Jesekiel David Kirszenbaum
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The painter J.D. Kirszenbaum was born in Poland in the village of Staszow in the district of Sandomiertz in 1900. He died in Paris, France in 1954.
He was the youngest son of a rabbinic scholar. He began drawing and painting at the age of twelve, mainly shop signboards and portraits of people he admired.
He immigrated to Germany in 1920 and in 1923, he joined the Bauhaus in Weimar were he studied under Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky. He moved to Berlin working as an illustrator and cartoonist for a number of Berlin Newspapers under the pseudonym Duvdivani. He participated in Berlin in several paintings' exhibitions.
In 1930 he fled Germany and arrived, together with his wife, as a refugee at Paris where a new period in his life and painting career began. He discovered the French Impressionism and techniques, such as the importance of light, in painting. Like many of the great Jewish painters of the so-called "School of Paris", that were influenced by the works of the Expressionism, he instilled in his work something very personal, from his roots: elements of mysticism and compositions related to Jewish beliefs and Folklore.
The Second World War put an end to all his dreams. During the German Occupation his studio was ransacked and more than 6oo paintings and drawings-nearly all his work dating from before he was imprisoned in a Camp in the South of France was looted. His wife was arrested, deported and murdered along with all the members of his family in Poland. None survived the Concentration Camps.
He survived the War and thanks to the help of Alix de Rothschild he returned to painting first in Paris and afterward also in Brazil and Morocco. He died in Paris from cancer at the age of 54.
[edit] His work
Though the Eastern European sources of his inspiration are often obvious, his style was always that of a discipline of Western European Art and of the Schools that had undergone the influence of French Impressionism. In addition, he had absorbed the influence of German Expressionism.
His work especially after the war was haunted by elegiac recollection of things past. He was able to reconstruct the scenes of his childhood, bringing back to life the villages where he had lived. In his paintings, Kirszenbaum was also able to resurrect the prophets of the Old Testament.
His trips to Brazil and Morocco gave his art a new lease on life allowing him to rediscover something of the original sources of his inspiration. He recaptured the mysticism of the vanished Eastern European Jewry transforming the grotesque figures of Rio De Janeiro Carnival and its riotous joy into festivities he had known in his childhood. The influence of this period affected all his future works which evoked less pessimism and melancholy.
Kirszenbaum participated in the Jewish Renaissance, in an avant garde art, a folkloric based art that started in Russia and spread to Poland and in which M.Chagal, J.Riback, El Lissitski, B.Anderson, J.Budko and others Jewish artists took part
Kirszenbaum's works are spread in museums in France, Holland, Poland and Israel, some are in the Collection Nationale Francaise and in private collections in France, Belgium, Holland, UK, Brazil, U.S. and Israel.
Because the loss of most of his pre war works, the ones that were or are offered at auctions are rare.
Kirszenbaum exhibited in Weimar/Berlin/Utrecht/Amsterdam/Limoges/Lyon/Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro and in Paris.
