Traces of a Jewish Artist

Traces of a Jewish Artist
Author: Kerry Wallach
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2024-03-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0271098244

Graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and cartoonist Rahel Szalit (1888–1942) was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. But after she was arrested by the French police and then murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz, she was all but lost to history, and most of her paintings have been destroyed or gone missing. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, this biography recovers Szalit’s life and presents a stunning collection of her art. Szalit was a sought-after artist. Highly regarded by art historians and critics of her day, she made a name for herself with soulful, sometimes humorous illustrations of Jewish and world literature by Sholem Aleichem, Heinrich Heine, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, and others. She published her work in the mainstream German and Jewish press, and she ran in artists’ and queer circles in Weimar Berlin and in 1930s Paris. Szalit’s fascinating life demonstrates how women artists gained access to Jewish and avant-garde movements by experimenting with different media and genres. This engaging and deeply moving biography explores the life, work, and cultural contexts of an exceptional Jewish woman artist. Complementing studies such as Michael Brenner’s The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, this book brings Rahel Szalit into the larger conversation about Jewish artists, Expressionism, and modern art.

Passing Illusions

Passing Illusions
Author: Kerry Wallach
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2017-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472053574

Challenges the notion that Weimar Jews sought to be invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans by "passing" as non-Jews

The House of Fragile Things

The House of Fragile Things
Author: James McAuley
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300252544

A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers—McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.

Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-century America

Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-century America
Author: Samantha Baskind
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Art, American
ISBN: 9780271059839

Explores the works of five major American Jewish artists: Jack Levine, George Segal, Audrey Flack, Larry Rivers, and R. B. Kitaj. Focuses on the use of imagery influenced by the Bible.

Art of Estrangement

Art of Estrangement
Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271053836

"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.

Women of the Book

Women of the Book
Author: Judith A. Hoffberg
Publisher: [Boca Raton, Fla.] : Friends of the Libraries, FAU Library
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2001
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Belonging and Betrayal

Belonging and Betrayal
Author: Charles Dellheim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781684580569

The story of dealers of Old Masters, champions of modern art, and victims of Nazi plunder. In Belonging and Betrayal, distinguished historian Charles Dellheim tells the story of the rise and fall of a small number of Jews, individuals, and families, who were merchants and connoisseurs as well as dealers and collectors of fine art. They competed and cooperated at various times and operated more often than not on both sides of the Atlantic. The protagonists of this story took a leading part in the critical transformations that shook the art world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the great migration of Old Master paintings from Europe to the United States; and the eventual triumph of modern art as Jewish dealers became the modernists' champions. The story begins with the entry of Jewish dealers into the art world in the late nineteenth century and ends with the Nazi plunder of their collections. Along the way, the narrative takes us into a variety of European capitals--Paris, London, Berlin, and Vienna--as well as American cities, notably Boston and New York. It sets the protagonists' stories against the backdrop of the broader changes that affected their fortunes and transformed art and society: The gradual opening of high culture, the dynamics of assimilation, acculturation, and antisemitism, the decline of the landed classes, the ascent of a new capitalist elite, the cultural impact of the "Great War," and the Nazi war against the Jews.

Afterlives

Afterlives
Author: Darsie Alexander
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780300250701

A strikingly original exploration of the profound impact of World War II on how we understand the art that survived it By the end of World War II an estimated one million artworks and 2.5 million books had been seized from their owners by Nazi forces; many were destroyed. The artworks and cultural artifacts that survived have traumatic, layered histories. This book traces the biographies of these objects--including paintings, sculpture, and Judaica--their rescue in the aftermath of the war, and their afterlives in museums and private collections and in our cultural understanding. In examining how this history affects the way we view these works, scholars discuss the moral and aesthetic implications of maintaining the association between the works and their place within the brutality of the Holocaust--or, conversely, the implications of ignoring this history. Afterlives offers a thought-provoking investigation of the unique ability of art and artifacts to bear witness to historical events. With rarely seen archival photographs and with contributions by the contemporary artists Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guez, and Lisa Oppenheim, this catalogue illuminates the study of a difficult and still-urgent subject, with many parallels to today's crises of art in war.