Berenice Michelow

Berenice Michelow
2025
Berenice Michelow passed away peacefully at the age of 94 on January 22, in the comfort of her own home. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and emigrated to the U.S in 2004 with her late husband Maurice Cecil Michelow.
From an early age Berenice loved to draw and paint. She was very talented in the arts. In addition to studying art in school, she was a ballet dancer, jazz pianist, and tennis player. Her early schoolbooks were filled with drawings which became highly sought after when she graduated from Redhill High School.
She studied art in Johannesburg for 3 years and in London for 4 years. Upon her return to South Africa, she worked in the theater designing costumes and stage sets. But her true passion was painting. When she started a family, she also launched her painting career, experimenting with diverse media and styles. Always a skilled draftsman, her great precision and technique coupled well with an excellent sense of color and composition. Her work was original, influenced by her environment depicting the events and times in which she was living. Her work was a social comment and visual background to everyday life. Her first phase was her Protest Art during the Apartheid years in South Africa. Her second phase was her personal artistic vision and response to the dynamic evolving democracy in the New South Africa. Upon arrival in the United States, she entered her third phase. This followed on the heels of 9/11 and Berenice was keenly aware of the overwhelming patriotism as depicted in her work.
Berenice had 27 solo exhibitions. She has exhibited in South Africa, Chile, France, Germany, as well as the USA and Canada. She represented South Africa as a painter at the 4th Biennale in Valparaiso, Chile. She was a guest artist in 5 museums and exhibited in a 10-year retrospective at the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg. She has work in the Chase- Manhattan Bank collection in New York and other collections in the U.S. Her work remains in museums and corporate collections in South Africa. Indeed, she was greatly admired.
Berenice loved and lived life to the fullest. There was nothing more important to her than family. She was very strong-willed with very definite opinions. She read the newspaper up until her last days and was always ready for a political discussion or to discuss the latest book she had read. One of her favorite pastimes was watching tennis. She was a keen gardener and an excellent cook.
She is survived by her son Bryan (Raizel) and their children Adam (Becky) and JJ; her daughter Diane Friedberg (Richard) and their children Oliver (Tina), Joshua, and Jenna and her great-grandson Wesley; and her son Ian (Michaela) and their children Aidan and Dylan.
She will be greatly missed.