Bernard Safran was an American painter known for his realistic portraits and scenes of everyday life in New York and in rural Canada. He created many portraits for Time magazine covers, with subjects that included Elizabeth II, Pope John XXIII, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
After the war, in 1946 Safran start to work as a freelance book jacket illustrator for western and mystery novels. A sample title is Nightclub Sinner by Harry Whittington. Wayward Girl, A Shocking Expose of Youth Gone Wild by Doug Duperroult is another example. He also illustrated magazine articles, such as Stand by for Danger in the April 1954 issue of Boys' Life, one of many stories he illustrated for that magazine. The work paid reasonably well, but he became dissatisfied with it and decided to become a serious artist. He spent six months in the mid-1950s studying and copying work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by old masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez and Rembrandt. Safran worked as an illustrator for Time from 1957 to 1966. Other illustrators of Time covers during this period, which has been called the golden age of Time covers, included Boris Artzybasheff, Robert Vickrey, James Ormsbee Chapin and Boris Chaliapin. Safran's covers included works such as Kenya's Tom Mboya, in which he showed a dreamy-eyed Mboya dressed in coat and tie in front of a white settler on one side and a native African on the other, with Mount Kenya in the background. His illustration of President Eisenhower shows Eisenhower in front of a diagram depicting ties between Washington, London, Paris and Bonn, representing the military–industrial complex. He depicted Cuba's Che Guevara for the August 8, 1960 edition and John XXIII for the January 4, 1963 edition.
Fine artist
After he had left Time Magazine, Saffran spent almost twenty years painting over forty genre scenes of everyday life in Manhattan, typically portraying the strength of ordinary people living in decaying urban settings. His subjects included the poor, prostitutes, working people and old people. He also took many casual photographs of public life in the city. He then moved with his family to a farmhouse in a remote part of eastern Canada. For the next 20 years he created paintings of working life in rural Canada. In 1964 Safran made a painting of Medea, a modern interpretation of the tragic Greek infanticide from the play of that name by Euripides. A well-dressed middle-class housewife stares at the viewer, with one arm around each of her two sons. The boys gaze up at their mother. The powerful painting conveys a sense of sadness and menace through Medea's expression alone, with no obvious clues such as a weapon. The model for the mother was a close friend of the family, and the boys were neighborhood children. The painting was first shown at the Fitzgerald Gallery in New York City in 1966, part of a show of works by Safran on themes from mythology and the Bible. Safran died of a heart attack on October 14, 1995 at his home in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. He was survived by his wife, Adele, two daughters and four grandchildren.
Works
Safran's work was exhibited in New York and Washington galleries.
Time magazine covers
Portraits that were published as Time magazine covers included:
