From A to X : A Story In Letters

John Berger

John Peter Berger (5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, is often used as a university text. He lived in France for over fifty years. Berger began his career as a painter[11] and exhibited works at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s.[11][8] His art has been shown at the Wildenstein, Redfern and Leicester Galleries in London. Berger taught drawing at St Mary's teacher training college. He later became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman.] His Marxist humanism and his strongly stated opinions on modern art combined to make him a controversial figure early in his career.[14] As a statement of political commitment, he titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red. Berger was never a formal member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB): rather he was a close associate of it and its front, the Artists’ International Association (AIA), until the latter disappeared in 1953. He was active in the Geneva Club, a discussion group that appears to have overlapped with British communist circles in the 1950