Bernard Kops, c. 1970s
Judy Bermant was born Judy Weil into an Orthodox Jewish family in north London, England in 1939. She studied illustration at St. Martin’s School of Art and printmaking with Peter Freeth RA at the Camden Institute in London. In 1962 she married the Polish-born Jewish writer Chaim Icyk Bermant (1929-1998), with whom she had four children; she illustrated many of his book jackets and he was the frequent subject of her sensitive portraiture which also includes other members of the Anglo-Jewish community. She was elected a member of the Contemporary Portrait Society and has exhibited widely throughout the UK including with Henny Handler in St John's Wood in 1985, the Sternberg Centre for Judaism in 1987, Boundary Gallery, London (with Sam Herman) in 1991, and at Ben Uri Gallery in 1981 (with Ruth Jacobson and Nigel Konstam), 1990 and 2008. She also designed the stained glass windows for Shomrai Hadath Synagogue, Hampstead, in 1989 and now works in London, Haifa and Jerusalem.
