art history
The New Man as Man Machine
A Book Talk by Eckhart Gillen, Berlin
ONLINE
VA, United States
Fifteen years after the great financial crisis of 2008, which shook the capitalist economic system in America and Europe to its foundations, the book “The New Man as Man Machine” presents, for the first time, the interrelationship of art and political economy in the Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America during the interwar period. By taking a look back at the 1920s and 1930s, it attempts to better understand our own era and its well-founded fears with regard to globalization and a new global economic crisis. Image above: Kliment Redko, Aufstand, 1924-25 This project focuses on how artists reacted to the central questions of the political economy in these three [...]
In Hitler’s Munich:
Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
A Book Talk by Michael Brenner, Munich and Washington D.C.
ONLINE
VA, United States
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918–19, which was led by many prominent Jewish politicians, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. This lecture provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution. Michael Brenner holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He is also Distinguished Professor of History and Seymour and [...]
Traces of a Jewish Artist:
The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit (1888–1942)
A Book Talk by Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College
ONLINE
VA, United States
In this presentation, Gettysburg College professor and author Kerry Wallach explores the life and work of Rahel Szalit (1888–1942; also: Szalit-Marcus). Szalit was a sought-after illustrator and painter who was active in 1920s Berlin and 1930s Paris. Image above: Rahel Szalit-Marcus, The Drive to the Rabbi, in Milgroym, 1922. Lithograph. Rahel Szalit was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. She painted and drew landscapes, Berlin city scenes, animals, and portraits of women, children, and public figures. She produced numerous lithographs and worked in pen and ink, pencil, pastel, chalk, oil paint, and watercolors. Women figured prominently in many scenes, from small-town Jewish life to snapshots of the metropolis. [...]
The Miraculous San Francisco Discovery of
Ary Arkady Lochakov’s Lost Art
A Talk by Journalist Julie Zigoris, San Francisco
ONLINE
VA, United States
One sunny May day in 2022—halfway around the world from Paris where the Jewish artist Ary Arkady Lochakov (1892-1941) died of malnutrition in 1941—a miraculous discovery was made. Maintenance staff came upon 48 abandoned artworks in a waterside park, all of them carefully arranged as if they were meant to be discovered. 38 of the 48 artworks all had the same signature: Ary Arkady Lochakov. Port employees researched Lochakov to discover he was a member of the famed École de Paris and was featured in Hersh Fenster's essential book Our Martyred Artists. San Francisco Standard journalist Julie Zigoris was the first (and only) to report the story to the public, following the trail of breadcrumbs to make some incredible [...]
Bruno Schulz (1892-1942):
An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
Benjamin Balint and Ori Z Soltes in Conversation
ONLINE
VA, United States
Benjamin Balint, author of the National Jewish Book Award winning book, and Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes in conversation. Bruno Schulz is renowned as a master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction. Isaac Bashevis Singer called him “one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived.” But Schulz was also an exceptionally talented graphic artist whose masochistic drawings would catch the eye of a sadistic Nazi officer. Schulz’s art became the currency in which he bought life. Image above: Bruno Schulz, Mural, 1941-1942. Drohobycz. Discovery Benjamin Geissler, 2001. Drawing on extensive new reporting and archival research, Benjamin Balint chases the inventive murals Schulz painted on the walls of an SS villa—the last traces of his vanished [...]
“Let’s Talk of Interesting People”:
The Story of Erna Friedländer (1890-1979)
With Noit Banai, PhD, Hong Kong, and Ketul Arnold, Boulder (Colorado)
ONLINE
VA, United States
This presentation by Noit Banai, PhD, Hong Kong, and Ketul Arnold, Boulder (Colorado), traces Erna Friedländer‘s unique journey as a German refugee who survived Nazi persecution and World War II in Hong Kong, and subsequently migrated to England, Israel, and the USA. Image above: Erna Friedländer, Chinese Landscape. Undated. Monotype. Courtesy The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, London As a German refugee who survived World War II in Hong Kong, and subsequently migrated to England, Israel, and the USA, Erna Friedländer’s journey is unique among the many histories of Jewish dispossession. Though few traces remain of Friedländer artistic oeuvre, she was a thoroughly modernist artist. Painter, printmaker, and teacher at the [...]
Steinberg before STEINBERG
Lecture by Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Rome (Italy)
ONLINE
VA, United States
In this presentation Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Italian journalist and scholar of 20th century history, tells the story of Saul Steinberg, before he became STEINBERG, the majuscules with which he signed his name to the art most people know, using some of his public art, some of his clandestine art, some of his personal art and - yes – some of his top secret art. Image above: Saul Steinberg, Seaside, 1941. © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York The art of Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was arguably one of the most recognizable for the US public from the mid-1940s until his death in 1999. Much of Steinberg’s best-known work appeared in magazines such as [...]
Art and Internment.
Heinz Henghes the Stowaway Sculptor
Presentation by Ian Henghes, London (UK)
ONLINE
VA, United States
Heinz Henghes (1906-1975) was born in Hamburg in 1906, a ‘Mischling’ of mixed Jewish and German descent. In America for almost 10 years before returning to Europe at a time of great political unrest Heinz spent time in Italy where he enjoyed the patronage of Ezra Pound, despite Pounds noted anti-semitism. In London at the outbreak of war Heinz was interned and sent to Australia on the notorious ship the Dunera. Ian Henghes, the artist's son, presents his father’s extraordinary story and the contact he had with other artists, writers and thinkers of his time. Image above: Heinz Henghes in Milan studio ca 1935 © Ian Henghes Ian Henghes is an online communications specialist working [...]
“My verses are like dynamite”
Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret
Presentation by Aubrey Pomerance, Berlin (Germany)
ONLINE
VA, United States
Under threat from Nazi antisemitism, the young Jewish lawyer Curt Bloch (1908–1975) fled Dortmund for the Netherlands in 1933. He went into hiding there in 1942 and emigrated to the United States after the war. In his hiding place, from August 1943 to April 1945 Bloch produced a magazine with the telling title Het Onderwater Cabaret – “The Underwater Cabaret.” Image above: Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family Week by week, Curt Bloch created small-format booklets with artfully designed covers, containing a total of 483 handwritten poems in German and [...]
George Grosz (1893-1959):
The Stick Men
Presentation by Karli Wurzelbacher, PhD, Huntington (New York)
ONLINE
VA, United States
George Grosz (American, b. Germany, 1893–1959) created the “Stick Men” series in Huntington, where he lived from 1947 until shortly before his death. Featuring hollow figures in an apocalyptic landscape, this group of watercolors offers a searing indictment of humanity following World War II, the Holocaust, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Grosz was an internationally renowned German-born artist who remained invested in political art following his immigration to the United States in 1933. In the “Stick Men” series, he wrestles with the emergence of Abstract Expressionism and reaffirms the ability of painting to impact society. Image above: Detail of George Grosz (American, b. Germany, 1893–1959), The Grey Man Dances, 1949. Oil on canvas. George [...]
