Lower Manhattan

Virginia Berresford's unique painting style spans the influences of New York and Paris, combining American Precisionist aesthetics with her extensive studies of the techniques of French Purism. Born in Rochelle Park, New York, the artist first studied at Wellesley College where a class trip to Europe solidified her interest in studying art. She then attended Columbia University, followed by a move to Paris in 1925 where she spent several years studying privately with the painter Amédée Ozenfant, a founder of the Purist movement utilizing elementary forms and minimized detail. She held her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1927, and returned to New York for another solo exhibition at the New Gallery in 1928. She continued exhibiting throughout the 1930s, developing a style that related to her contemporaries Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth and Louis Lozowick. She received critical acclaim and held many solo exhibitions throughout the remainder of her lifetime, and became an instructor and gallerist on Martha's Vineyard in her later years. Her works are held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Wellesley College Art Museum, Massachusetts; Farnsworth Art Museum, Maine; and the Detroit Museum of Art, Michigan.