From 1906 to 1909 Elias Goldberg studied with George Bridgman at the Art Students League of New York.
It was during this period that he studied and painted in Europe and developed friendships with Jules Pascin, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
In the 1950s, he befriended a younger generation of artists such as Knox Martin (a fellow artist in the Charles Egan Gallery), Reuben Nakian, Herman Rose, Peter Golfinopoulos and Joseph Stapleton.
[1] In the 1960s he had a series of critically acclaimed one-man shows at the Charles Egan Gallery.
Most of his city paintings focus on the area of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, where he lived from 1945 on.