Lenbachhaus 1948: Exhibition of Jewish artists

Art saved their lives

Art saved the life of the Jewish painter H. Szylis. When he was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, word got around among the guards that he could draw very characteristic portraits. He was soon allowed to not only to draw portraits of the heads of SS members from nature, but also their wives and daughters from photographs; the particularly “sentimental” even had the idea of having him copy classical pictures from reproductions. Böcklin’s Island of the Dead and Self-Portrait with Death were popular: Dürer’s self-portrait was earmarked for the casino. Even Himmler’s brother-in-law ordered a painting of [Lodz] Ghetto fenced in with barbed wire.

Without ressentiment or irony, the painter―who later narrowly escaped death in Dachau―tells the story in front of his pictures of gloomy Eastern oppression, executed this time from memory in charcoal and pastel crayon. His younger fellow sufferer Pinkus Schwarz succeeds in capturing the ghetto and Auschwitz experience no less directly, in a thoroughly non-realistic style. The influence of modern French art is unmistakable; some “reminiscences” nevertheless have a personal, harrowing yet liberating form in earthy colors; this great talent is so prolific in a number of ways that it also harbors the danger of shifting into the conventional poster-like in particular.

For others, the colorful reflected glory of the world became a comfort in their time of suffering. Prof. Maximilian Feuering’s flower pictures glow with an intrinsic, harmonious splendor. Ewa Brzezinska likes to emphasize the “fabric” in the bright tappestry of her landscape watercolors and approaches―not uncritically―the decoratively abstract.

This is how four Jewish painters are presented in an exhibition organized by the Cultural Office of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the rooms of the Municipal Gallery, with their different approaches and temperaments. What they have in common, however, is their salvation through their art from the utmost distress to which their lives and souls were subjected.

Pz.

Exhibition of Jewish Artists

Of the five Jewish artists who are exhibiting their work at the Städtische Galerie, Maximilian Feuerring is the most mature: a strong, disciplined talent who sees the world of appearances in colors. His watercolors, layered gouaches, his sheets in tempera and colored ink have unmistakably been influenced by an intensive study of Parisian painting, especially that of Matisse and Bonnard. This painter has entrusted himself to a good school without losing his independence. He shows landscapes with Upper Bavarian motifs of a highly cultivated, gossamery colorfulness, still lifes, portraits, nudes, interiors with a clear, colorful composition. Admittedly, he does not always escape the danger of slipping into a Bengali colorfulness. In his colored compositions, Hirsch Szylis is little [?] He narrates scenes of the bleak ghetto life of Lodz, naive in his artistry and expressive, with the drastic of an autodidact gripped by the motif. The young Pinkus Schwarz, insecurely searching, inspired in many ways and overly active in many ways, still lacks the discipline necessary for greater achievement, not talent however, which is noticeable everywhere, as in his stage design models for performances in DP camps. Ewa Brzezinska arrives at the happiest solutions where she can do justice to her feeling for the decorative. Leon Kraicer’s sculptural works show talent in the characterization of mimicry and movement, retaining on the whole however an illustrative naturalism.

H.E.