This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following biography has been provided by the artist, Harry Borgman, September 2005:
Harry Borgman was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 23, 1928. He went to Denby High School where he was fortunate enough to have an excellent teacher, Margaret Stein. Margaret taught art and was responsible for producing the high school yearbook. She ran the yearbook project very professionally, like an art studio. Harry was appointed the art director of the yearbook, which was engraved by Brophy Engraving Company. However, the Brophy art staff had been drafted in the army for the World War II war effort, so they hired Borgman to work in their art department, he was fifteen years old, a lucky break.
In 1946, upon graduation from high school, he received a scholarship to the Society of Arts and Crafts where his teacher was Sarkis Sarkisian. In 1947 he began working at Allied Artists, a new commercial art studio started by Jim Donahue, the former art director at Brophy Engraving. There he had his first success by starting to do paintings for Ford Times magazine, which he did for several years. During his career he also worked for many of the other leading Detroit art studios including, Gray Garfield Lang, Jose Cavillo Studios, McNamarra Brothers and eventually became one of the partners at MDM Studios. In 1955 he left the studio business to work in an advertising agency, Campbell - Ewald where he was head art director on the Chevrolet account, designing catalogs, sales promotion material and later, the magazine ads.
Borgman is an artist whose professional career has embraced both the commercial and fine art worlds. He exhibited his paintings and prints in Michigan Artist Shows as well as at Arwin Galleries in Detroit. After several years working in- agency, Borgman decided he wanted the creative versatility to be found only in freelancing. He worked for major advertising clients in Detroit, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1963 he joined Al Hutt Studios as an illustrator and graphic designer.
While working at Al Hutt Studios, he was also Chairman of the Advertising Department at the Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies) in Detroit. His courses included advertising design, illustration and cartooning.
In 1977 he decided to move to Europe and settled in Paris, France where he soon established himself as an artist for the top advertising agencies there. During this period he exhibited regularly in all of the major French painting salons. He also worked in Vienna, Austria, creating automotive campaigns, and was hired by the Lintas advertising agency to teach layout rendering to their art staffs in Jakarta, Singapore as well as in Madrid, Spain.
After several years in Europe he moved to New York City where he spent ten years working in advertising doing illustrations and various graphic design projects, as well as being active in the fine arts, his paintings and sculpture were exhibited at the Allen Wincor Gallery. He now lives in Sawyer, Michigan and devotes his full time to fine art projects.
Early in 2000 he discovered the infinite possibilities of digital art and continues to test the limits of the computer as an art medium. In addition, he sculpts a variety of subjects in wood, designs metal and wood constructions. He has exhibited his digital prints, paintings, photography and sculpture in galleries, art centers and museums.
He has written several art technique books that were published by Watson-Guptill Publications, including "Pen and Pencil Drawing Techniques", which has recently been reprinted by Dover Publications. His most recent books are "Art Therapy" a book of his cartoons about the fine art world, "Surrealities", a book of his photomontages, and "digital Dreams" a book that explores the computer as an art medium.
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