John Berger

(1926 - 2017)

While exhibiting paintings at London galleries in the 1940s and ’50s, John Berger contributed art criticism to various publications. About his later decision to give up painting for writing, he said in an interview, “A painter is like a violinist: you have to play every single day, you can’t do it sporadically. For me, there were too many political urgencies to spend my life painting.” Unhappy with the state of his country, he left England in 1962, resettling in the French Alps, and going on to publish his Booker Prize–winning novel, G., and Ways of Seeing.