An editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor, Liberman was educated in Russia and began his career in Paris. He emigrated to New York in 1941, escaping Nazi-occupied France via Lisbon, and began painting in the '50s. His famed career at Condé Nast lasted fifty years and he is credited with the redefinition of the contemporary magazine.
Purple on Green was created three years after Liberman held his first one-man show of paintings-installed by none other than Barnett Newman-at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1960. Hard-edged and loud, it presents a bold graphic sensibility. Liberman was known for working with bright colors, and is perhaps most renowned for his work in metal sculpture. The New Yorker claimed that "Liberman's greatest talent was his ability to bridge art and commerce," and pieces such as Purple on Green blur the distinctions between high and low art.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York (label verso)