1920 to 1939

As an immigrant arriving from a Russian-occupied Poland to a Jewish tenement house on the Lower East Side in New York in 1913, Janice Tworkov comes of age by facing a new culture and adolescence at the same time. Decamping to Greenwich Village with her older brother, Jack Tworkov, she becomes immersed in a bohemian life. Like her older brother, Janice is an avid reader, with The Three Musketeers​ being her favorite book. She would later tell French novelist and art theorist André Malraux that it was because of Porthos that she became an artist. 

While visiting an exhibition of French painting at the Brooklyn Museum in the Spring of 1921, Janice discovers the work of Cézanne. She enrolls in classes at the Art Students League and the School of the National Academy of Design. In the fall of 1922, Janice comes upon the work of Edwin Dickison and in the summer of 1923, hitchhikes her way to Provincetown to study with him.

By late 1920, Janice is an established artist with a growing reputation. A frequent exhibitor at the G.R.D. Studios (NY), a gallery that would later fuel the careers of many important American artists. She remains at the forefront of the fledgling art colonies of Provincetown (MA) and Woodstock (NY) and generated close friendships with now legendary American artists Edwin Dickinson and another prominent American artist, William Zorach. In fact, it was at the suggestion of Zorach that Janice changed her name to Biala, after the town where she was born, so as not to confuse her work with that of her brother.

During a fateful trip to Paris in 1930, Biala meets and falls in love with the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. A formidable figure among writers, artists and the transatlantic intelligentsia, Ford introduces Biala to the many artists within his circle forging a new Modernism in France including Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, among others. Upon Ford’s death in 1939, she flees Europe under the growing Nazi threat, rescuing Ford’s personal library and manuscripts while carrying as much of her own work as she could.

Though her work during this period was robust, little artwork is extant from this period. Work from this decade is characterized by a modernist reinterpretation of classical themes: landscapes, still-life, and portraiture.

Solo Exhibitions include: Georgette Passedoit Gallery, New York (’35, ’37); Denver Art Museum, Denver (’37); Olivet College, Olivet (’37); Galerie Zak, Paris (’39)

Group Exhibitions include: Provincetown Art Assoication and Museum, Provincetown (’27); Parc des Expositions, Porte de Versailles, Paris (’32)