of Modernism”. Unlike Hoffman, whose emphasis was in abstraction and initiated the Abstract Expressionists, Zerbe was well rooted in the expressionism and spawned the Boston Expressionists. Associated with the Boston Expressionists are Jack Levine, Hyman Bloom, Khalil Gibran, as well as, Zerbe's students-Jason Berger, David Aronson, Reed Kay, Jack Kramer, Bernie Chaet, Arthur Polonsky, and George Sheridan. In the 1940s, the Expressionist enthusiasm in Boston would materialize in exhihibitions of Max Beckmann, Chaïm Soutine, Oskar Kokoschka, Marc Chagall, and James Ensor before they were exhibited in New York City. World War II interrupted Berger's college education with three years in the Army, 1943–1946. Returning from the war, he graduated from college in 1948. Afterwards, with a traveling scholarship awarded by the School of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Berger went to Europe with his first wife, the painter Marilyn Powers. In addition to the European Traveling Fellowship, Berger received several awards, including the Grand Prize for Painting from Jacques Lipchitz at the Boston Arts Festival in 1956 and the Clarissa Bartlett Traveling Award in 1957. While in France, Berger studied with cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine in Paris and frequented Georges Braque's studio. He also met Matisse and absorbed the direct influences of Bonnard, Dufy, Picasso and Soutine. Upon his return to the United States, Berger began teaching first at Mount Holyoke College (1955), and then enjoyed a long tenure teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1956–69). He taught briefly at Wellesley College (1957–59), The State University of New York at Buffalo (1969–70) and The Metropolitan College at Boston University (1971–72). Until his retirement, he taught at The Art Institute of Boston (1973–88). During the summers, the Bergers traveled and painted en plein air in France, Mexico and Portugal. After his wife, Marilyn Powers, died in 1976 of cancer, he returned to Portugal where he met Estela Couto who became his second wife in 1978. They eventually moved to Portugal in 1994. Berger lost his second wife, Estela, in 1997. Berger remained in Portugal, where he eventually married the painter Leena Rekola in 1999. The couple moved back to Boston in March 2008. He died in October 2010. Berger continued to work directly from nature until his death, always putting the "picture first and feeding nature into it". This focus on combining the formal elements of color, shape and compositional scheme to make a good