Known for his "Profiles", portraits in the New Yorker magazine and for figurative watercolors, Burt Silverman is a realist painter who is a member of the National Academy of Design and the American Watercolor Society. His teacher, Professor Robert McGrath of Dartmouth College, referred to his painting style as "radical realism."

Early in his art training, he felt disadvantaged because so many of the teachers were hyping modernism, and this style did not appeal to him. He remains persuaded there is an enormous propaganda machine keeping the hype alive.

He has worked in New York all his life and surrounded by Abstract Expressionism and other contemporary movement, he has stayed true to his own realist style of figurative painting.

In January 1999, an exhibition of 50 of his works was held at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.

He showed early art talent, and his parents who were orthodox Jewish even allowed him to go to art school on the Sabbath.

SELECTED AWARDS & HONORS
2005 Newington Cropsey Cultural Center Award for Excellence in the Arts
2004 Gold Medal Lifetime Award the National Portrait Socie
2001 Honorary Doctorate awarded by the Academy of Art College, San Francisco, California
1997 Paul and Margaret Berkelson Prize, National Academy of Design, New York, New York
1979 Gold Medal, AWS Annual, New York, New York
1969 First Benjamin Altman Figure Prize, Nat'l Academy of Design Annual

ELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2005 180TH ANNUAL EXHIBITION
Life on Paper, Frey Norris Gallery, San Francisco, California
Gallery Henoch, New York, New York
2004 Drawings of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, with Harvey Dinnerstein, Delaware Art Museum
America Seen, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan
2003 178th Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, New York
Salon d'Arts Denver, Colorado
2002 American Watercolor Society, Annual Exhibitoin, New York, New York
Invited, the Butler Institue of American Art Annual ,Youngstown, Ohio
2001 Representation Re-presented The Arnot Museum, Elmira, New York
The Artists of America, 20th Annivesary Exhbition, Denver, Colorado

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Brooklyn Museum
The Butler Institute of American Art
Brigham Young Museum of Art
The Columbus Museum
The Denver Art Museum
The National Museum of American Art
The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Museums
The New Britain Museum of American
The Philadelphia Museum of Art

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Joseph Keiffer, "Burton Silverman" American Arts Quarterly
Frank Whitaker, "Four Realists" American Artist, October 1964
Pat Van Gelder "Burt Silverman Captures the Moment" American Artist, June 1972
Robert McGrath, Philip Saietta "Sight and Insight, the Art of Burton Silverman" Madison Square Press, 1999
Steven Heller, Review, ARTSmagazine, January 1984
William Shawn, "25 Years of New Yorker Profiles" Exhibition Catalogue, Grand Central Galleries, 1988
Clayborne Carson, "The Boycott That Changed Dr. King's Life" Drawings by Burt Silverman and Harvey Dinnerstein The New York Times, January 1996