Victoria Thorson is a PhD art historian in New York City and a leading art author, essayist, and catalogue raisonné writer. She is the editor of the acclaimed book Great Drawings of All Time: The Twentieth Century.

B.R. Schwartz is internationally recognized as one of the most significant figurative sculptors and printmakers of her generation. At 92 years old, she offers a poignant warning in a new book that illustrates a selection of her etchings. As she explains, “The book is on the theme of nuclear uncertainty. The beauty in our world and the uncertainty behind that beauty—should they look.”

It was only after moving to North America in 1980 that Schwartz turned to the theme of nuclear uncertainty. “In Africa, I was political, anti-apartheid, and that was reflected in my art,” she recalls. “It was only when I came to North America that I began to see the world from a different perspective. I became disillusioned with global geopolitics. People were too complacent. While my art may appear beautiful, behind it lies darkness—a lurking danger. People can continue to ignore this and focus on the beauty, but the potential danger is always there.”

Her engagement with political activism in art is deeply personal. Rather than taking an overtly strident approach or chronicling disasters—which she sees as a denunciation of humanism—she chooses beauty and mood as her means of expression. In an early 1970s gallery review titled In honour of International Women’s Year, she stated, “I feel a burning desire to create and accomplish, and what I crave is to create something beautiful. There is enough disorder and distaste around, and I wish to express myself in terms of beauty.”

As a contemporary humanist, Schwartz’s portraits radiate beauty while her subjects bear the burden of the unknown. Their faces and gestures range from innocent to pensive, introverted, and unnerved.

Schwartz gained recognition as an artist in Africa, where Fabio Barraclough—a well-known art critic, sculptor, and professor—reviewed her 1975 exhibition in Pretoria, South Africa: “I rate Bernice in this international class for the range of her accomplishments, from drawings and landscape sketches of great refinement to the psychological depth of her portraits and the intensity of mood in her nudes.”

Her etchings, distinguished by their unusual beauty and sensuality, occupy a clearly contemporary space. Some are set against cityscapes, while others feature figures leaning casually against door frames or tables. Yet within these serene compositions, nuclear uncertainty lurks—detonating on a period TV, reflected in a decanter, or suspended within an orb.

Schwartz describes Girl with NON Sign: “The ‘NON’ on the shirt means ‘NO BOMB,’ expressing negation or absence—nonaggression. And Girl Holding an Arum Lily, a symbol of purity, references the Bible: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’). Purity or nativity before the bomb.”

Signs and references are ubiquitous in her work. A 1968 news clipping—PARIS, Aug. 27. (AP) FRENCH “H” BOMB EXPLODES…—runs like a tickertape along a vertical margin. A young woman holds a book of rocket images as her companion speaks over her shoulder. Single hands grasp flowers that, in one print, become a maelstrom of seduction and, in another, an exploding bomb.

Figures separate and commingle, messengers of rare beauty and vitality.

Declaring her passion for sculpture, Schwartz explains, “I have always been interested in sculptural art. Etching is a form of sculpture—scraffito. The word intaglio comes from the Italian intagliare, meaning to carve or incise.” Her directive is conveyed through the power of mood and expression in her nudes and portraits, supported by her technical virtuosity in sculpture. Her deep connection to the tactile nature of creation is evident in a 1985 Paris Salon interview, where she discussed her silver-medal-winning Girl with Silver Thread: “It is like handwriting … in sculpture you have a distinct thumbprint—there is an organic quality where I pressed my fingers in.”

Through her etchings and sculptures, B.R. Schwartz masterfully intertwines beauty with an undercurrent of unease, prompting viewers to look beyond the surface. Her work is a meditation on the fragility of existence, where elegance coexists with the specter of nuclear uncertainty. In a world that often chooses to ignore the dangers hidden beneath its own creations, Schwartz’s art serves as both a tribute to human resilience and a quiet yet urgent call for vigilance.