Faces of Babi Yar in Felix Lembersky's art - The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis

Dear colleagues,

Paintings by Felix Lembersky (1913-1970) will be exhibited at the Rose Art Museum for a one-day symposium held on March 10, 2011. If you are in the area, please come by the museum to see the art (open to public 12-4:30).
See the abstract and attached brochure.
Best,

Yelena Lembersky

Faces of Babi Yar in Felix Lembersky's Art: Presence and Absence
In response to the horrors of Babi Yar, the single largest mass murder of Soviet Jews that occurred on 29-30 September 1941, Felix Lembersky (1913-1970) turned the bitter memories of the Shoah into art. He created three Babi Yar paintings (among the earliest artistic renderings), the last completed at the height of Stalin's campaign against Jewish culture. Human suffering and dignity persisted as dominant themes in the artist's work on the Ural miners, rich in the symbolism of the Babi Yar series. In the late 1950s, Lembersky moved away from socialist realism to non-conformist forms of art, increasingly returning to his childhood town of Berdichev (where his parents perished at the hands of the Nazis) and employing Jewish symbols and imagery. The artist sought to "awaken the consciousness" by offering art as a puzzle, a path to discovery. In Lembersky's own words: "In my art, I would like to reflect not so much on the visible beauty of objects, but to express my feeling and admiration for them. I attempt to find the hidden spirituality in nature, and treat the object as a metaphor."
                                                                                    ChaeRan Freeze PhD, Brandeis University

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