Bak FHM 2009

ICONS OF LOSS:
THE ART of SAMUEL BAK
F LORIDA H OLOCAUST M USEUM
Ancient Memory, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-A
Albrecht Dürer |Melencolia I, 1514
Engraving | 12 x 10 "
One of 49 photos that documented the liquidation of theWarsaw ghetto, known as the Stroop Report,
May 16, 1943.
L
ast year, the Florida Holocaust Museum’s
Board Chair, Irene Weiss, our Curator of
Exhibitions and Collections, Erin Blankenship, and I had the great privilege to
visit with Bernie Pucker in his art gallery in Boston
and to see 36 of Samuel Bak’s latest paintings. After
this, we were graciously invited to Bak’s home and
studio where we saw many more paintings in various
states of completion. This was truly a moment in time
for us and one of the most indelible visits we have ever
made anywhere. What we saw were the paintings that
are included in the exhibition Icons of Loss. It is hard to
find the words that can describe these powerful works
and the questions they ask. We, at the Florida Holocaust Museum, will leave this to our visitors.
The Florida Holocaust Museum is grateful to
Samuel Bak for allowing us the honor to share these
compelling works with our community. We have previously hosted other Bak exhibitions and are excited
by this latest body of work. During past exhibitions
of Bak’s works, docent-led tours of school-aged children have been fascinated and educated by his art.
Similarly, Icons of Loss will generate discussions about
the Holocaust. However, Icons of Loss goes further
than the teachings of the Shoah: Samek and the Warsaw Ghetto boy embody children who are victims of
all kinds of trauma and violence whether it is related
to genocide or to domestic scenarios. The angels who
are sadly contemplating the atrocities of the Holocaust
raise many questions about how this and other genocides could happen, about man’s inhumanity to man
and about the role of God during this horrific time
in our history. We are certain that our visitors will be
profoundly impacted.
Our thanks go to Bernie Pucker of the Pucker
Gallery in Boston and our heartfelt gratitude is extended to Samuel Bak who continues to teach us, to
make us question, to make us aware, and to make us
more honorable. We will display these paintings with
respect and love for Samek, for the Warsaw ghetto boy
and for the angels who push us to think about man’s
and God’s presence or absence.
With great humility,
– CAROLYN R. BASS
Executive Director, Florida Holocaust Museum
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Walled In, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-L
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ICONS OF LOSS:
THE ART of SAMUEL BAK
T
hat a single photograph from a Nazi
album and a sixteenth-century engraving by
Albrecht Dürer should give birth to the rich
array of visual representations assembled in
this catalogue is a tribute to the power of images to
stimulate the imagination of the artist.The anxiety and
confusion masking the face of the boy with his hands
raised as he is marched to an uncertain destination cry
out for response, but the obvious option of pity seems
utterly inadequate. Similarly, the gloom suffusing the
face of the angelic figure in Dürer’s engraving titled
Melencolia I (1514) forces the viewer to engage in a
silent dialogue with this apparently disenfranchised
messenger from heaven to uncover the sources of its
distress. Both photo and engraving present us with a
complex legacy and an ambivalent sense of the future,
multiplying the possibilities of interpretation through
variations on their original themes. As the artist reworks the images over and over in a seemingly endless creative outpouring, we are invited to confront
the contradictions they raise about the physical and
spiritual destiny of mankind. We are left searching for
meaning and purpose in the human journey even as we
meet repeated obstacles to achieving that goal.
Samuel Bak is a visual poet of the modern imagination, using familiar images in his dramatic canvases
to cast a relentless light on the dilemmas that continue
to haunt our civilization. Though we may instinctively
feel sympathy for the Jewish boy with his hands raised,
paradoxically the intention of the picture, which was
taken by a German photographer, was to rouse exactly the opposite response—contempt for a people
who represented a threat to the plans for a racially
pure Thousand Year Reich. The photo was one of a
series depicting the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, gathered in a volume and intended as a birthday
present for the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
It was thus meant to celebrate rather than to lament
the extermination of a people, and Bak’s inventive
versions of the vulnerable boy introduce numerous
alternatives to this bizarre objective. Indeed, how to
preserve the memory of the dead, those victimized
not only by mass murder but also by the other forms
of war and violence that have defined recent centuries, remains a major challenge to those who have
lived through them or inherited their legacy of loss.
Since the penalty of forgetting is oblivion, Bak’s variations restore to our consciousness one courier from
among those who have vanished, and this grants to
the boy a kind of immortality that countermands the
German desire to erase his existence. He is an emissary from the grave whom the power of art restores to
a symbolic life, bearing the burdens of his anguish, but
in so many guises that we must struggle to gain access
to the significance of his far from heroic doom.
Our failure to attend to his fate would sentence him
to return to the anonymity of the landscape that originally consumed him. This is one import of Walled In
(BK1242-L), where the outline of the boy is absorbed
by the wall of brick that comprises the only scenario of
the painting as he gradually fades from view, much as
his fellow Jews lost their identity when their physical
bodies were reduced to ash. To be “walled in” is to
allow the self to disappear, whether through choice or
external compulsion, and anyone attuned to how our
social and economic environments seek to pillage our
privacy will understand that such threats need not be
limited to the history of the Holocaust.
The paintings in this series achieve a dynamic dimension by addressing each other—this is not the first
time Bak has used this device—as if they constituted a
pantheon of figures each granted its own pedestal but
circling the viewer so that all are visible at the same
time. The various versions of the boy are in dialogue
with each other in a kind of silent communal debate
about identity; and since we do not know who he is,
his image remains fluid, detached from a personal history. Led by the artist, we are drawn by this strategy
into experiencing how memory and imagination can
rescue death from the void of history and turn absence
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Crossed Out II, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-C
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into palpable presence. Thus in Crossed Out II (BK1242C) the boy is distinct from his background, certainly
not yet a pure “portrait” but at least an individual
awaiting a destiny. In the original photograph the boy
is by himself but also surrounded by a crowd of other
Jews, though the worried expression on his face suggests a dawning recognition that neither community
nor family will be able to help him now. In Crossed Out
II (BK1242-C) he emerges physically from the bricks
of Walled In (BK1242-L), though the monotone of the
entire painting still links his garments to the color
scheme of his brownish surroundings.The punning title
teases us into further speculation, since the boy bears
on his body not one “cross” but two: the “X” that appears in both wood and rope evokes the mystery of his
anonymity and his fate while the slanted crucifix that
encases his body (with doubtless a deliberate irony) reminds us of the earlier execution (and resurrection)
of a less anonymous Jew. Bak associates the lot of the
boy with the idea of Christian crucifixion, but only to
detach it, since nowhere in the original photograph or
in Bak’s various versions of it is there even a hint of redemption.The Christian narrative offers a meaning for
sacrifice which has been passed on from generation to
generation without change, whereas the proper word
for what happens to the boy is murder, not sacrifice,
though as we know some commentators seek to ease
the pain of what lies before him by imposing a hopeful
idiom on the prospect of a meaningless death.
The idea of human sacrifice in connection with
God’s purposes for his chosen people enters Hebrew
scripture through the story of Abraham and Isaac, and
Bak includes several references, again ironic, to this
early narrative, partly as a contrast to the later Christian version. Christian theology chronicles the sacrifice
of God’s “only begotten son” for the sake of redeeming
mankind and making salvation possible. In Genesis the
Lord tests Abraham’s faith by ordering him to sacrifice
his “only son”—presumably his only legitimate one,
since Abraham has also had a son by the handmaiden
Hagar—but as we know God saves the boy at the
last minute and rewards Abraham with the following
promise: “because you have done this thing and have
not held back your son, your only one, I will greatly
bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the
stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of
the sea, and your seed shall take hold of its enemies’
gate.” (Gen. 22: 16-18.) Bak combines some of these
themes in a painting like Holding a Promise (BK1242H), which unites the fate of the Warsaw ghetto boy
with the crucifixion of Jesus (through the stigmata
in the boy’s palms) and the sacrifice of Isaac (through
the bundle of firewood that is hung from his neck),
adding an allusion to Noah’s flood (through the voyage by water and the fragments of rainbow at the top
of the sail) when God reaffirmed his covenant with
his chosen people. If we return now to the original
photograph, we witness the failure of those promises to reach fruition, and the unseaworthiness of the
craft in Holding a Promise (BK1242-H) carries little
reassurance for success. The meaning of a “chosen
people” has been redefined with a savage irony by the
members of the so-called “master race.”
How is the imagination of the viewer to grapple
with this complex interaction among memory, faith,
history, and a doomed future? Instead of multiplying
the seed of Abraham like the “sands of the shore by
the sea” (which are barely present in Holding a Promise,
BK1242-H), the Germans nearly achieved the exact
reverse: in Bak’s painting the boy’s future is literally
behind him, not before him, a voyage upon a watery
surface that contains no hint of a destination and no
sign of divine presence or protection. The works are
not accusatory, however, but simply reminders of the
spiritual dilemma that intrudes on our consciousness
as we recall a biblical narrative that the events of history seem so easily and so thoroughly to have thwarted.
The artist may not be accusatory, but his creations
are free to invade our composure with a starkly unsettling display. In Collective II (BK1204) a horde of
amorphous figures vaguely resembling the outline of
the boy, numbering in the hundreds if not thousands,
approach a crude altar whose contents bring us back
to Crossed Out II (BK1242-C), only this time a stone
barrier separates them from the spot where Abraham
in a test of faith agreed to sacrifice his son, while the
scattered nails and wooden cross are once more a clear
allusion to the Crucifixion. But now we are forced to
concede that these are inappropriate precedents for
what awaits these boys—more than one million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans—and to
confront an atrocity that carries no spiritual implications but requires an entirely new visual vocabulary
for its criminal dimensions to be appreciated. In the
distance the clouds of smoke rising from the earth
invite us to separate history from scripture, since we
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Identity, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-I
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Collective II, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 40" | BK1204
now discarded to be replaced by an association with
Christian martyrs who were burned at the stake in an
earlier era. But they at least had their faith to console
them in the final moments of their dying, whereas for
the boy there is no evidence of ties to the divine, no
voice of God emerging from the dark cloud above
him. If this is to be the fate of the boy from the photograph, to die alone without solace, it is no wonder that
for all its dramatic eloquence the painting continues to
leave us, its audience, distraught and speechless.
The ingenuity of allying the Nazi photo with
Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I is brilliantly confirmed
by the juxtaposition of the two in Elegy (BK1242-E),
where as in Walled In (BK1242-L) the figure of the boy,
which is disintegrating before our eyes, merges with
its inanimate background while ironically the angel
retains its vibrant identity. What is the subject of its
brooding? Is it trying with its broken wooden rule to
measure any remaining ties to the divine amidst the
fragments of shattered faith that surround it? We see
God’s rainbow promise from the story of Noah’s flood,
now reduced to an arc of wooden wreckage, as well as
the stigmata of the Crucifixion on the palms and the
star of David on the boy’s tattered garment, but these
know the destiny awaiting the crowd of nervous but
unsuspecting children. The title Collective II (BK1204)
may be seen as a disarming euphemism for “mass murder,” and the painting may be viewed as a preliminary
assault on those religious traditions that once regarded
“sacrifice” as an entry to divine heritage. The altar and
its trappings provide a retrospective ironic glimpse at
two familiar sacred narratives that are less outmoded
than simply irrelevant to the host of children who are
perhaps clamoring for a connection that the imagination cannot establish. Their future is more allied with
the clouds of smoke that rise from the earth in the
distance, an “ending” that neither Abraham nor Jesus
could have anticipated during the holy rituals with
which they have long been identified.
Bak has a unique ability to make silent images
speak, to force them to interact with each other (and
with us) with a visual eloquence that echoes volumes
despite the absence of speech. In Burning (BK1242-B)
Bak examines a new term in the lexicon of our spiritual legacy, “martyrdom,” as the narrative of sacrifice
culminates in the horrifying image of the boy set afire
while still alive. On the ground lie the knife and the
rope from the original story of the binding of Isaac,
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Figuring Out, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-F
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Elegy (BK1242-E) had already turned to a monumental
guarantees of ties to the divine seem not to inspire the
stone but here retain the vitality of their absent wearer.
angel, who sits fretting about the difficulty (if not the
How do we mourn his disappearance, or the loss of
impossibility) of integrating these disparate images into
thousands of Vilna’s Jews whose charred bodies lie bean integrated portrait of spiritual reality. Is it aware
neath the terrain upon which the angel sits while the
of the sinister cluster in the distance, the icon of the
winds of Ponari blow over the scene without evoking a
Holocaust, the twin chimneys belching smoke into the
token of their prior existence? The painting forces the
sky, their neutral tones in stark contrast to the bright
hues in the foreground? The broken
rule in the angel’s hand is, like Crossed
Out II (BK1242-C), a punning reference to a larger dilemma, since the
fate of the boy, and specifically of the
Jews, means that the spiritual rules
by which civilization has professed
to live, and for which the angel is a
visible emissary, have been broken: if
the various pledges of divine guardianship have led to this unspeakable
atrocity, then only a legacy of bitter
irony remains.
This irony extends to the act of
creation itself, since Bak is engaged in
the composition of decomposition,
of ordering chaos, no easy task when
most audiences expect some form of
organized beauty to emerge from a
canvas. In Winds of Ponari (BK1124)
Bak plunges his saddened angel into
the abyss of the Holocaust, though
the viewer is forced to interact with
history as well as art to follow the
trajectory of its contents. Ponari is
the site outside Vilna where the city’s
Jews, including the artist’s father
and grandparents, were slaughtered
by the Germans and buried in mass
graves, their corpses later exhumed
Winds of Ponari, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1124
and burned so that no traces of the
crime would be left. What role can
viewer’s imagination to do some excavating of its own,
a helmeted angel, immersed in the memory of such
but this has always been the major challenge of the Hoviolence, play in this visual drama other than to sit molocaust, as well as of other atrocities that have recurred
rosely and wonder what spiritual conduit can possibly
repeatedly in the modern era. Why do they exist, and
lead from such death to eternity? The painting is one
where do they fit into our more familiar narratives of
huge question mark, as it were, raising explosive issues
human progress and spiritual goals? The landscape of
(to which the detonator in the lower left-hand corner
Elegy (BK1242-E) is covered with road signs, but their
is a silent trigger) that the imagination is forced to pursurfaces are blank and they offer us directions only to
sue by a host of provocative images. The angel’s lidded
nowhere.
eyes seem to be gazing at the pair of shoes, which in
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In Their Own Image, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-J
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The landscape of Dürer’s Melancolia I is filled with
it, as if to announce the new role of random chance
signs and images too, but his angel contemplates the
in a universe once ruled by exact physical measurevastness rather than the futility of the task that lay bement or controlled spiritual design. Instead of an
fore the inquiring mind. Created at the cusp of the
arched rainbow and a dazzling light in the distance,
Renaissance, the engraving presents the meeting of an
we find some ominous chimneys in the background,
age of faith and an age of scientific discovery not as a
spewing their sinister smoke toward the heavens. The
violent clash or a dismal rupture, but as a vast as-yet
hourglass has been replaced by a clock face, blank exunanswered question about how mankind will resolve
cept for the Roman numeral VI. It still tells partial
any conflicts such an encounter
might bring to our understanding of
the physical and spiritual cosmos we
inhabit. The ladder, intact here but
broken in so many of Bak’s works,
suggests the possibility of rising
to new spiritual heights, while the
polyhedron and sphere, the scales
and hourglass and even the calipers
in the angel’s hand introduce ways
of measuring physical and temporal
reality that would end in the revolutionary space-time theories of an
Einstein. In 1514, a world lay before
Dürer that roused both anxiety and
hope.Today, a world lies behind Bak,
and behind us, demanding a redefinition of both. Neither the progress of
science nor the expectations of faith
can ignore the mayhem of atrocity
that each must bear as part of its
legacy for the future. Bak’s view
is retrospective, and in Appearing
(BK1131) he begins to sum up the
role of the angelic messenger today
who in the beginning called out to
Abraham and said “Do not reach
out your hand against the lad, and
do nothing to him” (Gen. 2: 11-12).
Where was that intervening voice
Appearing, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1131
when the Germans rounded up the
boy from the Warsaw ghetto?
In Appearing (BK1131) fragments of Dürer’s origitime, but it is attached to a brick and stone structure
nal vision remain, but the additions make all the difresembling one of the tablets that Moses brought
ference. The ladder now has nothing to lean against,
down from Mount Sinai, prompting us to recall that
pointing aimlessly toward the sky and held in place by
the sixth commandment in Hebrew scripture is “Lo
a taut rope connected to a support outside the frame
tirtsach,” “Do not murder.” It takes little effort to reof the picture. The polyhedron is there, but the sphere
member that the same numeral evokes the six million
is missing, replaced by a cube in the shape of one memJewish dead of the Holocaust.
ber of a pair of dice. The unused calipers lean against
But Bak is not content to leave us plunged in the
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Burning, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-B
14
gloom of a ruined civilization, our eyes dimmed by the
detritus of its remains. An unexpected image intrudes
on the scene in the shape of a solitary pear, and with
his fondness for punning Bak includes its name in the
title of the painting.Those familiar with his work know
that earlier he devoted a whole series to the single
image of the pear: why has it escaped from its original
context to appear in the terrain of Dürer’s angel, who
is brooding on the fate of the boy from the Warsaw
ghetto? Next to the single die, with its unsettling reference to random chance, we find a dissected pear, as
if someone wished to seek out the mystery of its ripe
beauty amidst all this decay. Its startling visual presence cannot redeem the gloom of its surroundings,
but it constitutes a revelation nevertheless of how art
can contribute to our understanding of history—and
Bak achieves this repeatedly in his visions of organized
chaos—by stressing the paradoxical nature of reality,
which inspires the creative impulse even amidst the
incidence of human pain.
It would be convenient if we could conclude that
Appearing (BK1131) represented the end of our journey, but that is not how this series works. The shift
in consciousness required by each painting as we encounter fresh emphases leaves the viewer burdened
with the task of a never-ending quest for tranquility
and reconciliation, a worthy goal so distant that it may
very well be unreachable. In Figuring Out (BK1242F) the very title defines our principal responsibility
in facing the ongoing conflict between the fate of the
body and the future of the spirit. Here the figure of the
angel is considerably diminished; it has abandoned the
tools of science and turned to a book whose text may
contain some insight into the grim spectacle before
(and behind) it. Behind it stands a cancelled community, its blocked entrances and empty windows raising
the question of where all its residents have gone. But
unlike our encounter with Winds of Ponari (BK1124),
we need not linger here over the answer: the angel is
gazing at a mass grave containing layer upon layer, in
the form of giant wooden cutouts, of the boy from the
Warsaw ghetto, transformed into inanimate material
and dominating the landscape before us. To the left of
the cutouts two hands emerge from the earth in mute
entreaty, but we are given no clue as to the nature or
the object of their appeal. During the past few years
a Catholic priest has been traveling through Ukraine,
having made it his life mission to uncover every last
mass grave in the regions where the Germans buried
the remains of murdered Jews. Populations there must
now “figure out” how this could have happened in the
twentieth century, just as Bak’s angel puzzles over the
atrocity that the earth has disclosed. Like the angel,
they know what they see, but they do not yet “see”
what they “know.” It is a classic example of the challenge of the visual imagination when art is the intermediary between perception and understanding.
I alluded earlier to a time when most of Western
Europe believed in the “controlled spiritual design”
of the universe. Few people of faith doubted the link
between a benevolent Creator and His creation. The
Holocaust has turned that into a problematical issue,
and Bak sums up the dilemma in In Their Own Image
(BK1242-J), a clear but ironic reference to the statement from Genesis (1:22) that “God created the
human in his own image.” Here the Warsaw ghetto boy
has split into two selves, as if his physical and spiritual
destinies were now isolated from each other. Although
the painting seems to offer some kind of triangulated
intimacy between the ancient winged figure above and
the boys below, they are separated by an intervening
curtain, part Jewish prayer shawl and part fragments
of a Star of David. The contemplative angel of Dürer
has now adopted the role of puppeteer, though careful
inspection reveals that no rope is connected to one arm
of the human boy while the flaming torch he carries
is about to sever the other. The empty crucifix to the
right, with the twin smoking chimneys nearby, sums
up one of the most charged implications of these paintings: that a narrative of salvation or divine intervention
in no way consoles or compensates for the narrative of
the murder of the Jewish people. Perhaps a new narrative is needed to answer the question of how the boy
can fulfill his human destiny and his angelic nature at
the same time. If history has moved beyond Genesis,
if these two alter egos are now products of their own
images, divorced from the divine, if life is no longer
a spiritual “performance” derived from some heavenly
origin—In Their Own Image (BK1242-J), with an almost
apocalyptic intensity, knows what to ask, but together
with its fellow paintings it leaves to the eyes and mind
of its audience the difficult duty of building a future for
the human spirit that will tolerate the paradoxical and
ironic vision it conveys.
– LAWRENCE L. LANGER, 2008
Professor of English Emeritus, Simmons College
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Deposition, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-D
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Exits, 1997 | Oil on Canvas | 26 x 39¼" | BK536
One Child Island, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 20" | BK1185
Forever, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 20" | BK1212
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For the Many Davids, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-G
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Study D, 1995 | Oil on Canvas | 21 x 25½" | BK413
HighWind, 2006 | Oil on Canvas | 16 x 12" | BK1180
Cumulative Data, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 30" | BK1172
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Moyshele, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-K
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Passing, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 24" | BK1187
Apprenticeship, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 18 x 18" | BK1167
Labeled, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 20 x 24" | BK1215
Exposure, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18" | BK1175
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Holding a Promise, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-H
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Brothers, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 48 x 24" | BK1203
Targeted II, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 48 x 24" | BK1231
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Procession, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18" | BK1199
Commemoration, 2007 | Oil on Canvas
18 x 14" | BK1205
Open Door, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18" | BK1220
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Gal-ed, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 16 x 20" | BK1213
Star, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 40" | BK1225
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Precarious, 2007 | Oil on Canvas
14 x 11" | BK1222
Landscape with Question Mark, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 20 x 20" | BK1216
March On, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 16 x 20" | BK1217
Torn, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 40" | BK1232
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With Time, 2003-06 | Oil on Canvas | 18 x 32" | BK1240
Reminder, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 24" | BK1223
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Rooftop, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 20" | BK1224
Still Alive, 2003-7 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18" | BK1226
Un-denied, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 18" | BK1233
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Study for Targeted, 2007 | Oil on Canvas
14 x 11" | BK1230
Visitor, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 30 x 36" | BK1236
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Guardian of Sleep, 2006 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1123
Measure of Time, 2006 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1128
With Other Remnants, 2003-06 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1125
TwoViews, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1126
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SAMUEL BAK
B IOGRAPHY
1933
Born 12 August in Vilna, Poland
1940-41 Under Soviet occupation
1941-44 Under German occupation: ghetto, work-camp, refuge
in a monastery
1942
First exhibition of drawings in the ghetto Vilna
1945-48 Displaced Persons camps in Germany; studied painting
in Munich
1948
Emigrated to Israel
1952
Studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem
1953-56 Israeli army service
1956
Received the First Prize of the American-Israeli Cultural
Foundation
1956-59 Lived in Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
1959-93 1959-66 lived in Rome; 1966-74 in Israel; 1974-77
in New York City; 1977-80 in Israel; 1980-84 in Paris;
1984-93 in Switzerland
1993
Moved to Weston, Massachusetts
SELECTED SOLO GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
Galleria Schneider, Rome, Italy – 1959, 1961, 1965, 1966
Alwin Gallery, London, United Kingdom – 1965
L’Angle Aigu, Brussels, Belgium – 1965
Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel – 1966
Roma Gallery, Chicago, IL – 1967
Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA – 1969, 1972, 1975, 1979,
1985, 1987, 1989, 1991
Hadassah “K” Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel – 1971, 1973, 1978
Aberbach Fine Art, New York, NY – 1974, 1975, 1978
Ketterer Gallery, Munich, Germany – 1977
Amstutz Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland – 1978
Goldman Gallery, Haifa, Israel – 1978
Vonderbank Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany – 1978
DeBel Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel – 1978, 1980
Thorens Fine Art, Basel, Switzerland – 1981
Kallenbach Fine Art, Munich, Germany – 1981, 1983, 1984, 1987
Soufer Gallery, New York, NY – 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1997,
2006
Galerie Ludwig Lange, Berlin, Germany – 1987
Galerie Carpentier, Paris, France – 1988
Galerie Marc Richard, Zurich, Switzerland – 1990
Galerie de la Cathedrale, Fribourg, Switzerland – 1991, 1992
Galerie Picpus, Montreux, Switzerland – 1991, 1992
Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA – 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000,
2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010
George Krevsky Fine Art, San Francisco, CA – 1998
Beaver Country Day School, Chestnut Hill, MA – 2004
Finegood Gallery, Milken Jewish Center, Los Angeles, CA – 2004
St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA – 2004
Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, Jewish Community Center, Manhattan,
NY – 2006
SELECTED MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
Bezalel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel – 1963
Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel – 1963
Rose Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA – 1976
Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg, Germany – 1977
Heidelberg Museum, Heidelberg, Germany – 1977
Haifa University, Haifa, Israel – 1978
Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf, Germany – 1978
Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, Germany – 1978
Kunstmuseum, Wiesbaden, Germany – 1979
Stadtgalerie Bamberg, Villa Dessauer, Germany – 1988
Koffler Gallery, Toronto, Canada – 1990
Dürer Museum, Nuremberg, Germany – 1991
Temple Judea Museum, Philadelphia, PA – 1991
Jüdisches Museum, Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Germany – 1993
Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, New York,
NY – 1994
Janice Charach Epstein Museum and Gallery, West Bloomfield,
MI – 1994
National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, Seton Hall
College, Greensburg, PA – 1995
Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL – 1995
B’Nai B’Rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, Washington,
DC – 1997
Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX – 1997
Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH – 1997
Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany – 1998
National Museum of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania – 2001
Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame,
IN – 2001
Florida Holocaust Museum, Saint Petersburg, FL – 2001,
2007, 2009
Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH – 2002
Clark University, Worcester, MA – 2002
Neues Stadtmuseum, Landsberg am Lech, Germany – 2002
92nd Street Y, New York, NY – 2002
Jewish Community Center, Memphis, TN – 2003
University of Scranton, Scranton, PA – 2003
City Hall Gallery, Orlando, FL – 2004
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX – 2004
Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN
– 2004
Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabrueck, Germany – 2006
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH – 2006
Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, Israel – 2006
Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University,
Evanston, IL – 2008
Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa, OK – 2008
Keene State College, Cohen Holocaust Center, Keene, NH –
2008
31
To the Left and to the Right, 2007 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1140
The Angel of Nuremberg, 1986 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 32"
SixWings for One, 2006 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1135
How to Remember, 2006 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30" | BK1134
32
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Tweed Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN
Haifa University, Haifa, Israel
University of Scranton, Scranton, PA
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA
Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Image and Imagination, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel – 1967
Jewish Experience in the Art of the 20th Century, Jewish Museum,
New York, NY – 1975
International Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland – 1979, 1981, 1982, 1984,
1986
Nachbilder, Kunsthalle, Hannover, Germany – 1979
Bilder Sind NichtVerboten, Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf,
Germany – 1982
Still Life, Tel Aviv Museum, Israel – 1984
Chagall to Kitaj, Barbican Art Center, London, United Kingdom
– 1990
Witness and Legacy, Traveling Group Exhibition in North America
– 1995
PUBLICATIONS AND FILMS
Samuel Bak, Paintings of the Last Decade, A. Kaufman and Paul T.
Nagano. Aberbach, New York, 1974.
Samuel Bak, Monuments to Our Dreams, Rolf Kallenbach. Limes
Verlag, Weisbaden & Munich, 1977.
Samuel Bak,The Past Continues, Samuel Bak and Paul T. Nagano.
David R. Godine, Boston, 1988.
Chess as Metaphor:The Art of Samuel Bak, Jean Louis Cornuz. Pucker
Art Publications, Boston & C.A. Olsommer, Montreux, 1991.
Ewiges Licht (Landsberg: A Memoir 1944-1948), Samuel Bak. Jewish
Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, 1996.
Landscapes of Jewish Experience, Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art
Publications, Boston & University Press of New England, Hanover,
1997.
Samuel Bak – Retrospective, Bad Frankenhausen Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany, 1998.
The Game Continues: Chess in the Art of Samuel Bak, Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000.
In A Different Light:The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak,
Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 2001.
The Art of Speaking About the Unspeakable, TV Film by Rob Cooper
and Pucker Art Publications, Boston, 2001.
BetweenWorlds: Paintings and Drawings by Samuel Bak from 1946-2001,
Pucker Art Publications, Boston, 2002.
Painted inWords – A Memoir, Samuel Bak. Pucker Art Publications,
Boston & Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2002.
Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions, TV Film by Christa Singer, Toronto,
Canada, 2003.
New Perceptions of Old Appearances in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence
Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Syracuse University
Press, Syracuse, 2005.
Samuel Bak: Leben danach, Life Thereafter, Eva Atlan and Peter Junk.
Felix Nussbaum Haus & Rasch, Verlag, Bramsche,
Osnabrueck, Germany, 2006.
Return toVilna in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence Langer. Pucker
Art Publications, Boston & Syracuse University Press, Syracuse,
2007.
Remembering Angels: Paintings by Samuel Bak, A Calendar, January 2008June 2009, Danna Nolan Fewell and Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Art
Publications, Boston, 2008.
Representing the Irreparable:The Shoah, the Bible, and
the Art of Samuel Bak, Danna Nolan Fewell, Gary
A. Phillips and Yvonne Sherwood, Eds. Pucker Art
Publications, Boston & Syracuse University Press,
Syracuse, 2008.
Icon of Loss: Recent Paintings by Samuel Bak, Danna
Nolan Fewell and Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Art
Publications, Boston, 2008.
Icon of Loss:The Haunting Child of Samuel Bak, Danna
Nolan Fewell and Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Art
Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press,
Syracuse, 2009.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Aidekman Arts Center, Tufts University, Medford, MA
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Ben Uri Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brookline, MA
Boston Public Library, Boston, MA
Constitutional Court of South Africa, Braamfontein, South Africa
Davis Museum,Wellesley College,Wellesley, MA
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
Dürer House, Nuremberg, Germany
Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabrueck, Germany
Facing History and Ourselves, Boston, MA
Florida Holocaust Museum, Saint Petersburg, FL
Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg, Germany
German Parliament, Bonn, Germany
Hillel Foundation, Washington, DC
Hobart and William Smith College, Geneva, NY
Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, TX
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Imperial War Museum, London, United Kingdom
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Jüdisches Museum, Stadt Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Kunstmuseum, Bamberg, Germany
McMullen Museum, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Municipality of Nuremberg, Nuremberg, Germany
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
National Museum of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania
Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany
Philips–Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
Rose Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa, OK
Simmons College, Boston, MA
Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame University, South
Bend, IN
Springfield Museum of Fine Art, Springfield, MA
Samuel Bak
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
33
Study of A Captive Angel, 1973
Pencil and Watercolor | 12¼ x 9½"
Elegy IV, 1997 | Oil on Canvas | 47½ x 51½" | BK546
Les Adieux, 1973 | Oil on Canvas | 32 x 26"
Dreaming Angel, 1972-74 | Oil on Canvas | 36 x 29"
34
Rainbow, 1989 | Oil on Canvas | 55 x 41"
CREDITS: Design: Leslie Anne Feagley, Editors: Destiny M. Barletta and Justine H. Choi, Photography: Samuel Bak and Keith McWilliams
© 2009, Pucker Gallery
Printed in China by Cross Blue Overseas Printing Company
I CONS OF L OSS :
THE ART of SAM BAK
F LORIDA H OLOCAUST M USEUM
D ATES: 1 November 2009 through 25 April 2010
H OURS: Monday through Sunday, 10 AM to 5 PM
Abraham’s Backyard, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 24 x 48" | BK1201
COVER: Elegy, 2008 | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48" | BK1242-E
FLORIDA
HOLOCAUST
MUSEUM
F LORIDA H OLOCAUST M USEUM
55 Fifth Street South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Phone: 727.820.0100
Fax: 727.821.8435
www.flholocaustmuseum.org
In conjunction with:
P UCKER G ALLERY
171 Newbury Street
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: 617.267.9473
Fax: 617.424.9759
E-mail: [email protected]
ISBN: 0-9700333-5-4