Janice Biala (1903-2000) was a Polish-born American painter well regarded in France and the United States for her paintings of intimate interiors, portraits of friends, and the places she traveled such as France, Spain, Italy, and Morocco.
Biala was artist Jack Tworkov’s sister. During her life Biala went by quite a few names. Her birth name was Schenehaia Tworkovska, and after immigrating this became Janice Bernstein. As a young adult she became Janice Tworkov. In 1930, at the suggestion of a fellow painter she chose a new name so as to avoid confusion with her brother, the other J. Tworkov. Ultimately she chose Biala, the name of her birthplace.
Biala spent most of her time between Paris and New York. In New York, she became one of the few women associated with the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. She befriended painters Willem de Kooning and critic Harold Rosenberg among others. In the 1950s her work appeared frequently in solo and group exhibitions at New York's Stable Gallery and the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris.
Biala is known for synthesizing the styles popular in the circles she orbited—the early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde and the mid-century New York School.
Her work is in the public collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Brooklyn Museum, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, among many others.