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I think the best we can achieve is asking questions about the world in which we live because I think accepting the world as it is and so on is just impossible. Finding the right answer, maybe finding some directions towards some answers is the most we can dream of.
— Samuel Bak
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I came across the work of Samuel Bak about twenty years ago, at the Pucker Gallery in Boston. It was easy for me to be drawn into his work. It was strongly symbolic and densely painted with deep, dark colors. It was easy to see that there was nothing trivial about it.
It had weight.
I discovered that Samuel Bak, who has resided in the United States since 1993, was born in Poland in 1933. From an early age his artistic talent was obvious. His family was Jewish and spent much of World war II in the ghetto of Wilno (where he had his first exhibit of his work at the age of nine) before being sent with his mother to a labor camp. They were able to flee and take shelter in a convent where they remained until the end of the war. At that time, only he and his mother survived from an extensive family.
He and his mother spent three years in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany before moving to Israel in 1948. He lived there until his move to the US in 1993.
I have followed his work for the past couple of decades and it almost always has the weight that I first saw in it.
It feels like it is filled with the memory of all memories.
I thought today would be a good day to share his work.
Redtree Times 