Abstract: Die Ausstellung erinnert an die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgte, jüdische Familie Chotzen aus Wilmersdorf. Über ihr Leben haben zu verschiedenen Zeiten Menschen Zeugnis abgelegt. Die Ausstellung folgt ihren Wegen des Erinnerns bis in die Gegenwart und eröffnet einen Raum zwischen historischer Forschung, Kunst und Erinnerung. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die künstlerischen Arbeiten von Inbar Chotzen. Die in Israel lebende Nachfahrin hat sich in aktuellen Arbeiten ihre Familiengeschichte wiederangeeignet. Ihre Werke stehen für ihren Umgang mit der familiären Holocausterfahrung. Einen wichtigen Zugang bot ihr der Familiennachlass, den die Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz bewahrt. Am 13. November führt sie selbst durch die Ausstellung und spricht über ihren persönlichen Zugang zur Familiengeschichte, ihren Arbeitsprozess sowie ihre künstlerischen Techniken. „Ich wollte die Familienmitglieder wirklich kennen lernen. Während ich malte, wurden sie mir so sehr lieb. Vertraut, voller Leben, echte Menschen. Ich malte sie voller Selbstsicherheit, sportlich und gesund, in der Natur, im Sonnenlicht. So fern wie möglich von der Vorstellung verfolgter Juden, wie man sie in den Bildern des Grauens der Holocaust-Opfer zu sehen gewohnt war.“ (Inbar Chotzen)

Abstract: Bracha L. Ettinger's (born in 1948) works are at the forefront of contemporary painting. Yet, like many of her female contemporaries, the radical capacities of her practice are only beginning to find recognition. Ettinger formulated the matrix(ial) understanding of origin as a therapeutic modality and philosophy. Her way of working aligns with how she approaches the human subject and psyche. For her first solo show in Paris in over 22 years, Radicants publish a collection of essential texts on her work, including 2 essays by Jean-François Lyotard, a text by Noam Segal (curator of the show) and Amelia Jones, as well as a collaborative writing project by Precious Okoyomon and Bracha L. Ettinger herself. "The work of Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger is a labour of anamnesis, guided by the 'presence' of the Shoah. This 'presence', like that of 'the Thing', asks nothing - demands nothing, rather it makes itself forgetting: already forgotten along with the secret code used by the SS administration of the 'Endlösung' to foreclose its presence, and again under the benign name of Holocaust, under the ceremonial pardons of chiefs of State and chiefs of Church, and again under the memorial monuments—all modes of oblivion." Jean-François Lyotard

Abstract: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944) zählt zu den bedeutendsten Schülerinnen des Weimarer Bauhauses. Das künstlerische Multitalent spezialisierte sich zunächst auf textile und grafische Gestaltung, später arbeitete sie als Designerin und Innenarchitektin. Ihre Gemälde spiegeln die tiefgehende Auseinandersetzung mit der klassischen Avantgarde wider. Detailliert zeichnet der Band das vielseitige kreative Schaffen einer politisch verfolgten Künstlerin nach.Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, geboren als Jüdin in Wien, war Malerin, Kunstpädagogin und kommunistisch aktive Plakatkünstlerin. Der reich bebilderte Band verortet ihr Werk in der Klassischen Moderne und zeigt, wie vielseitig die unter dem nationalsozialistischen Regime verfolgte Künstlerin arbeitete. Bis zu ihrer Ermordung im Ghetto Theresienstadt setzte sie sich unermüdlich dafür ein, Kinder zum Zeichnen zu animieren. Die einzelnen Textbeiträge beschreiben die besonderen Charakteristika ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit sowie der von ihr begründeten Kunsttherapie.

Abstract: The art and literature scene of Roaring Twenties New York gathered at Florine Stettheimer’s extravagant parties. Surrounded by the cultivated and yet unconventional “Dada flair”, the artist staged her pictures as a performance – and was thereby well ahead of her time. As an outstanding painter she was not only at the heart of the American art business, but also attracted attention with her eccentric, subversive and often humorous poems, as well as demonstrating her talent as a stage and costume designer in the theatre. This bibliophile monograph about the multitalented artist is lavishly illustrated and tells a new, exciting history of the modern age through her artworks.

Abstract: Regardless of her chosen media – wood, metal or fabric – Dina Recanati’s art remains steadily dedicated to the abstract. The great advantage of abstract art is the freedom it gives creators, and the room for interpretation it allows for viewers. Dina Recanati works within this boundless freedom and invites viewers to enter a world that combines colors and forms, dream and reality. Glimpses of Dina Recanati’s memories, which feed into her works, appear in both early and recent works. The memories, in shapes and colors, are tucked into the fabric folds, hidden behind arches and gates, and sketched in the pages of wordless books. The works’ colors – light desert tones, sky blues, and more recently, white – are the colors of memories. Some are very clear, others have blurred over time. The female figures in Passage (2000) are covered from head to toe, reminiscent of the “unidentifiable” women who populated the streets of Cairo in the 1940s, and who have in recent years returned to the streets of many cities worldwide. These figures’ colors and material makeup joins the artist’s earlier large abstract paintings, Untitled (1992). As if a landscape seen from the window of a fast train, memory acquires blurred colors and a checkered interpretation in the abstract paintings, which stress the free use of color in a way that leaves much room for coincidence. Although the appearance is based on concrete sights it is blurred, leaving behind more a sense of the colors than visual images. The fluidity of the colors and the amorphic stains emphasize the free movement of the colors on the canvas. Lacking perspective and center, the color stains all have the same value as they merge with each other. The form becomes secondary in these large colorful paintings that seem limited only by the size of the canvas. The Open Museum Tefen is honored to host the exhibition and its accompanying book, which together enfold 60 years of Dina Recanati’s creation. Ruthi Ofek

Abstract: Pamela Levy's large-scale figurative, cinematic works are replete with themes and iconography, and deal with feminist and political issues. Her oil paintings are made as collages featuring naked and clothed figures in deserted urban spaces, building sites or on the beach. They are psychologically charged, saturated with tension and contrasts between fear and delight, childhood and old age, complete and ripped, violent and merciful.

Abstract: Jerzy Malinowski's book represents the first draft of a history of painting, graphic design and sculpture by Polish Jews. The book is devoted to the Jewish artistic circles in Poland, but also to the works of those artists who came from the Belorussian-Lithuanian region as well as Polish artists who were active in Berlin in the period before World War I. The author addresses individual works of art in particular detail, their symbolism and their links to social or political ideologies.

Abstract: In Inferno, Yael Bartana films the inauguration of a grand temple, the destruction of it, and the worship of its debris. The starting point is the construction of a replica of Solomon’s Temple in São Paulo by an evangelical neo-Pentecostal church called the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). The temple is built with stones imported from Israel as the UCKG intends to bring part of the Holy Land to São Paulo, thus inverting the traditional path taken by pilgrims who would leave Brazil for the Holy Land. The film’s conflation of place, history, and belief allows Bartana to weave connections between the complex realities of São Paulo and Jerusalem. Shot and edited with stylistic references to Hollywood action epics, her film employs what she refers to as “historical pre-enactment”, a methodology that commingles fact and fiction, and prophesies and histories. Using this powerful cinematic language, Inferno combines histories of antiquity in the Middle East with Brazil’s contemporary hybrid culture. The film addresses the grandiose temple project through a vision of its future destruction.

Abstract: This exhibition examines the work of five figurative artists working in Britain in the 1950s, who each had a strong identification with the place in which they chose to live and work and which formed, for a significant part of their careers, the primary focus of their practice. Each associated themselves with a particular place: Eardley - Townhead in Glasgow; Fell, the mining community and landscape of her native Aspatria, Cumbria; Frankfurther - London's East End and its multi-cultural working-class communities; Herman - Ystradgynlais in South Wales with its indigenous mining community; and Lowry - his hometown of Manchester and its industrial, multi-peopled cityscape. This exhibition links these five seemingly disparate artists by uncovering a network of relationships, both personal and professional, and their shared exploration of particular artistic concerns and motifs. This exhibition is one of the outcomes of the Eva Frankfurther Research and Curatorial Fellowship for the Study of Emigré Artists.

Abstract: The exhibition presents new works, all from the past year, among them a group of monumental paintings alongside drawings in ink on paper, prints, tri-dimensional objects and a sculptural installation composed of 15 pumpkins cast in aluminum. Ignorant Field, the exhibition's central image, views the painting surface as a material "field" space, and entails the ethos of physical labor that accompanies Poliakine's artistic work and dictates many of her actions. Using her characteristic "sequential line," Poliakine develops motives of cyclamens (wilted), pumpkins, dead birds, self-portrait and personal homages to old masters. Poliakine draws, paints, coils paint tubes and combines various media to crossbreed painting and sculpture.

Abstract: This book was conceived by Sigalit Landau; it assembles the principle stages in her work and presents the installation titled One man's floor is another man's feelings that she has developed for the Israeli Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. This title, pointing to the interdependence of our destinies and the feelings uniting us to each other, corresponds to a constant concern in her approach. It is largely reviewed here, as a founding principle of her Venetian exhibition and of other important projects which follow from it. In her work, Sigalit Landau (born 1969 in Jerusalem, Sigalit Landau lives and works in Tel Aviv) answers poetically the warnings of the time. Her engaged moves turn individual, philosophical or political questions into universal ones. To achieve that, she often combines performances, installations, objects and videos. Her works have the capacity to crystallize into one image, or one object, as shown, for example, by the immense notoriety of her video Barbed Hula, with her realizations becoming the symbol of collective challenges. The necessity of this move explains the prominent place she now occupies in the realm of the community of artists who are indispensable for the reinvention of the world.

Abstract: Not long after the end of World War II, two suitcases from Terezín, the so-called model ghetto designed by the Nazi propaganda machine to showcase creative endeavors, were delivered to members of what remained of the Jewish community of Prague. The contents of the suitcases included children's drawings, paintings, and collages made at Terezín thanks to the efforts of a teacher interned there. Rediscovered in the 1950s, the pictures, by then housed at the Jewish Museum in Prague, were exhibited, and over time some were published. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was the remarkable woman who taught art to many of Terezín's children before she was killed at Auschwitz. While she has been valorized for her heroic efforts as a teacher, her approach to teaching art has remained unexamined. This book and the accompanying exhibition, curated by Linney Wix at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, offer a closer look at the methods and philosophy of Dicker-Brandeis's teaching, the history behind her approach, and its possible psychological effects on the children she taught. The book includes biographical and art historical information on Dicker-Brandeis, and sheds light on her roles as an artist, teacher, and heroine behind Nazi lines in the Second World War. Published in cooperation with the University of New Mexico Art Museum.

Abstract: Sleepless presents six new commissions alongside a selection of previous works from the last two years in a site-specific exhibition of photography, film, drawings and three-dimensional objects providing viewers with a powerfully emotive environment by the contemporary photographer and installation artist Vered Lahav. Subtle references to the relationship between gender and identity and the use of objects are clearly visible in her new commissions such as Anatomy of Time I, a single photograph of a white paper envelope containing children’s milk teeth wrapped in a white lace handkerchief, which looks to tackle issues of innocence.A significant new series of six photographs called The Lovers I, shows books with yellowing paper purchased from charity shops, inscribed with sentimental messages from lover’s written opposite the bleak reality of the price of the book. Here the relationship of the material in the photographs is important, where they show a record of past and present romantic exchanges.Finally, in the series entitled Scrimshaw, a Dutch word meaning to ‘waste one time’ and a craft adopted by whale men in the 1800s, Lahav reflects on the whalers voyages taking a contrasting woman’s perspective of a personal passage and journey, looking at issues of femininity and traditional craft methods, continuing the ideas of innocence. Lahav’s work explores two contrasting yet corresponding elements of the modern city, that of the ‘maker’ (the architect) and the ‘user’ (dweller). Sleepless presents new research into this environment through investigating three core elements – buildings, women and men. By acting as a social observer of these themes, she challenges traditional perceptions of female and male individuality and relationships and their interaction with the urban environment. She is interested in telling stories of fantasy and reality, which suggest personal histories of individuals and families as well as universal themes such as childhood, myth, memory and desire. The title of the exhibition Sleepless refers to insomnia as an analogy for the inability to access a place of security, rest and recuperation.Lahav is best known for her beautiful photographs and unusual installations, where her notion of ‘less and less image can give more and more meaning’ through her use of pure stark white simplistic yet complex compositions. As with her previous work, Sleepless can be defined as a form of mixed-media collage, where the relationship between the placement of the images and objects in a three dimensional space is important. The exhibition exists less as individual components and more as a whole because of the specific dialogues that have been constructed between each image and object.

Abstract: This catalogue accompanied the exhibition by Judy Bermant, which included portraits of her husband Chaim Bermant, a long-time writer and editor of the Jewish Chronicle. The exhibition catalogue contains texts by David Rowan, (former editor of the Jewish Chronicle), and Gerald Jacobs, current Literary Editor of the Jewish Chronicle.

Abstract: Envisioning Maps is an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and prints by contemporary American and international artists who use actual maps, real or imagined, as metaphors for human relationships, historical experience, social values, global politics, and issues of identity and heritage. The exhibition offers contemporary expressions of the full range of maps throughout the centuries: maps of projected travels or memories of journeys; maps depicting national boundaries or natural resources; maps of the known world or places yet to be explored; maps of worlds real and lost; maps of migration, exile, and immigration; maps for navigation or pilgrimage; maps of military campaigns or ecological disasters; maps of the earth and the constellations; and maps of ancient agricultural fields to the latest NASA and GPS navigational tools. Laura Kruger, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) Museum Curator, explains, "A map is a visualization of a particular surface pattern of the earth showing shape, size, and relative proportions. It might include physical landmarks such as water features, geological outcroppings, settlements, unexplored areas. A map can allude to other factors such as politics, population density, mineral resources, roads, and nationality. Vincent Varga, author of Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations, points out that those who drew the maps controlled the destiny of nations through the very power of delineating space. The graphic impact of maps of exploration, invasion, and rebellion is more memorable and vivid than the long explanatory texts accompanying them."

Abstract: Although Hesse's revolutionary and enduringly influential sculptures--elegantly fluid abstractions made of latex, rope, and fiberglass that wed the organic with the industrial, the kinetic with the frozen--are always included in modern art surveys, this is the first comprehensive critical study and catalog of her work. Curator Sussman has assembled a strong cast of her peers to discuss various aspects of Hesse's daring oeuvre, from her high-voltage drawings to her use of unconventional materials, "love of line and collapsing form," and self-described "weird humor." Biographical observations are kept succinct, but there's no escaping the poignancy of Hesse's short and "extreme" life. Born in Hamburg in 1936, she fled the Holocaust as a child; her divorced mother committed suicide; her own marriage was unhappy; and she died of cancer at age 34. But her devotion to art was fierce, her talent precocious, and she accomplished in her last five feverish years what others couldn't achieve in decades. Unfortunately, her experimental sculptures are deteriorating, a loss that makes this gorgeously illustrated volume all the more precious. Donna Seaman

Abstract: Ihr Leben umspannte ein ganzes Jahrhundert, ihr Werk spiegelt eine brüchige Welt zwischen Wien und London. Die Malerin Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-1996) wuchs in einer wohlhabenden jüdischen Wiener Unternehmerfamilie auf, für die der Umgang mit großen Künstlern selbstverständlich war. Hofmannsthal und Schnitzler zählten zum Freundeskreis, Großmutter Anna war eine der ersten Patientinnen Sigmund Freuds, der Vater - ein ungarischer Adeliger - hatte mit Brahms musiziert. Ein prominenter Name steht auch am Beginn von Motesiczkys künstlerischer Tätigkeit: Max Beckmann besuchte 1920 die herrschaftliche Sommervilla der Familie in der Hinterbrühl - Initialzündung für erste malerische Versuche des jungen Mädchens. Nach aufregenden Jahren in der Wiener "Jeunesse dorée" der 20er Jahre landete Motesiczky in Beckmanns Frankfurter Meisterklasse. Schon früh entwickelte sie einen eigenständigen Stil, zurückhaltender als der Expressionismus und unbeeindruckt von der abstrakten Avantgarde. Die Hoffnungen auf eine Künstlerkarriere wurden vom Nationalsozialismus zunichte gemacht. 1938 floh Motesiczky mit ihrer Mutter Henriette über Holland nach London, wo sich ein enger Kontakt zur Emigrantenszene entwickelte. Dort lernte Motesiczky die Liebe ihres Lebens kennengelernt: Elias Canetti. Die Beziehung der beiden schwankte über Jahrzehnte hinweg zwischen Faszination und Zurückweisung seitens des Schriftstellers. Zeitlebens unterstützte sie den Dichter finanziell: Von 1951 bis 1957 schrieb er in einem eigenen Zimmer bei den Motesiczkys an seinem Hauptwerk "Masse und Macht". Motesiczkys eindringliche Porträts des Schriftstellers gehören zu den Höhepunkten ihres Schaffens. Der Porträtierte revanchierte sich mit hymnischen Worten: "Jedes Bild, das Du noch malst, wird in die Geschichte der Malerei eingehen". Für ihr späteres Werk wurde Oskar Kokoschka stilprägend, dessen gestische Intensität sie beeindruckte und mit dem sie eine intensive Freundschaft verband. Motesiczkys Bilder spiegeln das unmittelbare Umfeld der Künstlerin. Vor allem erforschte sie mit dem Pinsel Menschen und deren Gesichter. Einzigartig sind die intimen, schonungslosen Psychogramme ihrer alternden Mutter, mit der sie über sieben Jahrzehnte im gleichen Haushalt lebte. Neben den Porträts entstanden symbolkräftige Stillleben. Zeitlebens nahm die finanziell unabhängige Malerin kaum am Kunstbetrieb teil, ihr Werk entstand nahezu im Verborgenen und wurde erst spät entdeckt. 1966 wurden ihre Bilder erstmals in ihrer Heimat präsentiert (in der Secession), 1994 fand in der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere eine wichtige Einzelausstellung statt. Die Retrospektive zum 100. Geburtstag zeigt rund 70 Ölgemälde und entstand in Kooperation mit dem Londoner Motesiczky Trust, der das Erbe der Künstlerin verwaltet. Die Ausstellung macht an Motesiczkys wichtigsten Orten Station: England (Liverpool, Southampton), Frankfurt - und Wien. Celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Marie-Louise von Motesiczky's birth, this exhibition brings the work of this acclaimed, yet relatively unknown, artist to a much wider audience than ever before. The exhibition presents around 70 paintings and a number of drawings, exploring the transition from her hard-edged realist style of the twenties to the poetic realism of her later work. Motesiczky is particularly known for her portraits, including compelling self-portraits and a moving series devoted to her ageing mother recording her decline. "If you could only paint a single good picture in your lifetime, your life would be worthwhile." (Marie-Louise von Motesiczky) After successful exhibitions at the Goethe Institute, London in 1985 and the Österreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Vienna in 1994, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky was widely acclaimed as one of the most talented and original artists of her time. The celebrated art historian, Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), paid tribute to her striking individuality and praised the delicacy and subtlety of her painting. Several major museums, including Tate, possess fine examples of her work, yet the scope of her oeuvre remains relatively unknown. Motesiczky was born in Vienna in 1906 into a wealthy and distinguished Jewish family. As a young woman, she studied at the Städel Art School in Frankfurt with Max Beckmann (1884-1950), who became a life-long friend and mentor. The German painter would become an important early influence on her work. She devoted most of the 1930s to painting, but when the Nazis marched into Vienna in 1938, Motesiczky and her mother immediately fled, first to the Netherlands, then Switzerland, finally arriving in England in 1939. Motesiczky's brother Karl remained in Austria, where he arranged for her works to be sent to London. It is thanks to him that most of her early work survives today. In 1939 he founded a resistance group, helping Jews to escape the Nazis. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and was sent to Auschwitz, where he died the following year. In England, Motesiczky lived and worked in a highly gifted community of exiled artists and intellectuals. Shortly after her arrival in London she met the writer Elias Canetti (1905-1994), with whom she embarked upon a turbulent relationship that was to last for the rest of their lives and which was characterised by a vital creative exchange and unfailing mutual support for each other's work. She also renewed contact with the artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), now in exile in England.

Abstract: In 1964-65, Eva Hesse lived with her husband, sculptor Tom Doyle, in Kettwig-on-the-Ruhr, Germany, at the invitation of a European art collector. During this time, as she did throughout most of her life, Hesse kept diaries and made extensive notations in datebook calendars. These two datebooks, published for the first time as facsimile editions, are accompanied by a third volume that includes an essay on their significance in the artist’s career as well as full transcriptions and annotations. The 1964/65 datebooks impart astonishingly rich personal details about the artist’s life: whom she met and where she traveled, which books she read, and which films and exhibitions she saw and what impression they made on her. Hesse’s notations also reveal invaluable insights into the German art scene of the mid-1960s, her transition from a painter to a sculptor and her often conflicted artistic ambitions, the stresses of her marriage, and the difficulties of returning to Germany, the country that in 1938 she fled with her family to escape Nazi persecution.