Harvey Breverman (1934-2024)

A one-fold brochure produced for the President’s Associates by the University at Buffalo includes the following artist’s statement and description of the print:

             In appreciation of the valuable support rendered by members of the President’s Associates, the University at Buffalo Foundation has commissioned U/B fine arts professor Harvey Breverman to design a color lithograph commemorating a philosophical theme of the University at Buffalo.

            In his design of “Composite” the artist has stated that “my concept of a three-part composite or montage, dislocates the familiar and places it in a new context, with the boundaries of the entire image conceived in flux.

            Reality and illusion are juggled. A central pattern emerges of a cluster of seven faculties linked to one another, each visually textured by being superimposed over a ground plan of the Amherst campus.

            Emanating upward from this core of ‘composite wisdom’ is the Hayes Hall landmark, countered by a horizontal page of electronic musical notations. The lower image, which can also be read as a flat pattern, is an architectural fragment of the Ellicott Complex, in itself a capsule of the educational adventure.

This original color lithograph was created exclusively for the President’s Associates Program of the University at Buffalo. The image was hand-drawn by the artist and hand-pulled from two stones (effaced after printing) in a limited edition on imported Arches Buff cover paper. Each lithograph is pencil signed and numbered by the artist.

This university imagery is also related to Breverman’s later interior mural design for the South Campus Station, titled Synoptic Triptych. It was commissioned in 1983 and completed 1984-85 as part of the “Art Commissioned by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority for the Light Rail Rapid Transit System Stations in Buffalo, New York.”  The artist stated that Synoptic Triptych “attempts to reveal the composite nature of a diverse, evolving University community and its attending resource.” Thanks to previous archival donations made by Harvey and Deborah Breverman, the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s Archives contain conceptual drawings, a maquette and other materials relating to this important commission, thus placing Composite in historical context within Breverman’s career.

- Nancy Weekly