Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920, and spent his childhood in Warsaw, Poland. The son of a poet and a singer, Yosl Bergner took painting lessons before emigrating to Australia in 1937 as a seventeen year old. Yosl Bergner struggled to survive in Australia, undertaking a series of menial jobs while studying painting at the National Gallery Art School, Melbourne. Yosl Bergner painted images which were essentially autobio-graphical, views of a dark, bleak urban environment, inhabited by lonely and dispossessed people, works which inspired many young Melbourne artists during the 1940s. Fellow student, Noel Counihan remarked that `The lonely drinker, the city rat-catchers, scavengers, refugees from Hitlerism, the woman of the slums - street sweepers - these were his subjects ... The compassion, humanity and deep sincerity of his art attracted immediate and deep attention.' During the second world war Yosl Bergner served in the Australian Army Labour Company at Tocumwal 1941-6 and after-wards gained a Commonwealth Rehabilitation Scholarship to return to his studies at the National Gallery Art School. Yosl Bergner left Australia in 1948, travelling first to Paris and then to Israel, where Yosl Bergner currently lives and works. (SM)

References: Noel Counihan, Yosl Bergner, in Barrett Reid (ed.), Modern Australian Art: A Melbourne Collection of Paintings and Drawings, Melbourne, 1958; Yosl Bergner: A Retrospective Exhibition, Banyule Gallery, Melbourne, 1985.
Yosl Bergner.