Art Exhibit Opening: Painted Memories of Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust
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May 10 2009 11:00 AM - Oct 1 2009 5:45 PM
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"They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland. Before the Holocaust" opens at The Jewish Museum on Sunday, May 10 and remains on view through October 1, 2009. In this lively exhibition, visitors will discover a lost world captured in astonishing detail in more than 80 vibrant paintings and drawings by Mayer Kirshenblatt. Born in 1916, Kirshenblatt left Poland for Canada in 1934. Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, the exhibition is a remarkable record of Jewish life in a Polish town, Opatów (Apt in Yiddish), before World War II, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy fascinated by the world in which he lived.
Mayer Kirshenblatt, now 92 years old, first began to paint at the age of 73. To his amazement, the town of his childhood emerged in living color in scenes of birth and death, and images of kitchens and farms, inhabited by a lively cast of shoemakers, butchers, prostitutes, street performers, thieves, chimney sweeps, and musicians. Painting by painting, story by story, he recreated the entire world of his youth. He painted everything he could remember about the streets and courtyards, the synagogue and marketplace, and the many characters who lived in Apt: the pregnant hunchback, who stood under the wedding canopy just hours before giving birth; the cobbler’s son, who was dressed in white pajamas to fool the Angel of Death; the teacher caught in bed with the drummer’s wife; the butcher who kept his accounts in chalk on his boots; the well-dressed kleptomaniac who slipped a fish down her bosom; and the woman who washed floors in a wedding gown. The exhibition is a tribute to the artist’s distinctive imagination and sharp recollection of his hometown.
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