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Photos by Adrian Fussell
A. RAYMOND KATZ’S ‘Tumult’ (ca. 1965) at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale. There are no less than three Surrealist exhibits currently at the home.
Surreal strokes at the Hebrew Home By Shant Shahrigian
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (undated) there are a number of works by lesser-known artists who took the progenitors’ styles in new directions.
sshah@riverdalepress.com
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op quiz: which name doesn’t belong on this list? Dalí, Hložník, Picasso, Warhol. If you picked the second, hard-topronounce name (you say it like “lazhNIK”), you would be wrong. There’s actually work from all four artists at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale. A spacious pavilion at the home contains a series of Surrealist paintings and lithographs, including two each from the modern masters of Spanish origin. A hallway including several Warhol lithographs on permanent display leads you to the home’s Derfner Judaica Museum, where curators have unearthed a striking series of roughly mid-century works by Vincent Hložník. The artist is little known outside his place of birth, the former Czechoslovakia. But a walk around the Hebrew Home’s premises gives the strong impression that Hložník (1919-1997) ranks among his more famous contemporaries in western Europe and the U.S. Out of his life’s work of paintings and prints, a series of 1962 linocuts is now on view. Created years after he witnessed atrocities during the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe, the jarring images represent an ongoing response to the horrors of war. The mostly black-and-white lithographs show fractured landscapes with violent splashes of color — a furious red sun or a dissonant block of yellow. The scenes are cluttered with de-
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CHIEF CURATOR Susan Chevlowe explains works by Israeli painter Naftali Bezem in the ‘Surrealist Impulse’ show. tached limbs and jagged outlines of buildings. With borrowings from Picasso like a warlike steed, the series reads like “La Guernica” imported east.
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usan Chevlowe, chief curator at the Hebrew Home, said she and a colleague happened upon Hložník’s striking lithographs while combing through the senior residence’s collection of more than 5,000 works several years ago. The home’s
hoard includes numerous pieces by eastern European artists, a group that fascinated longtime executive director and art collector Jacob Reingold. “Museums have collections, but it doesn’t mean every work is catalogued or we know what every work is,” Ms. Chevlowe recounted. “We spent time looking. What do we have? What is this? This was among that group,” she said of the Hložník lithographs. The curator said Hložník, who founded a graphic arts department in Bratislava, “inspired a whole genera-
tion of Slovak artists.” “It’s not a household name like Dalí and Picasso, but this is very important historically,” she added. The Hebrew Home has dubbed the show in the Derfner Judaica Museum “Vincent Hložník: Between War and Dream.” The display with the Dalí and Picasso lithographs is called “Surrealist Impulse: Works from the Permanent Collection.” Along with a striking pair of “Imaginary Portraits” (1969) by Picasso and two scenes from Dalí’s illustrations of
osl Bergner’s “Man in Flight” (1975) offers a literal interpretation of its subject. Birds comprise two human-shaped figures, with a number of the specimens flying away to make the bodies look like they are dissolving. The image seems to embody the artist’s experience of Nazi persecution in his native Germany, which he left for then-Palestinian territory before World War Two ended. A. Raymond Katz’s “Achod” represents the Hebrew word for “one” — often used to evoke unity with God — in melting shapes with somber colors. It is hard to tell if the Jewish artist, who emigrated to the U.S. before World War One, is suggesting that the concept has persisted through change, or threatens to dissolve because of it. “I think the experience of Jewish artists maybe lends itself to Surrealist imagery,” said Ms. Chevlowe. “How do you paint or visualize your disconnection?” “They experienced a lot of dislocation in their lives and they saw a lot of things happening that were completely irrational,” she concluded. “Surrealism was a language that they can grab to express what’s happening to them and in the world around them.” “Vincent Hložník: Between War and Dream” runs at the Hebrew Home, located at 5901 Palisade Ave., through Sunday, July 26. “Surrealist Impulse: Works from the Permanent Collection” runs through Friday, July 31. A related show, “Doug Brin: Journals,” runs through the same date. For more information, visit www.hebrewhome.org.
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