his passing, both curated by Delfim Sardo (1962, Aveiro, Portugal). In the words of the curator, “his enormous liquid canvases, intertwined with black monochromatic planes that interrupt the flow of vision, reveal a precise conceptual thought on the scale of painting, the question of representation, the phenomenology of perception and, above all, on the temporality of artistic fruition”. In 2008, Portuguese director Fernando Lopes (1935, Alvaiázere, Portugal – 2012, Lisbon) produced the film Michael Biberstein, o Meu Amigo Mike ao Trabalho [My Friend Mike at Work), in which he filmed the artist working in his studio. Interested in the theme of landscape, during and particularly after the analytical period of his painting in the 70’s, Biberstein developed an investigation about the process of perception in painting. His last work, Um Céu para Santa Isabel, a painting for the ceiling of the Church of Santa Isabel, in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon, interrupted by the sudden death of the artist, was continued and inaugurated in 2016.
The work of Biberstein is represented in the following public collections: Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, United Kingdom; Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Lisbon; Fundação de Serralves, Oporto, Portugal; FNAC – Fond National de l’Art Contemporain, Ministère de la Culture, France; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Kunstmuseum Aazau, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland; Ludwig Forum für Neue Kunst, Germany; Fundação Luso-Americana, Lisbon; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA.
PS, December 2020
