Janice Biala

Biala (b. 1903; d. September 24, 2000) was a Polish born American painter well regarded in France and the United States for her paintings of intimate interiors, portraits of famous friends, and the places she traveled.

In 1930, on a trip to Paris, she met and fell in love with the English Novelist, Ford Madox Ford. Remaining with Ford until his death in 1939, Biala became the perfect representative of American bohemia in France signing her paintings simply as Biala. She returned to New York City where she became one of the few women associated with the New York School. She befriended painters Willem de Kooning and critic Harold Rosenberg among others. In the early 1940s she married Daniel ‘Alain’ Brustlein, a noted cartoonist for the New Yorker and the couple soon began a life long process of spending their time living between Paris and New York.

Biala’s unique contribution to the rise of modernism was celebrated throughout her lifetime from New York City to Paris. The albums of art history will forever remark on her sublime assimilation of the School of Paris and the New York School of abstract expressionism.