Wallace Berman was born in Staten Island, New York. He moved to L.A. with his family in 1930. He enrolled in and attended the Jepson Art School and Chouinard but did not complete his studies. Instead of pursuing a formal art 'career' he worked in a factory finishing antique furniture. This work gave him the opportunity to salvage reject materials and scraps which he used to make sculptures. He began a mail art publication called SEMINA The format was a letterpress text printed on an assemblage of colored paper, photos, and essentially found material. He started the Semina Art Gallery in Larkspur, CA in 1960.
He used verifax collages in many of his works, allowing for creation of serial and multiple images. This development in the art world seems directly related to the growth of mass production, consumption, and mass disposal that the US embraced in the 1950s.
His likeness was included on the cover of the Beatles' 1967 album, Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
He was killed by a drunk driver on the night before his fiftieth birthday in 1976.
After his death, Berman became the subject of myriad books and exhibitions exploring his work and Semina Culture. In 2008, he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition All is Personal: The Art of Wallace Berman at the Camden Art Center in London. In 2009, there was a solo exhibition of his work at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
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