A Painter of Our Time

John Berger 1958 A Painter of Our Time - 1st edition

A Painter of our Time, first novel written by John Berger in 1958.

A Painter of Our Time is at once a gripping intellectual and moral detective story and a book whose aesthetic insights make it a companion piece to Berger’s great works of art criticism. The year is 1956. Soviet tanks are rolling into Budapest. In London, an expatriate Hungarian painter named Janos Lavin has disappeared following a triumphant one-man show at a fashionable gallery. Where has he gone? Why has he gone? The only clues may lie in the diary, written in Hungarian, that Lavin has left behind in his studio. With uncanny understanding, John Berger has written one of the most convincing portraits of a painter in modern literature, a revelation of art and exile.

« It is salutary to remember that the weather is only five miles thick. It is only the earth’s casing – as temperament is ours. »

« If you draw a series of parallel lines closely together, and then another series across them at an angle, you have the simplest visual example of the dialectical process. Cross-hatching as they call  it. You have the first series of line, then you have the second series in opposition to the first. But out of the two you get a series of diamonds. »

John Berger 1958 A Painter of Our Time - All covers
John Berger 1958 A Painter of Our Time - 1st edition

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JOHN BERGER

Storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, painter and critic, John Berger (1926-2017) is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. Solo or in collaboration with Jean Mohr for example, he published more than 30 titles, the Booker Prize winning novel G and the best-seller Ways of Seeing. He has also published articles in the most important newspapers around the world.

He used to work and live in Quincy, a small French peasant community, the setting for his trilogy Into their Labours.

Painters, cineasts, writers, dancers, curators have been and are still inspired by his work, this website is a window on these TODAY creations.