This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following is from www.leehansleygallery.com
George Bireline 1923-2002
RALEIGH -- A memorial service for George Bireline, 79, who died Aug. 20 at his home at 228 East Park Dr., will be held Sunday, Sept. 15, at 5 p.m. in the ballrooms of the Talley Student Center at N.C. State University.
Bireline, professor emeritus at the NCSU College of Design, is best known for his bright and intense color palette which he employed in his paintings in a number of styles--from his early figural abstract paintings, to abstract expressionism, to his benchmark color field paintings, to his trompe l'oeil interiors, his shaped canvases, his personal narrative paintings and in his late environmental and social comment works.
The works of George Bireline have been featured in two major retrospective exhibitions. The first in 1976 was entitled "Original Bireline" and it was mounted by the North Carolina Museum of Art and traveled to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem. Eight years ago the former City Gallery of Contemporary Art in Raleigh showcased a decade of the artist's latest works in its first exhibition dedicated to a North Carolina artist. Both exhibitions were accompanied by illustrated catalogues.
Works by Bireline are in the collections of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Emerson Art Museum in Syracuse, N.Y., the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, the Gallery of Art and Design at NCSU, at the Duke University Museum of Art and others.
Bireline's works have been shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, Jacksonville Art Museum in Florida, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla., High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Asheville Art Museum, the Krannart Art Museum in Champaign, Ill., the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, Tenn., the Japan Cultural Forum in Tokyo, Witte Memorial Art Museum in San Antonia, Texas, Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.
Among his patrons were the renowned Richmond, Va., couple Sidney and Frances Lewis, founders of Best Products, Inc.
Bireline had a distinguished career as a painter and at one point in his career was represented by the Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York City, a gallery known for its New York Color School artists. In 1964 Bireline had a sold out exhibition at Emmerich. The New York exposure captured the attention of the noted 20th century art critic Clement Greenberg, who wrote about Bireline in "The New York Times".
Bireline has twice won the top prize in the North Carolina Artist Exhibition and in 1967 was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. In 1968 Bireline won the Southeast Artist Award of the National Council on the Arts.
Bireline was born on Aug. 12, 1923, in Peoria, Ill., where he graduated from Woodruff High School. He served in the U.S. Army in the European Theater Operation from 1942 through 1946.
He studied painting at Bradley University where he earned a BFA in 1949. He did post graduate work at the University of North Carolina in 1952 and earned a MFA in painting at UNC in 1963.
Bireline taught art at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in 1953 and worked as a set technician at the outdoor drama "Unto These Hills" in 1954, the year he moved to Raleigh to work for Geodesics, Inc. In 1955 he served as technical director of Raleigh Little Theatre prior to his being hired as a painting instructor at the NCSU School of Design. He was visiting professor in the art department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1966. He retired from teaching in 1986.
George Bireline. History Lesson, 1993.
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