Samuel Bak-The Family detail -Judaica fine art oil Painting Reproduction

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This is a Museum quality, hand painted oil reproduction, painting of  "The Family detail "

The Family is a painting that I have dedicated to the memory of the perished members of my family. An explanation of this work would be beyond the limit of my present time, so let me go on with the outline of my biography.

During most of my last four decades, I have been indeed a wandering Jew. I have lived and worked in Tel Aviv, Paris, Rome, and Lausanne, and I presently reside in the US, in Boston. I have become a man who is at home everywhere and nowhere, an artist whose real roots are in the ground of his art. As I said earlier, and it may sound trite, I know that what I have been painting comes from a compulsive need to give meaning to the miraculous fact of my survival. It tries to appease a sad sense of bewilderment. It comes from the fear that in a world of unparalleled upheavals, things are never what they seem. My work reveals a reality observed through the eyes of a child who had suddenly aged. Some might call it elaboration of Trauma; I hope that my art is more than that.

To conclude, it is not "Bak" who chose the Holocaust -- it is rather the Holocaust that has put on "Bak's" shoulders a very distinct, almost inescapable need to give testimony.

I feel that we live in a world polluted by triviality. The Holocaust is a portentous subject. Artists who have chosen to deal with matters of importance, who are questioning the existential dimensions of life, death, good and evil, turn to the experience of the Shoah and believe that their images will stir emotions and stimulate reflection. Visual statements can be stronger than words. But the rhetoric of painting has its limitations. Visual Arts are mostly physical, they require places and spaces, and they can bear only so much moral weight. Besides, certain experiences demand verbal expression.

For that reason I decided to complement my painterly output with a verbal one. The result is a memoir entitled "Painted in Words." Enthusiastically prefaced by Amos Oz it was published in 2001 by Indiana University Press. My book is now part of a tuition program that trains American teachers to bring to their students the lesson of the Holocaust. Its vast array of implications is analyzed via a careful examination of literature, films, and the visual arts. As you can see, the aim of my writing, the desire to bring a decimated world back to life, at times with pain, sometimes with irony, and unmistakably with humor, was very close to what I try to achieve through my paintings.
So let me return to the paintings on the screen.

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