Aaron Birnbaum

1895-1998

Aaron Birnbaum was born in Skole, a summer resort in Ukraine.  His father was a tailor and his mother a dressmaker.  At 13, he was apprenticed to a tailor working from 5 in the morning till 10 at night, 6 days a week.  Birnbaum was a New York dress manufacturer who took up painting after he retired and found himself hailed as an exceptional folk artist. In his work, Birnbaum merged incidents of his childhood in Eastern Europe with the setting of houses, streets, and bridges of Brooklyn where he had lived since 1913.  He worked in oil or acrylic on paper, wood, glass, or tin.  Even at 100, Aaron Birnbaum was a powerful presence, all voice, lively eyes and a ready smile as he welcomed visitors to his one-bedroom apartment.  A small man, 4 foot 9, he painted daily in the living room, perched on a stool.  When showing his work to a visitor, he moved easily about the room pulling out examples of his favorite paintings.  He took up painting at the age of 70, after the death of his wife Sadie.  He had closed his dress business, and to help ease his loneliness, his daughter bought him paints, recalling that he had sketched the dresses he produced.  Fame came some 30 years after he started painting when the Museum of American Folk Art celebrated his art and his age at a party at the museum for his 100th birthday.  (article found in The New York Times, August 13, 1998, by Rita Reif)