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Exhibition at the Polish Library in Paris
From March 13 to April 19, 2024. Tues.–Fri. 2 PM–6 PM.
Curator: Anna Czarnocka
The exhibition, titled Jerusalem and the Return to Life, is divided into two parts.
The first part showcases a series of Jerusalem landscapes (oil paintings and watercolors) created by Isaac Celnikier during various stays in Israel (1967, 1972, 1976, 1978, 1988, 1995). Art critic Waldemar George described this work as follows:
"And then, there are the landscapes. […] Celnikier, who delves into the essence of things, captures their arid nature. His layers of pictorial material reveal the configuration and geology of landscapes as classical and steeped in history as those of Latium and Greece.
The painter of the Ghetto, an artist initiated into profound truths, contemplates the land of the prophets, his ancestors, with the eyes of the soul. He offers a stripped-down, austere vision. While he recognizes its splendor, he seems more attuned to the grandeur and architectural character of what once served as the stage of the Bible."
The second part of the exhibition revisits three series of engravings produced from 1969 onwards: Polish Suite, Ghetto Suite, and Camps Suite.
From November 10, 2023, to June 16, 2024
Curator: Zuzanna Benesz-Goldfinger
The exhibition, titled Minor Remnants from Solna Street. Isaac Celnikier and the Holocaust Experience, focuses on Isaac Celnikier's early works (1946–1964), situated at the crossroads of socialist realism and the Arsenal aesthetic. These works, preserved in various institutions, are brought together for the first time and presented to the public in a single venue.
At the heart of the exhibition is a collection of illustrations for stories by Yiddish writer Abraham Rejzen and poems by Dovid Sfard.
