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Irving Norman (1906-1989) was a social surrealist painter in San Francisco, Calif. He married Hela Bohlen (1927-2010) in 1955.
Norman was born Irving Noachowitz in Vilna, Russia in 1906. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 and worked in a barber shop in Monticello, New York. In 1934 he moved to Los Angeles and opened his own barber shop in Laguna Beach. A few years later he volunteered for service in the Abraham Lincoln battalion in Spain, and upon returning to California , he joined a life drawing group. He attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1940, studying with William Gaw and Spencer Macky, and in 1945 had his first major solo exhibition. At this time he also won the San Francisco Art Association's Albert Bender Memorial Prize. In 1946 he studied at the Art Students' League in New York and traveled to Mexico. He received much press when one of his paintings was removed from an exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum for obscenity in 1950. Despite this setback, he continued to regularly exhibition his work over the next decade.
A renewed interest in Irving Norman's work occurred in the mid-1970s, at which time he exhibited many new paintings. During the 1980s he continued to exhibit his work and participated in several video interviews. In 1988 a storm caused a fire which destroyed his house and studio, including drawings and most personal papers. Irving Norman passed away at home in July 1989 and a memorial retrospective of his work was held at San Jose State University the following year. Hela Norman continued to manage the sale and exhibition of Irving's artwork until her death in 2010.