Tony Berlant, about 1975. Photo by Mimi Jacobs, from series of photographs of artists taken by Mimi Jacobs, 1971-1981, courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

  Gail Severn Gallery is deeply saddened to announce the passing of artist Tony Berlant. He was 85 years old, and is survived by his wife Helen Berlant, daughter Kate Berlant, and brother Jeff Berlant.

  Tony Berlant was born in New York in 1941 and moved to Los Angeles when he was a young child. Berlant remained in Los Angeles to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received his MA and MFA. During his time at UCLA and thereafter, Berlant quickly became enmeshed in the community of artists in Los Angeles, including Frank Gehry, Ed Moses, Chris Burden, Richard Diebenkorn, Ken Price, Gwynn Murrill, and many others.

Together with Ruscha, Goode, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jess, and Claes Oldenburg, Berlant was part of the 1963 exhibition Pop Art USA at the Oakland Museum of Art, one of the earliest exhibitions of Pop Art on the West Coast. In addition to painting and sculpture, Berlant works in a wide array of formats, including photography and collage. Since the 1960s, he has employed a dazzling collage technique using images printed on metal, which he cuts into small pieces and obsessively nails down upon a flat surface to create a visually complex assemblage of painterly gestures.

  In addition to his artistic practice, Berlant is also an avid and knowledgeable collector, dealer and advisor, especially of Mimbres pottery, Navajo blankets, and ancient handaxes. Several influential exhibitions and books have grown from Berlant’s collection, including First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone at the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX) and Decoding Mimbres Painting: Ancient Ceramics of the American Southwest at LACMA.

Tony Berlant’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Airport, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Mayo Clinic, Target Corporation, Minneapolis, and the Broad Theater, Santa Monica.