In an artist’s statement, Breverman once identified a primary source for his paintings, drawings, and printmaking as human drama “particularized by the figure in all its frailty and grandeur. A surround of fragments, connected or disparate, have found their way into my imagery. It serves as a compelling and complex vehicle not only for identity, disguise, and deception but as a conveyor of associations and private mythologies.”
Breverman has had more than ninety solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally. His art is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Museum, the Library of Congress, the British Museum, and the Israel Museum. He has also received grants and awards from numerous foundations and organizations. He represented the U.S. in International Print Biennales in England, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, China, Japan, Finland, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Thailand, and Turkey.
Breverman has taught and has been a visiting artist at colleges across the nation, and at universities in England, France, and Poland. The artist notes, “Although [I] retired from formal teaching in 2005, my artistic enterprise continues to be based in Western New York.” He has a long history of exhibiting in Buffalo, including solo shows at the James Goodman Gallery (1964), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1967 and 1989), and the Nina Freudenheim Gallery (1977 and 1994). A major exhibition of Breverman’s paintings and drawings from the 1980s and a comprehensive survey of his prints from the past forty years were presented in both the UB Art Gallery and UB Anderson Gallery in 2004. Harvey Breverman is a Living Legacy Artist at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. There are currently thirty of his works, including drawings, prints, and paintings, in the Burchfield Penney collection.
