Naomi Samuel, Author at סגולה https://segulamag.com/en/author/naomi-samuel/ מגזין ישראלי להיסטוריה Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:33:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://segulamag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/logo-svg-150x150.png Naomi Samuel, Author at סגולה https://segulamag.com/en/author/naomi-samuel/ 32 32 Portrait of a People | Chilling Testimony https://segulamag.com/en/chilling-testimony-portrait-of-a-people/ Wed, 23 Jul 2025 17:15:14 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=40431 The post Portrait of a People | Chilling Testimony appeared first on סגולה.

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The Slave Trade
Oil on canvas
162 x 229 cm
Paris, circa 1840
Wilberforce House Museum,
Hull, England


François-Auguste Biard
1799–1882

Genre Art
An outgrowth of Realism, genre art focuses on the world as it is, including any typical depiction of everyday scenes

François-Auguste Biard is best known for his vivid paintings of distant lands and cultures. Born in Lyon, France, in 1799, Biard set out to join the clergy but soon discovered his calling as an artist. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he traveled through Italy, Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East, broadening his artistic horizons. However, it was his time in Brazil and North America that shaped some of his most powerful and socially conscious works, particularly those addressing the brutal realities of slavery.

The Slave Trade is one of Biard’s most significant and unsettling creations. On the deck of a slave ship, men, women, and children are chained, their faces etched with fear and despair. Some of these prisoners kneel in submission; others stand rigidly, packed into an oppressive, confined space. Biard’s potent use of light and shadow and his muted, somber palette amplify the sense of suffering, adding emotional weight to the devastating scene.

At the heart of the composition, two white slave traders inspect a young man lying helplessly on his back. Nearby, another man brands a female slave, a chilling act of dehumanization. In the foreground, a weary African slave dealer puffs on a long pipe, while a white trader lounges behind him, indifferent. To the left, other slaves are whipped and loaded onto the ship, their bodies contorted in agony. A white dealer stands in the foreground, his back to the viewer, holding a restraining device, one of the violent tricks of the trade.

In 1862, Biard published Deux années au Brésil (Two Years in Brazil), a travelogue illustrated with 180 engravings. Shedding light on the horrors of slavery, this volume contributed to a growing awareness of the social injustices involved.

Biard’s artistic legacy is thus not just one of adventure and discovery, but of conscience, making The Slave Trade an important and poignant part of his ouevre

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Portrait of a People | Cape Crusader https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-cape-crusader/ Thu, 10 Jul 2025 04:50:07 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=39582 The post Portrait of a People | Cape Crusader appeared first on סגולה.

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Interior
Oil on canvas
295 x 320 cm
Cape Town, c. 1930–35
Iziko South African
National Gallery, Cape Town


Wolf Kibel
1903-1938

 
Expressionism
Twentieth-century movement seeking to convey emotion rather than reality, often through distortion or exaggeration

 

I want to achieve a very high degree of complexity and order without any sacrifice of the feeling of spontaneity […] something like an orchestral effect in paint, in which the various distinct instruments blend together into a richly woven whole.

Wolf Kibel was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, a shtetl near Warsaw in 1903. His father – a cantor and ritual slaughterer who dabbled in cantorial composition, sculpting, and bookbinding – died when he was eight, leaving the family struggling financially. After moving to Warsaw during World War I, Wolf briefly apprenticed as a bookbinder and shoemaker before turning to art.

A British artist commissioned to embellish  the local synagogue recognized Kibel’s talent and introduced him to the Warsaw art scene. Following a wave of postwar antisemitism in Poland, Wolf left for Paris in 1923, but his lack of funds and documentation got him only as far as Vienna. He studied there under portraitist Edmund Pick-Morino, who pointed him toward Palestine.

Ill with malaria and virtually penniless, Kibel arrived in Jerusalem in 1925. Disillusioned by the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts’ Oriental version of Art Nouveau, Wolf moved to Tel Aviv, where he befriended other expressionists and met his future wife, Freda. Frugality limited him to charcoal sketches and watercolors, until a local doctor’s support allowed him to transition to oils. He also formed a lasting friendship with legendary poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik.

After four years, Kibel received British Mandate citizenship. Finally armed with official papers, he joined his brother in Cape Town. Sharing a studio with renowned sculptor Lippy Lipshitz, the artist began his most fruitful period, experimenting with pastel, tempera, chalk, and ink. 

A strict formalist, Kibel refused to explain, date, or sign his work, which would have increased its value. His portraits, still lifes, and interiors were vibrant and emotionally charged, rooted in expressionism but lacking its revolutionary anger. Though his early exhibitions were reviled, Kibel helped introduce expressionist painting in South Africa. Works like Interior, depict black South Africans by means of rich impasto, distorted contours, and bold colors reminiscent of Chaim Soutine. 

Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1937, Kibel died at thirty-four. Only posthumously was his talent fully recognized, as was his impact on South African art in his eight short years in the country. His legacy, including monotype and etching, is one of constant striving to capture something deeply human yet elusive. 

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Portrait of a People | Painting from Life https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-painting-from-life/ Tue, 18 Mar 2025 10:52:31 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=16778 The post Portrait of a People | Painting from Life appeared first on סגולה.

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Self-Portrait
Milan, 1690
121 X 95 cm
Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest


Salomon Adler
1630-1709

 
 
 
Baroque
Ornate, mainly 17th-century style of European architecture, art, and music, encouraged by the Catholic church in response to Protestant austerity. Rich in symbolism and allegory, baroque art uses contrast and movement, deep color, grandeur, and surprise to create a sense of awe 

Although Salomon Adler seems to have been the first well-known Jewish painter, little is known about him. Growing up, he reputedly focused solely on becoming a painter. Born in Danzig, Germany, he moved in his youth to Milan, where he flourished among Italian baroque artists influenced by Rembrandt and his circle. Adler later mentored Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, also known as the monk Fra Galgario, a famous Italian painter.

Two centuries before emancipation, European Jews were still isolated in ghettos. Their contact with the surrounding culture was minimal, especially in the realm of art, a medium that ostensibly violated the biblical prohibition of graven images. Among the first to open the door to liberal Jewish art, Adler rose to prominence.

A superb portraitist, Adler captured his subjects at their best; recreating their faces with uncanny accuracy, he conveyed their emotions in true baroque fashion. In this double self-portrait from 1690, Adler smiles at the viewer in a three-quarter pose. The blinding, white satin of his blouse contrasts sharply with the dark garb of his younger self, who scowls at us from the sidelines like a distorted mirror image. Clearly, the artist was more comfortable with himself and his art in middle age. The disparity between the two likenesses also reflects the gap between art and reality, between memory and the present. Yet even the exceptionally lifelike figure of the mature artist is a mere image, a tribute to Adler’s ability to harness line, form, and color in bringing his canvas to life.

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Portrait of a People | On Stage https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-naomi-samuel/ Thu, 13 Mar 2025 13:40:53 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=16301 The post Portrait of a People | On Stage appeared first on סגולה.

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Eunuch’s Costume for the Ballet Scheherazade
Paris, 1910
27 X 43 cm
Gouache and graphite with gold accents
Metropolitan Museum of Art New York


Léon Bakst
1866-1924

 

Art Nouveau
An international style of art, design, and architecture popular between 1890 and 1910, incorporating decorative elements, particularly flora

 

Léon Bakst, born Leyb Hayyim Samoylovich Rosenberg in Grodno (now Belarus), grew up in a middle-class Jewish family amid intense anti-Semitism. At his first exhibition, when he was just over thirty, he took the name Bakst – short for Bakster, his mother’s family name – as it sounded less Jewish. 

While studying at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Bakst worked as a book illustrator. He then spent several years at Paris’ Julian Academy, focusing on portraiture. Returning to Russia in 1897, he helped found Mir iskusstva (World of Art), a magazine and art movement aiming to expose the Russian public to new artistic trends.

Bakst revolutionized stage and costume design, replacing simple, realistic backdrops with bold color and imagination and dressing performers in puffy, padded garb that exaggerated their every movement. From broad concepts to intricate details, he carefully considered all aspects of the stage, providing myriad sketches and measurements.

In 1902, theater became Bakst’s main occupation. His breakthrough came in 1909 after joining Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris. Scheherazade was the pair’s first major success. Much like the heroine’s riveting tales, Bakst’s rainbow palette and meticulous lines held audiences spellbound. 

The eunuch’s costume in this drawing draws on Oriental elements; the wide belt emphasizes his torso, and his limbs are swathed in bell-shaped sleeves and harem-pants. Zigzags, lozenge motifs, and tear-shaped tassels contrast with the strong oranges and reds of the fabric, with matching jewelry complementing the riot of color and motion. 

During this time, Bakst also taught periodically in St. Petersburg, where his student Marc Chagall later gained fame. 

In 1922, Bakst left the Ballets Russes and concentrated more on interior design. He began visiting the United States and exhibiting all over North America. Léon Bakst died of lung complications in 1924.

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Portrait of a People | Lions on Canvas https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-lions-on-canvas/ Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:21:44 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=15793 The post Portrait of a People | Lions on Canvas appeared first on סגולה.

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Daniel in the Lions’ Den
Oil on canvas, 98 x 152 cm
London, 1872
National Museums, Liverpool


Briton Rivière
1840-1920
Romanticism
An artistic movement aiming to represent everyday life as is

 

London-born Briton Rivière is renowned for his exceptional depictions of animals. His father, William Rivière, was a devout churchgoer as well as an accomplished artist and draftsman who established an art school in Oxford. His son was influenced by the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood’s attempt to revive the artistic style predating the Renaissance, when the technical brilliance of Raphael and Michelangelo revolutionized painting. Rivière frequently exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1858 until his death in 1920.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den, one of Rivière’s most famous works, revisits the biblical story of Daniel, punished for defying Persian king Darius by praying to God, not to him. This powerful rendering of faith and divine protection showcases Rivière’s skill in capturing both human and animal forms with remarkable precision and emotion.

Daniel stands calmly amidst the lions, his serenity contrasting sharply with their ferociousness. Rivière’s attention to detail is evident in the lifelike lions, each with its unique expression and posture, highlighting the artist’s profound understanding of animal anatomy and behavior.

This chapter of Daniel’s life has inspired many, symbolizing the triumph of devotion and perseverance over hardship. The painting reflects Rivière’s blend of religious and animal themes. His interpretation breathes life into the ancient tale, realistically dramatizing divine intervention on behalf of a defenseless believer.

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Portrait of a People | How Shall We Sing the Lord’s Song? https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-jews-mourning-in-exile/ Sun, 09 Mar 2025 16:17:38 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=15484 The post Portrait of a People | How Shall We Sing the Lord’s Song? appeared first on סגולה.

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Jews Mourning in Exile
Oil on canvas
163 x 133 cm
Dusseldorf, 1832
Wallraf-Richartz Museum,
Cologne, Germany


Eduard Bendemann
1811-1889

Romanticism
A reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, this late-18th-century movement in literature, philosophy, and art emphasized the subjective, irrational, emotional, and imaginative, idealizing heroes and artistic genius

Born in Berlin to a prosperous Jewish banking family, German painter Eduard Bendemann was known for his portraits and biblical images. At seventeen, he drew notice for a likeness of his grandmother exhibited in his hometown. His next work, Ruth in the Wheat Fields of Boaz (1830), was similarly appreciated, but the young artist had yet to realize his trademark ability to express emotions. Although Bendemann’s parents had converted to Protestantism before his birth, his paintings reflect a deep connection to his Jewish heritage, mining its tragedies for guidance.

Bendemann taught at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and headed the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. His notable Jews Mourning in Exile, displayed at the 1832 Berlin Academy exhibition, instantly placed him among the leading painters of his time.

The work portrays a family in captivity, their faces etched with resignation and loss. Using subtle brushstrokes and gentle lighting, the artist skillfully communicates surrender, grief, and sorrow. The figures’ postures convey despair, particularly the shackled male, his face turned away from the harp slipping from his hand. The scene encourages reflection on the nation’s calamity.

The river and cityscape in the background contribute to the family’s isolation and the perceived absence of divine intervention. Anti-Semitism wasn’t yet prevalent in Germany, however. A hundred years before Hitler’s rise to power, this painting contemplates tragedies long past.

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Portrait of a People | Mother of Art Therapy https://segulamag.com/en/portrait-of-a-people-mother-of-art-therapy/ Thu, 06 Mar 2025 10:33:23 +0000 https://segulamag.com/?p=14957 The post Portrait of a People | Mother of Art Therapy appeared first on סגולה.

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Interrrogation I
Prague, 1934-38
120 X 180 cm
Oil on wood
Jewish Museum, Prague



Friedl Dicher-Brandeis

1898-1944

 

 

 

 

 

Deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942 with a fifty-kilo weight limit, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis filled her suitcase with art supplies – not just for herself, but to teach the hundreds of traumatized children she expected to meet at her journey’s end.

Born in 1898 to a poor Jewish family in Vienna, Friedl lost her mother at age four, leaving a void she felt keenly for life. Art was always central to her personality. As a pupil at the Weimar Bauhaus under Johannes Itten and Paul Klee, she adopted the Bauhaus design philosophy of simplicity and functionality as her guide in teaching art to children.

The quick spontaneity of her early works, clearly influenced by Itten, gave way after her marriage to cousin Pavel Brandeis in 1934. Living in Prague, the childless Friedl channeled all her maternal warmth into art instruction. She also began experimenting, combining graphic elements such as typed correspondence mounted on wood with intense, expressive brushwork in oils.

Interrogation I is Dicker-Brandeis’ only self-portrait, but ever self-effacing, she turns her back on the observer, seemingly keeping her distance even from herself. Nazi cruelty is reflected in the interrogator’s facial expression, and the psychological impact on the regime’s victims echoes from the blood-red blotches staining the wood.

Conditions in Theresienstadt were appalling, particularly for children. Grappling with life-changing upheaval, they desperately needed direction and purpose, and Friedl realized that art could help deal with their fears. With typical enthusiasm and energy, she taught over six hundred children. Somehow ignoring the transports, overcrowding and darkness of the ghetto, Dicker-Brandeis and her students focused on the positive: landscapes, flowers, and people.

When Friedl’s husband was deported to Auschwitz in late September 1944, she volunteered for the next transport, desperate to reunite with him. She packed five thousand pieces of artwork into the same two suitcases the couple had brought to the ghetto. Then she hid them, to be found after the war. These drawings and their signatures are all that’s left of most of Friedl’s students. Little remains of her own art. Hot-tempered and lacking self-confidence, she destroyed some of her works and left many unsigned.

Only at the end of the 20th century, with the discovery of hundreds of her pictures as well as letters and memoirs from her students, did Friedl Dicker-Brandeis receive her due as both an artist and a pioneer of art therapy. 

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Drawing for Dear Life https://segulamag.com/en/drawing-dear-life/ Thu, 04 Jul 2019 21:00:00 +0000 https://segulamag.com/drawing-dear-life/ Charlotte “Lotte” Salomon was born just over a century ago to a wealthy Berlin family. Her father, a surgeon, pioneered mammography. Her mother committed suicide when Lotte was only nine, though the cause of death was hidden from her. The Nazis came to power when Lotte was sixteen, after which she stopped attending school. Accepted...

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Charlotte “Lotte” Salomon was born just over a century ago to a wealthy Berlin family. Her father, a surgeon, pioneered mammography. Her mother committed suicide when Lotte was only nine, though the cause of death was hidden from her.

The Nazis came to power when Lotte was sixteen, after which she stopped attending school. Accepted nevertheless into the Berlin Academy of Arts, she left two years into her studies. The family fled Germany in 1938, and Lotte was sent to the South of France to live with her grandparents. Her grandmother tried to hang herself during the girl’s stay, and her grandfather subsequently informed her that six family members – including her own mother – had all committed suicide. Yet instead of succumbing to what seemed to be her grim destiny, Salomon declared, “I will live for them all!” Within two years (1941–2), she’d created over 730 notebook-size gouache paintings.

When her mother insinuated that she wanted to become an angel, Lotte asked her to leave for her a letter on the window sill. She was waiting for the letter the rest of her life
When her mother insinuated that she wanted to become an angel, Lotte asked her to leave for her a letter on the window sill. She was waiting for the letter the rest of her life 'South of France 1941-2'. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam

Working feverishly, Lotte chronicled the milestones of her life – her mother’s death, studying art in the shadow of the Third Reich, her relationship with her grandparents – changing her family’s names in her accompanying text and employing a strong fantasy element. Salomon started out using exquisitely bright colors, but in her final paintings she moved into darker, more morbid, almost violent shades, as if awaiting her impending fate. Humming as she worked, she tinkered with the paintings, rearranged them, added transparent overlays, and even suggested music to heighten their drama.

The painting shown here depicts a fictional Charlotte in bed with her sick mother, who tells her that soon she (the mother) will go to Heaven, become an angel, and leave her daughter a letter on her windowsill, raving about the after-world. Young Lotte is shown waiting for the letter at the window from which her mother jumped to her death. The text overlay asserts that “in Heaven, everything is much more beautiful than here on earth.”

Salomon wed in September 1943, but her marriage registration revealed her whereabouts to the Nazi authorities. As they intensified their search for Jews in southern France, she entrusted her drawings to friend Ottilie Moore. “Keep this safe,” the artist implored her. “It’s my whole life”. Arrested soon afterward with her husband, the pregnant Charlotte was gassed on arrival in Auschwitz.

Salomon’s father survived the war and subsequently received a package of nearly 1,700 of his daughter’s works, many of which can be found today in the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam.

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Make Art, Not War https://segulamag.com/en/make-art-not-war/ Sun, 02 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000 https://segulamag.com/make-art-not-war/ British prime minister Winston Churchill is famed for his inspiring speeches and historical works. But he was also an exceptional artist. Churchill's Jerusalem

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Painting as Oxygen

Churchill's painting of Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 1921, oil on canvas,  Private collection, London
Churchill’s painting of Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 1921, oil on canvas, Private collection, London Churchill Heritage Ltd

Best known as the British prime minister who defeated Hitler, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill is famed for his inspiring speeches (“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”) and historical works. But he was also an exceptional artist. For Churchill, painting was more than a hobby; it was oxygen.

Happy are the painters, for they shall never be lonely: light and colour; peace and hope will keep them company to the end of the day. (Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime [McGraw-Hill, 1950], p. 13)

Having resigned from government in 1915 after being blamed for the debacle of the Allied retreat from Gallipoli during World War I, Churchill was at his lowest ebb. Visiting his brother, he came across his sister-in-law painting in the garden and accepted her offer to try his hand. It was love at first sight.

Churchill painted mainly landscapes and sea scenes, usually in oils. Neighbors Sir John and Hazel Lavery, both prominent artists, advised him, and painter friend Walter Richard Sickert helped him overcome his lack of formal training, especially in portraiture. Sickert taught Winston how to convey proportionality and to use photographs to continue a work in progress.

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Divide and Paint

The results were impressive. Churchill first exhibited in Paris, in 1919 and 1921, under the pseudonym Charles Morin. And two of his paintings, attributed to “David Winter,” were accepted by London’s Royal Academy of Arts in the late 1940s as part of its permanent collection.

Like statesmanship, painting required Churchill’s intense concentration, subsuming a web of intricate details into a single, fixed purpose. Art provided the perfect retreat from the stress of politics.

Churchill completed close to six hundred works, mostly in England and France. Only one was painted in Jerusalem, during a short break after the frenzied Cairo meetings pursuant to the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1921, which divided the Middle East among the colonial powers. As usual, he had his easel with him.

A lifelong pro-Zionist and admirer of the fledgling Jewish communities in the Holy Land, Churchill spent much of his stay in Jerusalem painting the magnificent vistas, including this view from Mount Scopus. The elaborate dusky skies and crimson sunset lend the roofs a peculiar tranquility, projecting the inner peace of the artist at work.

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Painter of Jerusalem https://segulamag.com/en/painter-of-jerusalem/ Mon, 16 Apr 2018 21:00:00 +0000 https://segulamag.com/painter-of-jerusalem/ An artist is more popular with the public than with critics and peers: meet Ludwig Blum | Naomi Samuel

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Ludwig Blum

Often an artist is more popular with the public than with critics and peers. Ludwig Blum was one such. Born in Moravia (now the Czech Republic) to an Orthodox Jewish family, young Blum excelled at gymnastics and was active in the Maccabi sports club in Prague. In 1913, he was drafted into the Austrian army, serving in World War I. Blum began studying art only after the war, first in Prague and then throughout Europe.

Ludwig Blum, 1891–1974 Impressionism
Ludwig Blum, 1891–1974 Impressionism --

A fervent Zionist, Blum helped set up the World Maccabi movement after the signing of the Balfour Declaration. Settling in Jerusalem in 1923, he did his best to adapt to the local art scene, dominated by the Bezalel school and its fusion of Orientalist and Art Nouveau styles. Artists such as Reuben Rubin and Abel Pann were determined to create a unique Palestinian Jewish visual culture. Blum’s art, however, was deeply rooted in both Impressionism and Expressionism. His paintings of the Holy Land sold best in Europe.

Via Dolorosa, oil on canvas, 1947/ Ludwig Blum
Via Dolorosa, oil on canvas, 1947/ Ludwig Blum Paintings courtesy of the artist’s family

Blum’s works reflect his delight in the deceptively simple pleasure of seeing. One series, Land of Light and Promise, features exceptionally delicate panoramas of Jerusalem’s Old City as well as desert landscapes, depictions of rural life, street scenes, and holy sites throughout the Middle East. He became so famous for his lyrical renderings of the Holy City that he was sometimes dubbed “Painter of Jerusalem.”

His most ambitious work, nearly eight meters in width, was Jerusalem, View from the Mount of Olives. Commissioned in 1936 for the Museum of Biblical Antiquities in Blum’s native Brno, Czechoslovakia, the painting is currently housed in the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas there. A smaller version, “only” five meters wide, hangs in the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.

View from the Mount of Olives, oil on canvas, 1936/ Ludwig Blum
View from the Mount of Olives, oil on canvas, 1936/ Ludwig Blum Paintings courtesy of the artist’s family

Jerusalem in Snow (1927) captures the Holy City in a singular way. Painted outdoors after a snowstorm, this clean, white landscape exploits snow’s tendency to blur distinctions. Many artists have portrayed the Old City, but almost none in snow. Blum’s unrelenting artist’s eye and sense of poetry here create one of his most extraordinary images. The city seems to float above an alien world, barely tethered to the rest of the country. That splendid isolation sums up a great deal about Jerusalem.

Jerusalem in Snow/ Ludwig Blum
Jerusalem in Snow/ Ludwig Blum Paintings courtesy of the artist’s family

Blum and his family became part of Jerusalem society, and his son Eli fought in the first Palmah unit. He was tragically killed in a 1946 sabotage operation while blowing up a bridge in the Galilee, one of eleven targeted that night. After his son’s death, the artist painted soldiers, battlefields, and the ravages of war almost obsessively.

Blum remained in the capital throughout the War of Independence, although his studio in the Talitha Kumi building on Ben Yehuda Street was heavily damaged in the Jordanian bombing of Jerusalem. Continuing to live and paint in the city after the establishment of the State of Israel, he was appointed a Jerusalem Fellow in 1968.

Jaffa Gate, oil on canvas, 1929/ Ludwig Blum
Jaffa Gate, oil on canvas, 1929/ Ludwig Blum Paintings courtesy of the artist’s family

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Victor Brauner – Inspired by Cards https://segulamag.com/en/%d7%95%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%98%d7%95%d7%a8-%d7%91%d7%a8%d7%90%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%a8-%d7%9c%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a8-%d7%9e%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%9a-%d7%a7%d7%9c%d7%a4%d7%99%d7%9d-2/ Sun, 03 Sep 2017 21:00:00 +0000 https://segulamag.com/%d7%95%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%98%d7%95%d7%a8-%d7%91%d7%a8%d7%90%d7%95%d7%a0%d7%a8-%d7%9c%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a8-%d7%9e%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%9a-%d7%a7%d7%9c%d7%a4%d7%99%d7%9d-2/ His scandalous attitude caused his expulsion from the School of Fine Arts, but did not stop Victor Brauner from creating imaginative surrealistic paintings

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Jewish Juggler

Victor Brauner was an iconic Romanian Jewish painter and sculptor. As a young artist, he was expelled from the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, where his work was considered scandalous. Brauner embraced Dadaism in 1929, settling in Paris in 1930, where he was introduced to the Surrealists. Unable to captivate the Parisian art scene, he slunk home to Bucharest in 1935.

World War II left Brauner isolated in southern France, though he maintained contact with other Surrealists in Marseilles. After the Nazis invaded France, he took refuge in Switzerland. Lacking painting materials, the artist began experimenting by mixing hot wax with pigments (encaustic painting) and also developed a graffito (scratching) technique. He returned to Paris at war’s end, in 1945.

Brauner’s postwar art borrows heavily from tarot cards, which figure in many other Surrealist works. His Surrealist uses the juggler card as a self-portrait. The juggler embodies artistic creativity, the capacity to utilize intelligence, wit, and initiative to invent one’s own personality, playing with the future as the juggler twirls his baton.

The Surrealist
Artist Victor Brauner (1903–1966)
Created Paris, 1947
Media Oil on canvas
Location Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice
Style Surrealism Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

Glowing across the juggler’s oversized, eccentric hairdo, the letter alef and the infinity symbol represent both beginning and end. Other motifs signify the four elements – fire, water, earth, and air – conveying some metaphysical, enigmatic message.

Brauner died in Paris in 1966 after a protracted illness. He chose his own epitaph: “Painting is life, the real life, my life.”

Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner

 

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