Rachel Stern2023-05-03T14:36:21-04:00May 3rd, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Histories of Germany’s Bauhaus art and design school (1919–33) usually position it exclusively as a movement in exile as soon as the Nazis took power in 1933. In fact, the vast majority of its members remained and embraced Nazism, survived it, or became its victims. In this talk, art historian Elizabeth Otto scrutinizes traces of the work and lives of Bauhäusler who, through their imprisonment and often deaths in the concentration-camp system, have largely been lost to the history of the Bauhaus movement. Using archival sources—often scant materials preserved by family members and friends, including documents, photographs, and private memoirs—she reconstructs aspects of these artists’ work and lives and considers how to write the histories that Nazi violence has taken [...]
Rachel Stern2023-04-26T13:54:56-04:00April 26th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
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, [...]
Rachel Stern2023-04-17T19:19:05-04:00April 17th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
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 [...]
Rachel Stern2023-03-15T14:04:18-04:00March 15th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
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 [...]
Rachel Stern2023-02-15T19:21:41-05:00February 15th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Inspired by a visit to his birth country in the 1990s, American artist Philip Orenstein (b. 1938) created seven murals about the French complicity in the persecution of Jews in France during World War II. At that time, the French government had not admitted it had taken part in the persecution. The murals have been shown in various galleries and museums in the United States. In 1999, William Zimmer wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Orenstein’s method involves combining poignancy with the determination that the viewers not miss the story. To this end, Mr. Orenstein skillfully, and wittily, employs the look of today’s splashy graffiti.” The works have not yet been shown in France. Born in Paris, France, in 1938, [...]
Rachel Stern2023-02-06T07:18:23-05:00February 1st, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
The Kunstmuseum Basel’s department of classic modernism houses one of the most prestigious collections of its kind. It was in fact assembled at a comparatively late date. In the summer of 1939 — shortly before the outbreak of World War II — Georg Schmidt (1896–1966), the museum’s director at the time, managed to acquire twenty-one avant-garde masterpieces all at once. The works were among those denounced in 1937 by Nazi cultural policy as “degenerate” and forcibly removed from German museums. The Third Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda correctly assumed that a portion of such works would find buyers abroad and bring in foreign currency. In this way certain artworks deemed “internationally exploitable” reached the art market via various channels. [...]
Rachel Stern2023-02-01T06:15:59-05:00January 25th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In honor of UN Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hilary Helstein, director of the award-winning documentary "As Seen Through These Eyes" spoke with Rachel Stern, director and CEO of the Fritz Ascher Society New York, about the making of her documentary. As poet Maya Angelou narrates this powerful documentary, she reveals the story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit, enduring against unimaginable odds. Featuring interviews with Simon Wiesenthal as he talks about his art, never before appearing in a film, [...]
Rachel Stern2021-06-14T18:07:03-04:00June 14th, 2021|Events, Past Events|
THIS EVENT WAS NOT RECORDED. After surviving the Holocaust, Shoshana Comet (1923-2012) could not speak about her experiences. One day in 1968, Shoshana announced that she had joined a course on weaving. At home, she wove five 6-foot high tapestries which served as a means to unshackle herself from her holocaust trauma. Shoshana then trained to become a psychotherapist, working with Holocaust survivors and their families who had been scarred by their experience. (See Ted Comet, Transforming Trauma Into Creative Energy, March 10, 2014) Ted is giving tours of Shoshana's tapestries to diverse groups, including students from Germany. For the past year, these tours are virtual, developed and conducted by DOROT, an innovative leader in designing intergenerational programs, supportive services and opportunities that enhance the [...]
Rachel Stern2018-11-26T05:40:08-05:00September 4th, 2018|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, I know, this summer I seem obsessed with Fritz Ascher’s I know, this summer I seem obsessed with Fritz Ascher’s Dancers from 1921. But there is one more thought about the drawing that I want to share. Fritz Ascher, Dancers, 1921. Private collection. Photo Malcolm Varon ©2018 Bianca Stock Fritz Ascher, Dancers, 1921. Private collection. Photo Malcolm Varon ©2018 Bianca Stock When the drawing was created,“Freikörperkultur” (FKK) or “free body culture” had become popular in Germany. Founded in 1898 in Essen, Germany, the nudist culture was about celebrating the body unencumbered by clothes, in nature and sunlight. Many of the naturists came from the Wandervogel movement, the pre-eminent German youth movement, founded to escape the repressive and [...]
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:21:16-05:00October 25th, 2017|Select Press Coverage|
Bilder eines Vereinsamten Das Museum Gunzenhauser erinnert an den kaum bekannten jüdischen Künstler Fritz Ascher: Dessen expressionistisch-symbolistische Bilder sind eine echte Wiederentdeckung wert, denn zwei Weltkriege konnten seine künstlerische Kraft nur schwächen - aber nicht brechen Matthias Zwarg CHEMNITZ - Es gibt ein Porträt von Fritz Ascher aus dem Jahr 1912, gemalt von seinem Freund Eduard Bischoff. Es zeigt einen optimistischen jungen Mann: Anzug, rote Krawatte, frech den Kopf auf den Arm gestützt, lächelt er froh und selbstbewusst dem Betrachter entgegen. Und es gibt ein Selbstporträt von Fritz Ascher aus dem Jahr 1953: Weiss und grau über schwarzer Tusche, Aquarell-Farbtupfer wie Wunden in dem Gesicht, in das so etwas wie die Suche nach Fassung nach dem Entsetzen eingeschrieben ist. Dazwischen [...]
Newsletter #6, May 2016
Rachel Stern2018-12-04T12:44:40-05:00May 19th, 2016|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, As we are drawn to spend more time outside in the lovely spring weather, this newsletter is all about Fritz Ascher’s late landscapes that became the focus of his work after 1945. Trees, late 1950s ©Bianca Stock, Munich Frank Auerbach, Mornington Crescent Looking South, 1997 ©Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art In dozens and dozens of intense paintings and gouaches intoxicated with color, Ascher turns to nature painting in the broadest sense. Among them are landscapes, woodland scenes, portraits of individual trees, groups of trees, all inspired by hours of walking in the nearby Grunewald. In his catalogue essay accompanying the upcoming Fritz Ascher retrospective, Eckhart Gillen relates the aesthetic practice and behavior of the two painters Fritz [...]
