Vision of the New Bones: Jewish Imaginations after 1940
The exhibition seeks to broaden perspectives on art created in the aftermath of World War II and to illuminate a phenomenon that has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention: artists with ties to Judaism who experienced the horrors of the war and the Holocaust during their formative years, and whose work contains a visionary element bearing traces of personal trauma and a shattered reality. This phenomenon appears not only in visual art but also in broader cultural expressions — film, music, and literature — all of which are represented in the exhibition.
Many of the featured artists and creators experienced persecution or loss because of their identity, while for others, trauma is present as an intergenerational shadow. They created from a place of inner vision and in dialogue with the world of Jewish spirituality. Their works give voice to individual and unconventional perspectives and reveal personal interpretations of traumatic reality.
For most of the creators, art was a means of exploring and mapping the unconscious dimensions of the human psyche, and a necessary stage in forging a safe space in which to rebuild their lives. Through symbols and traditions of the past, they articulate a new world that makes life possible: a vision of new bones.
Participating artists: Batia Apollo, Shmuel Ackermann, Mordecai Ardon, Arik Brauer, Michail Grobman, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mordecai Moreh, Erich Neumann, Ernst Fuchs, Karl König, Jacques Katmor, Mark Rothko
Shmuel Ackerman, Red Violin, 1975
Gouache on paper, 17×17
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Hadas Hay
The exhibition was made possible by The Exhibition Circle of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art: Doron and Marianne Livnat, The Herta and Paul Amir Foundation, The Kirsh Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies
The grant for the curatorial research was given by the Israeli Institute for Art, the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo
Additional support was provided by the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv
