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Art

Holocaust artist exalts beauty's invincibility

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published February 8, 2007

For most of us, leaving home is a youthful adventure, a form of liberation. For children of the Holocaust, it was a wrenching, forced exile that shattered families. The story of Samuel Bak, the subject of an exhibition opening at the Florida Holocaust Museum on Saturday and continuing through May 13, is particularly moving.

Growing up in the Polish city Vilna, he was considered a gifted child artist. In 1939 the Jewish community was rounded up and sent to a ghetto; conditions went from bad to unthinkable. He and his mother escaped and lived in hiding, but days after they got out, his father was shot, along with hundreds of other slave laborers.

Bak survived and moved on, living peripatetically for most of his life, but his paintings indicate he could never leave home behind. "Return to Vilna" is a collection based on his visit to Vilna in 2001, the first time he had seen his hometown since 1945. The 20 on view at the museum have never before been shown in the United States.

The renaissance polish of their execution contrasts with the disturbing, sometimes nightmarish, subject matter that presents the mundane and ordinary in surrealistic settings. In Under the Trees, shown, Bak paints a bleak landscape of hard stones and decapitated trees flying through the air. The works are specific to his experience but rise to the universal, proof that evil can never eradicate beauty.

The Florida Holocaust Museum, located at 55 Fifth St. S, St. Petersburg, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. (727) 820-0100.

[Last modified February 7, 2007, 09:04:51]