painting
The Art of Felix Lembersky (1913-1970)
Yelena Lembersky and Ori Z Soltes, PhD
ONLINE
VA, United States
The program features a talk by Lembersky’s granddaughter, Yelena Lembersky, co-author of the recent and highly acclaimed memoir, Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia. Yelena will be introduced by Georgetown University professor, Ori Z Soltes, who has known her for many years and has written extensively on the work of Felix Lembersky. “We are merely honest people and see what is good and bad, and we cannot be confused.” – Felix Lembersky, Leningrad, the Soviet Union, 1960 Image above: Felix Lembersky, At the Train Station, ca 1960-64. © Felix Lembersky estate Felix Lembersky (1913-1970) was a Soviet Jewish painter, teacher, theater sets designer, and an organizer of artistic groups in Leningrad and [...]
EARLY ISRAELI AND AMERICAN ARTISTS:
RE-VISIONING THE HOLOCAUST.
Talk by Ori Z Soltes, Georgetown University, Washington DC
ONLINE
VA, United States
In honor of Yom HaShoah, this talk by Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes focuses on three Israeli and three American familiar and unfamiliar artists working in very diverse styles and not typically thought of as focusing on the Holocaust. Each of them, however, has offered powerful reflections on the defining catastrophe of the twentieth century. Barnett Newman, the foremost verbal spokesman for the chromatic side of the abstract expressionist movement redefining American painting in the early 1950s, offers an unexpectedly intense reflection on the question of theodicy. Mordecai Ardon, in the process of assuming leadership of the Bezalel school in Jerusalem at around the same time, balances between abstraction and figuration in depicting the Nazi-engendered chaos. Yigal Tumarkin’s [...]
Benno Elkan (1877-1960)
and the Definition of Israeli Art
Talk by Ori Z Soltes, PhD
ONLINE
VA, United States
In honor of Yom Ha'azmaut, Israel's Independence Day, and this year's 75th anniversary of the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, this talk by Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes addresses the question of what defines Israeli art and when it began to take shape. Is it made only by Israelis---then how did Elkan's Menorah become the consummate symbol of Israel when he never lived in the state? Did "Israeli" art begin with or before the birth of the state? How does this relate to the opening of the Bezalel School of Art in 1906--and closing by 1929, only to re-open years later? How does it relate to the question of defining Jewish art? Benno Elkan's stunning work, [...]
Between America and France:
Varian Fry and the Rescue of Artists
Talk by Ori Z Soltes, PhD
ONLINE
VA, United States
With a belated reminder of the proximity of the American and French Independent Day celebrations, this talk focuses on the artists’ Schindler, the American journalist, Varian Fry (1907-1967). Using methods both legal and not, Fry managed to rescue some 2,000 individuals from France between 1940 and 1941. France had become largely swallowed up by Nazi Germany, the “free” parts in Southern France (Vichy France) were not necessarily unreluctant to assist with the deportation of Jews into Nazi-held territories, and the US immigration policies were far from open-handed to those seeking refuge. Who was he and who were some of those he helped—or in some cases, could not help—to escape destruction? Lecture by Ori Z. Soltes, introduced and moderated by [...]
A Painter in Search of an Audience:
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky in Exile
Talk by Ines Schlenker, London
ONLINE
VA, United States
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish family in Vienna in 1906. She trained under the German painter Max Beckmann, a family friend, and embarked on a promising career. When the National Socialists marched into Austria in 1938 Motesiczky fled the country for the Netherlands, eventually settling in England. Her attempts to build a new life in a foreign country were supported by a network of fellow émigrés, among them the painter Oskar Kokoschka and the writer Elias Canetti, with whom she had a long relationship. Lecture by Ines Schlenker, introduced and moderated by Rachel Stern. Image above: Self-Portrait with Red Hat, 1938 (Private Collection) ©️Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust 2023 [...]
The Art of Marc Klionsky:
Shaping a Three-World Condition from Minsk to New York
Lecture by Ori Z Soltes and conversation with daughter Nadia Klionsky
ONLINE
VA, United States
In this program Georgetown University professor and author, Ori Z Soltes, explores Marc Klionsky's life and work, in part through conversation with his daughter, the scholar and artist, Nadia Klionsky. Image above: Marc Klionsky, Dizzie Gillespie: The Man and his Trumpet, 1988. Oil on canvas, 52 x 66 inches. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC. This exciting program features the paintings of Marc Klionsky (1927–2017). Born in the Soviet Union, Klionsky managed to navigate what has been called a “two-world condition”—creating the particularized Soviet Socialist Realist work that was acceptable to the Stalinist and post-Stalinist State while allowing his soul to reveal itself in work that only a very few trusted viewers might see. As [...]
„I’m always on the go…” –
The painter Franz Domscheit / Pranas Domšaitis (1880-1965)
Lecture by Jan Rüttinger, Lüneburg (Germany)
ONLINE
VA, United States
Searching, wandering, not arriving - this is how the person and art of Franz Domscheit/Pranas Domšaitis can be characterized. Born into a German-Lithuanian family as the son of a farmer and innkeeper, it was primarily his Lithuanian origins that interested him. The early landscape and cultural impressions of his homeland, Prussian-Lithuania, at the interface of German and Lithuanian culture, shaped his work throughout his life. Landscape is one of the painter's main themes, who is primarily perceived as an expressionist. Image above: Franz Domscheit, Two Peasant Women, 1930s. Oil on canvas. Copyright National Lithuanian Art Museum. Trained at the Königsberg Art Academy by Ludwig Dettmann, among others, Domscheit then moved out into the world. Berlin, [...]
“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 [...]
Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust
Presentation by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
ONLINE
VA, United States
Lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived, Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916-2009) made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in images and words. Born in Opatów (Apt in Yiddish), Mayer left for Canada in 1934 at the age of 17. Image above: Mayer Kirshenblatt, Synagogue interior, 1991. Acrylic on canvas. Gift of the Kirshenblatt Family. Taube Family Mayer July Art Collection at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw. He had always told his family stories about growing up in Poland before the Holocaust. After his family begged him to paint what he could remember, Mayer finally picked up his brush in 1989 at the [...]
Misunderstandings and Contradictions:
The Art and Life of Jacqueline de Jong (1939-2024)
Presentation by Curator Ariella Wolens, Fort Lauderdale (FL)
ONLINE
VA, United States
In this virtual talk, curator Ariella Wolens presents the late Dutch artist, Situationist, and Pataphysician Jacqueline de Jong (1939-2024). Born into a Jewish family in Enschede, Netherlands, De Jong’s infancy was spent in exile in Switzerland; she and her mother narrowly escaped deportation to Sobibor after being taken in by the resistance. For the rest of her life, she remained universally empathic, and chose art as her own form of resistance. Image above: Jacqueline de Jong, Naufrage en Mediterranée (Border Line), 2020. Oil and nepheline gel on canvas, 35 3/8 x 47 1/4 in / 90 x 120 cm. BPS22, Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut, Belgium. Courtesy the artist’s estate and Ortuzar Projects, New York. © 2024 [...]
