In Memory: Devera Jean Ehrenberg, Age 79

Devera Jean Ehrenberg, long-time artist for the New Yorker, died on July 25th at age 79 in Gloucester, MA from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Ms. Ehrenberg, born October 27, 1940 to Anne Scoville and Myron Ehrenberg in New York City, grew up in Rye, New York, where her parents had moved after WWII to join a small colony of progressive artists and writers. Myron was a photographer who had served with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. During the 1960s Ms. Ehrenberg attended the Art Students League of New York and began drawing small “spots” used as filler by newspapers, such as the Washington Post, and magazines, such as the New Yorker. Her drawings were precise, decorative, and whimsical. Encouraged by Lee Lorenz, art editor for the New Yorker, Ms Ehrenberg began to do covers, publishing ten New Yorker covers during the 1980s and 1990s.

Ms. Ehrenberg was married during the 1960s to Richard L. Currier, a noted anthropologist, and in the 1970s to Edward Kaim, a successful businessman. Both marriages ended in divorce. Thereafter, Ms Ehrenberg supported her “art habit” with a succession of temporary office jobs in banks, offices and universities, while living in a succession of 3rd floor walkups in Cambridge, Brookline, and finally Gloucester. There, inspired by the light and reflections from the water, she took up her father’s art. Her photos, like her drawings, were also precise and whimsical, and they were often shown in Gloucester’s various galleries.

Ms. Ehrenberg, a gentle soul, was predeceased by her brother, Jonathan Ehrenberg, and leaves her brother Jesse Ehrenberg of Albuquerque, NM and a niece, Dawn Eden of Joplin, MO.