Neither Georges Rouault, the monumental Rouault of Romanesque-Byzantine holy faces and Christs wandering through the outskirts of sprawling cities, nor Goya, the haunted painter of the inferno that was the Quinta del Sordo, can provide the key to the visionary art of Isaac Celnikier.

Born in Warsaw, imprisoned at sixteen, deported to Auschwitz, and later liberated by the Allies, Celnikier began his artistic studies in Poland and continued them in Czechoslovakia under the guidance of Filla, the heroic-era Cubist painter and close associate of Georges Braque. He traveled extensively to Israel and eventually settled in Paris. Does he belong to the Paris school, the Polish school, or the young Israeli school? Classifying him is no simple task. He claims, instead, the legacy of European art in its entirety.

His major works include The Ghetto (first version: 215 cm x 240 cm; second version: 220 cm x 394 cm) and Prague (230 cm x 195 cm). In The Ghetto, which serves as his Guernica—though its spirit differs—he departs from realism and elevates the discourse.

His Massacre of the Innocents is not a human document evoking the torment of a people condemned to death. It is neither a call to action, a cry of despair, nor a danse macabre. It is a metaphor expressed through art.

Celnikier does not merely denounce a crime. This great artist refuses to submit to the demands of immediacy. Like Piero della Francesca, master of The Dream of Constantine, he creates an image that is both epic and legendary.

His irrational or supra-rational forms, his specters and ghosts—which are rhythms of planes and volumes—and his winged seraphim and dark angels emerge from an ideal or celestial space.

A tragedy unprecedented in world history is treated with serenity. The chiaroscuro alone expresses its essence and makes it perceptible. This interplay of waves of shadow and waves of light forms the poetic, plastic, and musical fabric of the work.

The Ghetto, the focal point of one of Israel's public galleries, the Museum of Martyrdom, has been seen by only a few in France.

It is a page whose inner life reveals a painter who transcends his era. The horror of the situation itself is overcome. A master of line and color has elevated it to the symbolic level of the Pietà of the late Middle Ages, such as the Pietà of the Avignon School. It possesses the same tension and concentration, intensity, and dramatic resonance.

Is Prague the second chapter of The Ghetto? Hiroshima was genocide.

Budapest was carnage. Prague is a violation—a violation committed against the identity of a free nation that refused to surrender or be subjugated. Celnikier, speaking in parables, recounts its sacrifice. His dialectical method here differs from that employed in The Ghetto. He fragments the elements of his canvas: both formal and thematic.

Isolated figures embody resistance or despair. Others serve as allegories of predatory power. The overall harmony of the painting—sober, grave, yet resonant—unites the composition. However, Prague is not the work of an activist artist crafting a polemic.

Prague is a funeral dirge.

Isaac Celnikier also painted nudes and portraits. One of his nudes, dating back twelve years, is a dense and volumetric form, reminiscent of the shapes Picasso created in 1906 during the era of his own self-portrait.

Isaac Celnikier’s portraits are fiery mirrors. The painter blurs the features of faces but reveals the eyes, which shine like stars of life. His maternities, sanctified by love, are like Virgin and Child compositions, sculptural in structure and sharply defined in their outlines.

Then there are the landscapes. Only one refers to Paris, drawing inspiration from Cézanne's later works—those chromatic rhythms without clear contours, embodying Cézanne's famous words: “When color reaches its richness, form attains its fullness.” The other landscapes are inspired by Israel, the promised land that is also a scorched land.

Celnikier, who delves deeply into his subjects, captures their harshness. His streaks of pictorial matter expose the configuration and geology of landscapes rich in classical and historical significance, akin to those of Lazio and Greece.

As the painter of The Ghetto, Celnikier views the land of the prophets, his ancestors, through the eyes of the soul. His vision is stripped-down and austere. While he perceives its splendor, he seems more attuned to the grand and architectural character of what was once the stage of the Bible.

I ask the visitors to the Galerie Granoff exhibition to pause in reflection before certain paintings, especially The Apocalypse of Prague. Indeed, Isaac Celnikier is not an artist like other artists. His work is an act of faith. For those who defend painting and its permanence, it represents immense hope.