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Ori Z. Soltes

Mar 28, 2022

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter April 2022

2022-03-28T05:26:02-04:00March 28th, 2022|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter April 2022

Dear Friends, When the artist Ben-Zion was born in 1897, his hometown Starokostiantyniv belonged to the Russian Empire. By the time he left for the United States, it belonged to the Ukraine/Poland. Today it again belongs to the Ukraine, and is brutally attacked and destroyed by the Russian army. As the casualties are mounting, we hope for peace, democracy and independence in the Ukraine. Join us on Wednesday, April 6 for a ZOOM LECTURE in our monthly series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression” about the painter, printmaker, sculptor, educator, and poet: Wednesday, April 6, 12:00pm “Ben-Zion (1897-1987): Man of Many Faces” Featuring Tabita Shalem and Ori Z Soltes ) ZOOM EVENT REGISTRATION Ben-Zion, Prophet [...]

Feb 15, 2022

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter February 2022

2022-03-25T18:43:40-04:00February 15th, 2022|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter February 2022

Dear Friends, Our new online exhibition is ready to be launched, and we want to celebrate with you, together with our new partner, the Sheen Center! Please join us: Sunday, February 27, 3:00-4:30pm “Identity and Migration: Artists and Composers who Fled Persecution” The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, New York MORE INFO AND TICKET LINK During the first half of the 20th century, with the rise of Nazism and other fascist movements across most of Europe, the numbers of people migrating were second only to today. Many refugees made the United States their destination. During this event, expert panelists discuss the degree of receptivity of America to incoming refugees, as well as [...]

Jan 21, 2022

Ben-Zion (1897-1987):
Man of Many Faces
Featuring Tabita Shalem and Ori Z Soltes

2022-04-06T15:57:51-04:00January 21st, 2022|, , |Comments Off on Ben-Zion (1897-1987):
Man of Many Faces
Featuring Tabita Shalem and Ori Z Soltes

Born in the Russian Empire, Ben-Zion (Benzion Weinman, 1897-1987) immigrated to New York City between the wars, arriving as a craftsman of words whose cultural Zionist convictions led him to write his poetry in Hebrew. By the early 1930s, the rise of fascism and its particularized manipulations of language drove him to despair of the power of words and to turn to visual art as a medium of expression. Endlessly creative, across the next six decades he produced a flood of drawings and oil paintings and sculptures often made by re-visioning found objects of wood, stone, and iron. As a founding member of the expressionist group, "The Ten"--that included among others a young Mark Rothko--Ben-Zion addressed social, political, and cultural [...]

Jan 12, 2022

Identity, Art and Migration:
Artist Refugees from Nazi Germany and Today
School of Visual Arts, New York

2022-05-02T14:41:57-04:00January 12th, 2022|, |Comments Off on Identity, Art and Migration:
Artist Refugees from Nazi Germany and Today
School of Visual Arts, New York

Note: Attendees must provide proof of vaccination (including booster, if eligible) and advance Eventbrite registration. Presented by BFA Visual & Critical Studies, the SVA Honors Program, and The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized, and Banned Art. In honor of The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art's virtual exhibition “Identity, Art and Migration,” this panel discussion probes historical and all-too contemporary fault lines of persecution, migration, intolerance, cultural complexity and art. Historians, curators and artists come together to discuss the life and work of artists who were persecuted by the German Nazi regime and came to the US during the first half of the 20th century, while also hearing from living artists who are facing the challenge of relocation [...]

Jan 5, 2022

Identity and Migration:
Artists and Composers who Fled Persecution
Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, New York

2022-03-28T19:23:45-04:00January 5th, 2022|, |Comments Off on Identity and Migration:
Artists and Composers who Fled Persecution
Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, New York

Opening remarks by Consul Yasemin Pamuk, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York Distinguished Panelists Ori Z Soltes PhD, Georgetown University in Washington DC Artist Refugees from Nazi Germany in the United States Rebecca Erbelding PhD, Historian and Author in Washington DC US Immigration Policy during the 1930s Refugee Crisis Stephen M Rasche JD, Catholic University in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq Identity in a Time of Forced Displacement: Religious Art and the Iraqi Christian Experience David Stern, German born American Artist in New York NY Immigration and Culture Shock in Times of Globalization Musical Performance (Piano) Carolyn Enger, Steinway Recording Artist: Arnold Schoenberg - Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op. 19 Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: Homesickness Pt. 1 Paul [...]

Oct 14, 2021

CONFERENCE: Identity and the Arts
FEATURING Libby Copeland, Ori Z Soltes
Deborah Tannen and Oksana Yakushko

2022-08-26T05:12:16-04:00October 14th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on CONFERENCE: Identity and the Arts
FEATURING Libby Copeland, Ori Z Soltes
Deborah Tannen and Oksana Yakushko

What is it that defines human identity? DNA? Language? Culture? Landscape? Polity? Or is it a combination of all of these factors? How do the sources of identity make it easy or difficult for individuals who migrate from one location to another—by choice or under duress—not merely to adapt but to become fully comfortable within their new home? In this brief Zoom Conference, an interdisciplinary panel of experts considers how identity is shaped by our genomic make-up; how it is affected by the migration from home to new and different dwelling places; and how, in particular, migrational shifts can affect artists and their creative process. Expert Panel: Libby Copeland, Award-winning journalist and author Ori Z Soltes, Teaching Professor at Georgetown [...]

Oct 7, 2021

CONFERENCE
Artists Migrating to the United States, In and Beyond the Nazi Period
FEATURING Rebecca Erbelding, PhD,
Katya Grokhovsky, and Ori Z Soltes, PhD

2022-08-26T05:07:57-04:00October 7th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on CONFERENCE
Artists Migrating to the United States, In and Beyond the Nazi Period
FEATURING Rebecca Erbelding, PhD,
Katya Grokhovsky, and Ori Z Soltes, PhD

Shaped in accordance with the theme of the current Fritz Ascher Society online project, "Identity, Art and Migration," this brief conference focusses on psychological, historical and art historical aspects of migration—broadly and in particular within the context of artists seeking refuge in the United States during the Holocaust. Expert Panel: Rebecca Erbelding, PhD, USHMM historian in Washington DC Katya Grokhovsky, artist and founder of The Immigrant Artist Biennal in New York NY and Ori Z Soltes, PhD, Teaching Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC These diverse experts will address the specifics of American immigration policies in the first half of the twentieth century and how they particularly affected those seeking refuge from the ravages [...]

May 25, 2021

Alice Lok Cahana –
Beyond ‘The Last Days’:
Familial Continuity, Creativity, and Immortality
With Michael Berenbaum, Michael Z Cahana, Ken Lipper, Ori Z Soltes

2022-02-18T05:43:45-05:00May 25th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on Alice Lok Cahana –
Beyond ‘The Last Days’:
Familial Continuity, Creativity, and Immortality
With Michael Berenbaum, Michael Z Cahana, Ken Lipper, Ori Z Soltes

Join us for a discussion about the Hungarian born Holocaust survivor Alice Lok Cahana, whose life and art are recently recognized in two very different ways: The just remastered, Academy Award®-winning documentary, The Last Days, presented by Steven Spielberg and USC Shoah Foundation and the book Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival: The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana, Ronnie Cahana, and Kitra Cahana, recently published by the Fritz Ascher Society of Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, which investigates three generations of the Cahana family and their art in the context of biological and psychological research, allowing a deep understanding of how trauma and especially the Holocaust experience is remembered. This event investigates the portrayal of Alice Lok Cahana, her life and art, in art book [...]

Mar 30, 2021

Worlds Apart:
Antithetical Jewish Experiences
in the Twentieth Century
A book discussion with Dr. Ori Z Soltes, Washington D.C.

2022-02-18T06:23:24-05:00March 30th, 2021|, |Comments Off on Worlds Apart:
Antithetical Jewish Experiences
in the Twentieth Century
A book discussion with Dr. Ori Z Soltes, Washington D.C.

Conversation with  Dr. Meital Orr and Dr. Ori Z. Soltes Opening remarks Rachel Stern, Fritz Ascher Society forPersecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art Anke Yael Popper, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Organized by the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. This program delves into the following books by Ori Z Soltes: Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival: The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana, Ronnie Cahana, and Kitra Cahana This book reviews the story of a 14-year-old girl from Sarvar, Hungary who was deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis, together with her family. She was the sole survivor of the deportation and transit through three different camps, ended up marrying a rabbi, moving to Houston, Texas, [...]

Feb 26, 2021

2020 – Ori Z Soltes (Ed.)
Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival:
The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana,
Ronnie Cahana and Kitra Cahana

2021-02-26T06:28:48-05:00February 26th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Ori Z Soltes (Ed.)
Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival:
The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana,
Ronnie Cahana and Kitra Cahana

Alice Lok Cahana (1929 - 2017) was a teenager from Sarvar, Hungary who survived four different camps in the last year of the war, losing every member of her extended family, except for her father and including her beloved older sister, Edith—who survived, only to perish from illness immediately after liberation: she entered a hospital, and Alice never saw her again. Alice swore an oath to herself while in the camps that, if she survived, she would become an arOst and draw rainbows out of the ashes of her experience. She not only became an artist, she produced three offspring, and among them her oldest son, Ronnie, intensely responsive to his mother’s history, became a poet. Ronnie’s oldest daughter, Kitra, [...]

Feb 24, 2021

2020 – Rachel Stern (Ed.)
Fritz Ascher. Poesiealbum 357

2021-02-24T05:40:28-05:00February 24th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Rachel Stern (Ed.)
Fritz Ascher. Poesiealbum 357

Ascher composed, wrote, drew and painted: Between 1942 and 45 - three long years - he hid from the persecution of the fascists in the basement of a bombed-out house in Berlin-Grunewald. Immobility, loneliness and hunger as well as the fear of betrayal and discovery, torture and death did not leave him during this time. In this situation he found poignant words for his “unpainted pictures”. He conveys both the intensity of his thought processes and his sensitivity for - and his use of - words as well as their nuances and sound patterns. Above all, he demonstrates the indomitable spirit of the artist Fritz Ascher, which no circumstance, regardless of the medium, can prevent from creating with vehement and [...]

Feb 24, 2021

2020 – Rachel Stern and Julia Diekmann (Ed.)
Der Vereinsamte. Clowns in der Kunst
Fritz Aschers (1893-1970)

2021-02-24T04:27:46-05:00February 24th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Rachel Stern and Julia Diekmann (Ed.)
Der Vereinsamte. Clowns in der Kunst
Fritz Aschers (1893-1970)

For Fritz Ascher, the ambivalence of the clown as an outsider in society was a central motive. Fritz Ascher found his Bajazzo motif during the First World War, a time of political, societal and social upheaval. In her introduction to this catalog, Rachel Stern traces Ascher's world as well as his artistic development and illuminates the further life of the persecuted and ostracized artist through the horrors of the Nazi regime. In the catalog essays, the authors Jutta Götzmann and Ori Z. Soltes highlight Fritz Ascher's Bajazzo works in a focused way. In addition to Ascher's Bajazzo works, the catalog also includes depictions of landscapes created after 1945, which clearly show the personal and artistic break through experiencing persecution, ostracism by [...]

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