Felix Nussbaum | Artist of the Holocaust

"If I perish, don’t let my works die; show them to the public", Felix Nussbaum begged a friend before he was deported to Auschwitz.

Felix Nussbaum painted multiple self-portraits during the Holocaust, giving us a unique artistic insight into the experience of one man, among the millions that were murdered.

Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944) was a German-Jewish surrealist painter.

Nussbaum's paintings, including Self Portrait with Jewish Identity Card (1943) and Triumph of Death (1944), explore his experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust.

Felix Nussbaum | Self Portrait with Jewish Identity Card / Autoritratto con passaporto ebraico, 1943

His work is usually associated with the New Objectivity movement, and was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Rousseau and Vincent van Gogh.

He took refuge in Belgium after the Nazi rise to power, but was deported to Auschwitz along with his wife Felka Platek only a few months before the British liberation of Brussels on 3 September 1944.

Marc Chagall's Colors

An early modernist, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was associated with the École de Paris as well as several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism".

Marc Chagall: "Lo stile non è importante. Esprimersi lo è"

• "Color is everything. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration".

• "Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man's hope in love. In life, just as on the artist's palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love".

Florine Stettheimer | Rococo-inspired modernist painter

Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) was an American modernist painter, feminist, theatrical designer, poet and salonnière.

Stettheimer developed a feminine, theatrical painting style depicting her friends, family, and experiences in New York City.

She made the first feminist nude self-portrait and paintings depicting controversies of race and sexual preference.

She and her sisters hosted a salon that attracted members of the avant-garde.

Lotte Laserstein | Figurative painter

Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993) was a German-Swedish painter.

She was an artist of figurative paintings in Germany's Weimar Republic.

The National Socialist regime and its anti-Semitism forced her to leave Germany in 1937 and to emigrate to Sweden.

In Sweden, she continued to work as a portraitist and painter of landscapes until her death.

The paintings she created during the 1920s and 1930s fit into the movement of New Objectivity in Germany.

Eva Bonnier (1857-1909)

Eva Fredrika Bonnier (1857-1909) was a Swedish painter and philanthropist.

Born in Stockholm as the daughter of publisher Albert Bonnier and a member of a leading family of publishers, Bonnier studied painting with August Malmström and became a student in the women's section of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1878.

Together with her friend and co-student Hanna Hirsch, she traveled to Paris in 1883, staying there until 1889.

Isaac Snowman | Genre painter

Isaac Snowman (1873-1947) was an Anglo-Jewish artist who made Jewish cultural themes his subject.

Early life

He was educated at the City of London School. In 1890 he entered the Royal Academy School, where he gained a free medal, and afterward a scholarship in the Institution of British Artists.

He showed his interest in Jewish matters by his drawings A Difficult Passage in the Talmud and The Blessing of Sabbath Lights, as well as by his Early Morning Prayer in the Synagogue.

Lettere d'amore di Franz Kafka a Felice Bauer

"L'amore non è un problema, come non lo è un veicolo: problematici sono soltanto il conducente, i viaggiatori e la strada"

- Franz Kafka.

Kafka rifiutava la carnalità e la sua stessa corporeità. Egli stesso racconta il disgusto per il proprio corpo quando il padre accompagnandolo in piscina lo costringeva a denudarsi.

Lo stesso senso di ripugnanza egli lo esprimeva nei confronti dell'amore sessuale che descrive ad esempio ne "Il castello" come qualcosa di sporco e che riduceva l'uomo all'animalità.

Nella sua vita Kafka ebbe tre relazioni, maggiormente epistolari.

La più significativa rimase la relazione con la Felice Bauer (1887-1960), una steno-dattilografa prussiana d'origini ebraiche, la donna che liberò la forza creatrice di Kafka.

Franz Kafka, lo scrittore boemo, tra i maggiori del Novecento, incontrò Felice Bauer a Praga, in casa dell'amico Max Brod, la sera del 13 agosto del 1912.

Lui aveva 29 anni e lei 25, arrivata a Praga per lavoro.

Franz Kafka | Domenica saremo insieme..

Nella primavera del 1919, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) - una delle maggiori figure della letteratura del XX secolo ed importante esponente del modernismo e del realismo magico europeo - conosce la giornalista, scrittrice e traduttrice Ceca Milena Jesenská (Praga, 10 agosto 1896 - Campo di concentramento di Ravensbrück, 17 maggio 1944), moglie del critico e scrittore ebreo Ernst Pollak (1886-1947), residente a Vienna, in cui si era dovuta trasferire dopo essere stata allontanata dalla famiglia che non le aveva perdonato il matrimonio con un ebreo.

Poiché gli introiti di Pollak non erano sufficienti per un'adeguata vita della coppia a Vienna, Milena contribuì lavorando come traduttrice.

Nel 1919 si imbatté in un breve racconto dello scrittore praghese Franz Kafka, e gli scrisse per ottenere l'autorizzazione alla traduzione dal tedesco al ceco. Da quel momento cominciò una intensa corrispondenza tra i due.

Franz Kafka e Milena Jesenska

Marc Chagall | Stained glass windows

One of Chagall's major contributions to art has been his work with stained glass. This medium allowed him further to express his desire to create intense and fresh colors and had the added benefit of natural light and refraction interacting and constantly changing: everything from the position where the viewer stood to the weather outside would alter the visual effect (though this is not the case with his Hadassah windows).

It was not until 1956, when he was nearly 70 years of age, that he designed windows for the church at Assy, his first major project. Then, from 1958-1960, he created windows for Metz Cathedral.

Marc Chagall | Paris through my window, 1913

After Marc Chagall moved to Paris from Russia in 1910, his paintings quickly came to reflect the latest avant-garde styles.

In "Paris Through the Window", Chagall’s debt to the Orphic Cubism of his colleague Robert Delaunay is clear in the semitransparent overlapping planes of vivid color in the sky above the city.

The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the cityscape, was also a frequent subject in Delaunay’s work. For both artists it served as a metaphor for Paris and perhaps modernity itself.

Chagall’s parachutist might also refer to contemporary experience, since the first successful jump occurred in 1912. Other motifs suggest the artist’s native Vitebsk.

Marc Chagall | Paris through my window, 1913 | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

Marc Chagall | Expressionist /Cubist painter

Marc Chagall, (born July 7, 1887, Vitebsk, Belorussia, Russian Empire [now in Belarus]-died March 28, 1985, Saint-Paul, Alpes-Maritimes, France), Belorussian-born French painter, printmaker, and designer.

He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic.

Predating Surrealism, his early works, such as I and the Village (1911), were among the first expressions of psychic reality in modern art. His works in various media include sets for plays and ballets, etchings illustrating the Bible, and stained-glass windows.

Nathan Altman | Avant-garde artist

Nathan Isaevich Altman / Натан Исаевич Альтман (1889-1970) was a Russian avant-garde artist, Cubist painter, stage designer and book illustrator and book illustrator, who was born in Ukraine in the Russian Empire and worked in France and the Soviet Union.

Altman was born in Vinnytsia, in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to a family of Jewish merchants.

From 1902-1907, he studied painting and sculpture at the Art College in Odessa (now independent Ukraine).

In 1906, he had his first exhibition in Odessa.

Max Liebermann (German, 1847-1935)

Max Liebermann (20 July 1847 - 8 February 1935) was a German painter🎨 and printmaker of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism🎨 in Germany.

The son of a Jewish fabric manufacturer turned banker from Berlin, Liebermann grew up in an imposing town house alongside the Brandenburg Gate.

He first studied law and philosophy at the University of Berlin, but later studied painting and drawing in Weimar in 1869, in Paris in 1872, and in the Netherlands in 1876-77.

David Černý, 1967 | Metalmorphosis | Giant Rotating Heads

Metalmorphosis is a 14-ton water fountain that's shaped like a human head. On top of that, the sculpture is made with over 35 steel layers that can independently rotate 360 degrees to re-arrange its face and trip your brains out.

The mirrored water fountain is made by Czech sculptor David Černý and is located in Whitehall Technology Park in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Max Liebermann | Impressionist painter

Max Liebermann, (born July 20, 1847, Berlin, Ger. - died February 8, 1935, Berlin), painter and printmaker who is known for his naturalistic studies of the life and labour of the poor. He was also the foremost proponent of Impressionism🎨 in Germany.

Amedeo Modigliani | School of Paris

Amedeo Modigliani, (born July 12, 1884, Livorno, Italy-died January 24, 1920, Paris, France), Italian painter and sculptor whose portraits-characterized by asymmetrical compositions, elongated figures, and a simple but monumental use of line-are among the most-important portraits of the 20th century.

Modigliani was born into a Jewish family of merchants.

As a child, he suffered from pleurisy and typhus, which prevented him from receiving a conventional education.

Marc Chagall | Four Seasons, Chicago ,1974

Four Seasons is a mosaic by Marc Chagall ⎆ that is located in Chase Tower Plaza in the Loop district of Chicago, Illinois.

The mosaic was a gift to the City of Chicago by Frederick H. Prince (via the Prince Charitable Trusts); it is wrapped around four sides of a 70 feet (21 m) long, 14 feet (4.3 m) high, 10 feet (3.0 m) wide rectangular box, and was dedicated on September 27, 1974.

It was renovated in 1994 and a protective glass canopy was installed.

The mosaic was the subject of a 1974 documentary film, The Gift: Four Seasons Mosaic of Marc Chagall ⎆, directed by Chuck Olin. | © Wikipedia

Marc Chagall | Le Cirque series

Marc Chagall🎨: "For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world.

A circus is disturbing. It is profound These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves at home in my visions.

Why? Why am I so touched by their make-up and their grimaces?

With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up, I can dream of painting new psychic distortions. It is a magic word, circus, a timeless dancing game where tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of a great art"!

Pablo Neruda | If your eyes / Se non fosse per i tuoi occhi..

John Singer Sargent | Two Girls with Parasols at Fladbury, 1889

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,

of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,

if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,

if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment