Exhibitions

Drawn from Memory: Holocaust and History in the Art of Samuel Bak

September 19-November 30, 2008
Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center

Samuel Bak, Study for ApPEARing, 2007, mixed media
on paper.  Courtesy of Pucker Gallery, Boston.

Throughout his six-decade career, artist Samuel Bak has addressed the tragedies he and other European Jews endured during the Holocaust. Reinterpreting iconic themes from Western traditions of art and combining them with his own recurrent iconography, Bak inflects familiar compositions with personal experiences. Through his art Bak effectively engages in a dialogue with artists whose work represents the ideals of Western humanism—Michelangelo, Holbein, Dürer—in order to visualize the suffering experienced by millions.

Click on the picture for a slideshow. (Requires Adobe Flash Player)

Read a review of this exhibition from Chicago Jewish Star.

For more information about Samuel Bak, visit the Pucker Gallery's website.

Related Events

• Dialogues with the Past and Present: The Vivid World of Samuel Bak. Jeffry Diefendorf, the Pamela Shulman Professor in European and Holocaust Studies at the University of New Hampshire, spoke about Bak's work on October 29. An audio recording of this lecture is available on the Block Museum's podcast page.

Drawn from Memory: Holocaust and History in the Art of Samuel Bak is organized by the Block Museum of Art with cooperation from Pucker Gallery, Boston. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Myers Foundations; and Rubens Family Foundation.