As a statement of political commitment, he titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red.

His Marxist humanism and his strongly stated opinions on modern art combined to make him a controversial figure early in his career. He later became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman. īerger taught drawing at St Mary's teacher training college. His art has been shown at the Wildenstein, Redfern and Leicester Galleries in London. Career īerger began his career as a painter and exhibited works at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. He enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design in London. He served in the British Army during the Second World War from 1944 to 1946. īerger was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford. His grandfather was from Trieste, Italy, and his father, Stanley, raised as a non-religious Jew who adopted Catholicism, had been an infantry officer on the Western Front during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross and an OBE. He lived in France for over fifty years.īerger was born on 5 November 1926 in Stoke Newington, London, the first of two children of Miriam and Stanley Berger. 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, was influential.

John Peter Berger ( / ˈ b ɜːr dʒ ər/ BUR-jər 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet.

James Tait Black Memorial Prize Booker Prize (1972)

John bergers