The Howard County
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VOL.12, NO.8
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Survivor and self-taught painter
‘I never saw my father again’ Biegel’s life had a tragic early beginning. When he was 11 years old, Nazi soldiers took his father from the Jewish family’s home and sent him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. “The Nazis banged on the door, and I
5 0 AUGUST 2022
I N S I D E …
PHOTO COURTESY OF AL BIEGEL
By Robert Friedman Al Biegel escaped the Nazis in Vienna, where he was born, joined the U.S. Army, rose to the rank of colonel while engaging in combat during the Vietnam War, retired from the military after 25 years, then went on to serve another quarter of a century in the national intelligence community. Now 84 and an artist-teacher, Biegel is displaying several works from his “plein air” (outdoor landscape) period at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House in Columbia. The exhibit also includes paintings by several of Biegel’s students, most of whom, he said, are at least 45 years old. Biegel, a Columbia resident since 1970 (he also lives part of the year in Boca Raton, Florida), noted in a recent interview with the Beacon that his art work — which he began some 60 years ago — had often offered him a mental stability, especially during his years of military combat. “While serving two combat tours in Vietnam, I focused on painting just to find psychological relief,” Biegel said, adding: “Once you pick up the brush, you forget about everything else.” He first experimented with painting in 1959, when he and his wife, Marilyn, also a Holocaust survivor, were living in a oneroom apartment in the Bronx. Marilyn had admired a painting of bottles in an art store. It was for sale at the outrageous price (for them at the time) of $75. That led Biegel to spend $5 on art materials, including a canvas. “I had never used a paintbrush before,” he said. Nonetheless, “after a week of effort, a crude picture of bottles ‘graced’ our walls.” He has since applied oils, acrylics and watercolors to canvases he has set up in, among other places, Germany, where he was stationed in the Army, in the colorful French countryside of Provence, Palm Beach and Howard County, among other locations where he has created his paintings, which now number “several thousand.”
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Al Biegel started painting decades ago but picked up the pace after retiring from the U.S. Army. His works are on display at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House in Columbia through August 12.
never saw my father again,” Biegel said. Biegel, his mother and brother escaped Vienna, and in late 1940 were passengers on what Biegel described as “the last ship from Trieste carrying passengers to the U.S.” His mother remarried and the family settled in the Bronx, where Biegel affected a tough guy attitude, along with a high pompadour to boost his 5-foot, 4-inch stature. A high school guidance counselor told the teenage Biegel that his persistent low grades showed he was “not college material.” Biegel noted that he countered the assessment by scoring well on the SAT exam. He was accepted into tuition-free City College of New York, joined the ROTC there (where he served under cadet Col. Colin Powell), and managed an A-minus average in his coursework.
his all-time favorites: Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. “They painted beautiful landscapes,” he said. The Impressionists of the mid-19th-century, when Monet and Cézanne painted, were considered radicals in their time. They violated the traditions of painting by using freely brushed colors that took precedence over lines and contours. Other differences included that they painted realistic scenes of modern life and often painted outdoors. Previously, still-life and portraits, as well as landscapes, were almost always painted in a studio, with landscapes usually serving only as background. Meanwhile, painters of en plein air, a French phrase meaning “in the open air,” artistically painted the landscapes they actually saw outdoors, where they had set up their easels.
Admires ‘radical’ impressionists Biegel pointed to two French painters as
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