We encourage you to come join the curator-guided tour this Sunday. Teresa Śmiechowska and Michał Krasicki will talk about the moving works created in the ghettos of Warsaw, Łódź and Białystok. Some of the drawings and watercolours like the ones by Gela Seksztajn and Rozenfeld (first name unknown), for example, we saved in the Underground Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto. They are one-of-a-kind testimonies of the rich artistic life that blossomed in the ghetto despite the tragic living conditions. The power of the message these works send- e.g. “A Family in the Ghetto” by Roman Kramsztyk or portraits of starving children by Witold Lewinson- is unbelievable. We show the works of artists who worked under inhuman time constrains, who had to find within themselves the power to create when robbed of freedom and debased. They could no longer be part of the world’s artistic landscape. They could only salvage the remains of their humanity by depicting scenes from the ghetto. The next few days are the final opportunity to see what they created. The exhibition will close on the 30th of March 2015.

 

Curator-guided tour:

At noon and at 3 p.m. 

This dramatic image was also capturedby Jacek Kaczmarski in the lyrics of his song Kredka Kramsztyka (Kramsztyk’s Crayon) :

Tireless is sanguine

Before his death, a homeless Jew 

Carries children in his hands and arms

(Niezmordowana jest sangwina:
Nosi bezdomny Żyd, nim skona
Dzieci na rękach i ramionach.)