Alexander Liberman was born in Kiev, Russia, and grew up in Paris. His mother wanted him to be an artist, but he studied philosophy, mathematics, and architecture before turning to painting. Liberman was the managing editor of the French magazine VU, and also worked part-time in an architect’s office making illustrations of gardens. With the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States, where he got a job working for Vogue. By 1962, Liberman was the editorial director for all Condé Nast publications in the United States and Europe, and he and his wife, Tatiana, were style setters in fashionable Manhattan society. He divided his time between the office and the studio, explaining that he thought of art as a dangerous full-time profession because it would be very easy to become “trapped” into doing the same type of work all of the time
