Barbara Pearlman

Barbara Pearlman is a Graduate of Parson’s School of Design.

After starting as an illustrator with Neiman Marcus, she moved to Paris where she worked as an illustrator for Europe’s leading fashion publications, including editorial work for Paris Vogue, Bazaar, Marie Claire, Jardin des Modes, Elie and Italian Vogue. Additional illustration work included assignments from Dior and Volkswagen and special assignments from French television. Commercial assignments came from leading department stores in France, Holland and Germany and from numerous fashion agencies.

After returning to the United States, Ms. Pearlman, already a world-renowned illustrator, was selected as the illustrator for all advertising by Galey & Lord, a division of Burlington Industries. She has been internationally recognized and honored for the outstanding level and quality of her work on this account, which spanned ten years. She was honored by the Society of Illustrators, to which she was also elected a judge and an invited lecturer. The Goucher College of Art Tour visited her studio as an artist who had successfully spanned both commercial and fine art worlds. Her work also included costume drawings for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Articles about Barbara Pearlman and her work have appeared in French Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, British Vogue and Harpers. Her work was featured in an arts article by Penthouse (U.S. and U.K.), New York Magazine and in German publications such as Gebraucht Graphic. Gebraucht Graphic wrote: “Miss Pearlman has opened up a new era for both photo and drawing in the freedom of expression exemplified by her figures.” Further articles have appeared in Russian, Polish and Hungarian magazines. She also appears in the picture file in the New York Public Library and in libraries throughout the United States.

Her editorial illustration work also included Vogue, Harpers, Penthouse, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, New York Magazine, New York Art, New York Times “Fashion of the Times”, New York Times fashion centerfold and the pilot of an animated film for which she did all the drawings. The rights were purchased by Penthouse.

Her first painting exhibition was with the Frankfurt Gallery in Germany. Her works achieved considerable impact, with wonderful critical reviews, and were used as part of a course, “Phenomenology in the Arts”, at New York University.

In 1985, Ms. Pearlman’s second exhibition of works was held at the Frankfurt Gallery. The art press was most enthusiastic about the power and uniqueness of her work. In the Fueillerton Press on October 30, 1985, it was said “The artist has an extraordinary talent to allot space and keep the weight in perfect balance. Her beings raise themselves high up and bend diagonally across the paper, three yards and more, with part of the picture still rolled up on the floor. Pearlman’s paintings are horrendous, eruptions of a veritable furor to paint, precarious outings on the brink of the ineffable. Related to Goya, Munch and Schultze’s “Migots”, and yet of a different kind of terror. When the Frankfurter Gallery am Palmengarten showed Barbara Pearlman’s paintings, her human beings were still veiled in a gentler aura. The drawing was less eruptive. Aesthetic effect outweighed pure expression. And now, after the death of a friend, a new rupture. The paintings get larger in size, their lines more edged, the duo scenes are enlarged to embrace groups. She transmits the agonies she has suffered as undissembled experience of herself. These are paintings whose immediacy allows them to meet the always wished for challenge, to communicate the subject and its being.”

Ms. Pearlman conducted courses in Advanced Painting and Drawing at the Nassau Fine Arts Museum. She previously taught at the Parson’s School of Design for five years, and is now on the faculty of the Fashion Institute of technology where she has been teaching for the past 15 years.

Ms. Pearlman is listed in “Who’s Who in American Women”, “Who’s Who in the East”, “The International Dictionary of Biography”, the book “History of Fashion Illustration” by Eunice Sloane, and “National Association of Women Artists.”

 

Barbara Pearlman
2259 Edsall Avenue
Bronx, New York 10463
Tel: (718) 884-9677
Fax: (718) 884-8087