Dora
Holzhandler
goldmark 2011
A Total Yes to Life: The Art of Dora Holzhandler Philip Vann Dora Holzhandlerʼs beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling. A celebratory note resounds in Doraʼs oil paintings of lovers emparadised in each otherʼs arms in bedrooms of opulently embroidered patternings (subtly intricate miracles, on the artistʼs part, of intuitive Op Art design). It can be heard in her portrayals of mothers and children in gardens of Eden‑like fecundity, and in her gouaches of rabbis studying ancient holy texts in plain wooden studies of scintillating darkness. Speaking about the genesis of her making art, Dora says that ʻthe beginning of a picture is very important. You have to be in quite a meditative state. Itʼs very magical. You have the empty canvas. Once the picture has begun, itʼs the question of just finding it. When I paint something Iʼve seen fifty years ago, itʼs the same moment recreated. The beginning of the picture, the moment of inspiration, is reliving the actual moment. In that way, a person never changes. The moment is the truth.ʼ Dora Holzhandler was born in Paris in 1928. Her parents were Jewish refugees from Warsaw. Many of her paintings are inspired by childhood memories – being fostered in her early years by an affectionate Catholic farming family in Normandy until she was about five, her return (ʻa great shockʼ, she says) to live with her poor, extended Jewish family in Belleville in Paris, and then the move in 1934 to live in Dalston in Londonʼs East End. For many years now, she has lived in Londonʼs Holland Park. Her Eastern European Jewish familial roots, and her French origins – reinforced by her liberating post‑War discovery of the art of the École de Paris – permeate her paintingsʼ atmosphere to this day.
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Friday Night Lovers, ÂŁ9500 oil on canvas, 2010, 75.5 x 61 cm
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A painting of Bathers – showing her mother and another lovely, dark‑ haired young woman bathing in a pond or lake of rippling turquoise pellucidity, surrounded by orbs of luscious green vegetation, an egret resting on the waters – ʻcould actually go backʼ, Dora says, ʻto the stories my mother told me about her youth: it could be Poland in the summertime.ʼ Over the years Dora has returned often to her native Paris. Whereas she thinks affectionately of England being ʻlike an overgrown gardenʼ, she says she likes ʻthe French way for things to be neat, orderly, everything in its place. The philosophy is neat. I try to do that in the paintings.ʼ In 1947 Dora was accepted as a student at the Anglo‑French Art Centre in Londonʼs St. Johnʼs Wood, where a small painting she did of anemones was much admired by the painter Victor Pasmore. She emphasises her own radical self‑discovery as an artist, saying, ʻThere are definitely rules in art. But I discover them and these are the answers. Here in my paintings are the rules Iʼve found.ʼ ʻAll my paintings have esoteric secrets in themʼ, Dora says. In her painting of Friday Night Lovers, the semi‑naked lovers are portrayed in modest pose, not actually touching though touchingly at one with each other, lying on (and simultaneously, in quiet ecstasy, soaring above) a bed with white sheets and pillows. These are deliciously decorated with swift calligraphic curlicues of purple and yellow. The bed is set within a carpet of profoundest Prussian blue, beyond which is an outer border of alternating black and white checks. An angel floats over them, blessing their return to a state of blissful reconciliation with their original nature, as enjoyed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (before the Fall). In our troubled world, Dora Holzhandlerʼs rare, innocent art is welcomed and appreciated by many viewers, who find themselves responding to her paintings with a smile of compassionate self‑ recognition.
Philip Vann is the author of Dora Holzhandler, a monograph on the artist published by Lund Humphries, London and The Overlook Press, New York in 1997. He is the author of Face to Face:
British Self‑Portraits in the Twentieth Century (2004), and several books on modern British artists. The full version of this text is available online at www.doraholzhandler.co.uk
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Mother Lighting Sabbath Candles, ÂŁ8000 oil on canvas, 2008, 65.5 x 40.5 cm
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Bathers, ÂŁ12,000 oil on canvas, 2005, 100 x 75 cm
to order phone 01572 821424 prices include frame, vat and uk delivery
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Rabbi Studying Kabbalah, £4500
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oil on canvas, 2008, 39.5 x 29.5 cm 13.
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Lovers in Snow, £4000 oil on canvas, 2001, 40.5 x 30.5 cm
Rabbi Studying Spinoza, £5000 oil on canvas, 2004, 45.5 x 35.5 cm
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Little Girl in Snow, £4000 oil on canvas, 2000, 40.5 x 30.5 cm
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The Flower Stall in Portobello Road in Spring, ÂŁ6000
www.doraholzhandler.co.uk
oil on board, 56 x 45.7 cm
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Lovers in Spring, ÂŁ9500 oil on canvas, 1989, 71.5 x 62 cm
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Portrait of Sister Wendy Beckett, ÂŁ12,000 oil on canvas, 2000, 76.5 x 61.5 cm
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Spanish Dancers, ÂŁ1500 gouache, 1989, 55.5 x 39.7 cm
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Rabbi with Birds, ÂŁ650 gouache, 2007, 29.5 x 22.5 cm
to order phone 01572 821424 prices include frame, vat and uk delivery
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Lovers in Autumn, ÂŁ900 gouache, 1998, 32.5 x 25.5 cm
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Girl in the Sea, ÂŁ1100 pastel, 2002, 39.5 x 34.5 cm
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Lovers with Pink Blossom, ÂŁ1700 pastel, 2000, 58.5 x 43.5 cm
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Jewish Wedding, ÂŁ1500 pastel, 54.5 x 41.5 cm
to order phone 01572 821424 prices include frame, vat and uk delivery
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Lovers Allonge with Red Carpet, ÂŁ1500 pastel, 2002, 42 x 55 cm
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Lady with Bouquet on the Beach, ÂŁ1250
www.doraholzhandler.co.uk
pastel, 2005, 42.5 x 38.5 cm
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Girl with Rose Bush, £875
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watercolour, 1983, 35.5 x 31.8 cm 102.
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Girl by the Sea, £800 watercolour, 1984, 28.5 x 26.5 cm
Girl with Parrot in a Cage, £625 watercolour, 1985, 28 x 24.5 cm
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Rabbi, £750 watercolour, 24.5 x 25 cm
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Roses and Dahlias, £500 pastel, 1998, 21 x 18 cm
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Lady with Seagulls, £750 pastel, 2002, 25.5 x 20 cm
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Mother and Baby with Lilac, £625
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watercolour, 1993, 24.5 x 21 cm 118.
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Mother and Baby, £950 watercolour, 37.5 x 33.5 cm
A Couple with a Bird, £650 watercolour, 1998, 24 x 18 cm
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Girl with Flowers by the Sea, £850 watercolour, 32.5 x 26.5 cm
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Lovers in Moscow, ÂŁ950 watercolour, 43 x 28.5 cm
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to order phone 01572 821424 prices include frame, vat and uk delivery
Nue Allonge, ÂŁ850 watercolour, 1986, 25.5 x 35 cm
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Dora
Holzhandler
ʻNational treasure.ʼ The Sunday Times
ʻDoraʼs paintings are alive and will last; they are an expression of an inner experience, not a display of outward show. And what a luminous experience they represent . . . the core of each of her pictures is the feeling within it – the note her work strikes, which rings out a telling life of our times.ʼ Julian Spalding, formerly Director of Glasgow Museums
ʻFor Dora Holzhandler life often seems to be a dance. Or a feast. Or the two together. Certainly a happy place, full of colour and movement. And yet, in a way, repose is the keynote of her art. . . . [She is] sophisticated, yes. But working with a curious directness which can only come from some sort of divine innocence.ʼ
ʻAll of Dora Holzhandlerʼs paintings possess an ineffable tenderness, they make us recall our childhoods, our myths, our roots, and if we have severed from these things, they make us long for them in a palpable way. They are little expanses of sweetness and peace. Dora is that rare thing – a mother and child in one, as an artist she captures the apparent simplicity of life and infuses it with a depth I find eerie.ʼ Edna OʼBrien
ʻDora Holzhandler grasps life and celebrates it. She sees us clearly, for her all is sacred, all is aflame with divine power, even sorrow, even death. She offers to life here a total yes.ʼ
John Russell Taylor, The Times art critic
Sister Wendy Beckett
ʻDora Holzhandlerʼs beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling.ʼ
ʻHolzhandlerʼs images of childhood bliss have made her one of the countryʼs most popular artists.ʼ The Guardian
Philip Vann
front cover 17.
Mother and Children in St Ives, £16,000 oil on canvas, 2007, 126 x 75 cm
GOLDMARK GALLERY, 14 ORANGE STREET, UPPINGHAM, RUTLAND, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 www.goldmarkart.com www.doraholzhandler.co.uk