Bernard Perlin showed that he was an artist from an early age, but his creative maturation was a process that played out over the many decades of his career. Critics were sometimes confused, but in retrospect one can easily see the threads that tie together Perlin's works from the 1940's to the 1970's: painstaking technique and glowing color.

Perlin's appearance as a professional artist coincided with the United States' entry into the Second World War. Perlin was engaged by the Office of War Information to create posters to motivate the populace in favor of the war effort. His vigorous images propagandized for patriotism with dynamic arrangements of massive forms and figures. By 1944 Perlin was sent overseas to witness th...