Chronology

1931

born in Basel, Switzerland, on March 27

1945

begins four years of study at the Basel School of Design (Schule für Gestaltung Basel)

1947–50

travels frequently to Paris

1951

works as a commercial artist in Fond du Lac, then Milwaukee, before settling in Cleveland on Magnolia Drive.

1954

wins first prize at the Cleveland Museum of Art for a large canvas — Der Kreis (The Circle).

1956

travels to South Dakota and explores the ancient

1957

first solo exhibition, at the Howard Wise Gallery of Present-Day Painting and Sculpture, in Cleveland, showing The Magnolia Series

1957

drafted into the U.S. Army with the Seventh Army Headquarters in Stuttgart. During the period he creates The Stuttgart Series

1957

a large canvas is chosen by a jury for the Bicentennial in Pittsburgh of 1958 (the Carnegie International)

1960

returns to Cleveland

1962

moves to New York, settling in Greenwich Village, at 25 Bethune Street, then at 33 Perry Street, and finally for the next two decades at 25 Bank Street.

1965

marries Mary York Sampson and together they found the Bank Street Press, an independent publisher of poetry and children’s books

1997

retrospective exhibition of 140 works on paper held at the Gewerbeverband Basel-Stadt

1998

moves to 271 Frost Street in Brooklyn and begins his Multiple Composites Series (trompe l’oeil collages on canvas), a series which lasts through 2009

2005

moves to 261 Water Street, and the next year around the corner to 25 Peck Slip, both in the South Street Seaport District of Lower Manhattan, for the next 14 years.

2018

President of the Fashion Institute of Technology honors Bertschmann with the school’s rarely-bestowed Lifetime Achievement Award at its commencement exercises at Radio City Music Hall.

2019

moves with his wife, Mary, into an assisted living facility in Holtsville, Long Island