Jane Berlandina was born in 1898 in Nice, France. She initiated her artistic studies in Paris at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs. She soon became a pupil of the famed Raoul Dufy. With Dufy’s influence Berlandina began exploring abstraction, long before it had become the predominant method of painting. 

Berlandina moved to New York before settling in California in 1931. She began teaching art at the University of California, Berkeley.  She also became a member of the San Francisco Art Association and the Society of Women Artists. In 1939, she exhibited her work with the Fourteen Bay Area Watercolorists. As Hans Hoffman and the Berkeley School gained prominence, Berlandina was likely exposed to the growing the Abstract Expressionist movement on the West Coast. But Berlandina’s daring abstract WPA murals and watercolors became her signature style.

Sources:
Gordon T. McClelland and Jay T. Last, California Watercolors, 1850-1970
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, 2002
“Jane Clara Howard Berlandina,” AskArt.com