Remembering Italian Jewish Artist Amedeo Modigliani (1886-1920)

Helsinki, Finland. Large sign for Modigliani exhibit at Helsinki airport. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber November, 2016.

Remembering Italian Jewish Artist Amedeo Modigliani (1886-1920)
by Samuel D. Gruber
 
Today is the anniversary of the death of  Italian Jewish artist Amedeo Modigliani, who died young of tuberculosis in the heyday of the School of Paris, and whose popularity continues to grow decade by decade.  Born in a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy, he spent his artistic career in Paris. Even so, worldwide, he may the best known Italian painter of the 20th century, surpassing Balla, Boccioni, de Chirico, Morandi, Burri and so many more. His story and his star rival Van Gogh's in art-celebrity annals (2 movies have been made of his life). 

More than the cubists, Modigliani was able to take some precepts of modernism and apply them to traditional - and still recognizable genres.  Though all his many portraits are stylized and unmistakably his, the subjects are recognizable.  He was a very social artist and his portraits of his many artist and writers friends and patrons help us to populate one of the most fertile periods of European art.

Modigliani was also a Jewish artist.  Though in upbringing., language, and religious identity he was quite different from the many Yiddish speaking East European artists in Paris, he was exceptional close friends with many of them, especially Chaim Soutine and Jacques Lipchitz, as well as the American Jewish artist Jacob Epstein. His own Sephardi roots in Livorno and elsewhere were deep and though he was not known to be religious, he overtly and often defiantly identified himself as Jewish, sometimes introducing himself "as an artist and a Jew."

Amedeo Modigliani. Caryatide Head, drawing, 1911

Amadeo Modigliani. Portrait of Jean Cocteau, 1916. Perlman Foundation on long-term loan to Princeton University Art Museum

Amadeo Modigliani. Portrait of Moise Kisling, 1915

Amadeo Modigliani. Portrait of Juan Gris, 1915. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And then there are the nudes. Few artists have been as unashamedly in love with the female body, presenting nudes with a bold confidence hardly seen since the Rubens. There is no rosy soft-focus of Renoir, or the statuesque perfection of Bouguereau and other soft-porn academic painters of the previous generation.  Modigliani's nudes are real women - or at least real bodies - of flesh and blood and taste and smell.  God know, when I was teenager I was certainly mesmerized!  These works - which now fetch some of the world's highest prices for art - were commissioned by Modigliani's friend and dealer Léopold Zborowski, who provided  his apartment,  models, and painting materials. This was beneficial to both - Modigliani needed money (he was alcoholic and drug-addicted) and Zborowski  paid him  fifteen to  twenty francs each day for his work.  

When exhibited, the nudes caused a great sensation - positive and negative - the show was cited for obscenity. So the nudes in many ways stand alone. Though Modigliani had seriously studied the nude since a teenage art student, these works were unlike his thousands of drawings often created in a passionate frenzy, or his portraits of friends, done as much for friendship as cash. The nudes were conceived of as a commercial venture. And brilliantly so.

Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

Sculptor Chaim Gross at work on Harvest at 1939 New York World's Fair. Photo by Eliot Elisofon, courtesy of Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

The current exhibit of photographs of the sculptural work of Chaim Gross (1904-1991), “Displayed: Stages for Sculpture,” is on view until December 16 at the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation in New York. Gross practiced what he (and contemporaries) called “direct carving” and created totemic human figures out of wood and stone. According to the exhibit organizers he "was a perfect subject for photographers who wanted to capture his creative process." Sculpture, as one of the most active, physical and, of-course, 3-dimensional forms of art, and one that could be represented well in black and white with light and shadow, appealed to photographers and was frequently featured in the many photo and news magazines of the early 20th-century.

According to the Foundation's press release:

"The photographs chart the “stages” in the making of sculpture, and public “stages” displaying Gross’s work, such as the 1939 World’s Fair, educational carving demonstrations, and commercial print media. The exhibition, curated by the Foundation's archivist Zak Vreeland, features images from the Foundation’s collection by renowned photographers Arnold Newman (1918-2006), Eliot Elisofon (1911-73), and Rudy Burckhardt (1914-99). It also includes works by less known, yet equally compelling photographers Robert M. Damora (1912-2009), Soichi Sunami (1885-1971), Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006), and Arnold Eagle (1909-92).

Chaim Gross knew many of these photographers at the beginning of their careers and became particularly close with Arnold Newman and Eliot Elisofon. Gross hired them to record the process of sculpting, both in the privacy of the studio as well as various public venues. The photographers also featured Gross, his house, studio, and sculpture in news stories, fashion spreads, and advertisements in publications such as Life and Glamour. The exhibition explores this relationship between sculpture and photography. It also considers the convergence of two modes of production: Gross’s signature process of hand carving and the mechanical reproduction of the photograph. Of particular interest are photographs of window displays that featured Gross’s sculpture in arrangements with mannequins and merchandise from c. 1940-50 at Bonwit Teller, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lane Bryant. These include an eight-window display for Bonwit Teller designed by the preeminent window designer Gene Moore (1910-98)."

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/139204/#ixzz1QrP1DBfb

View the 1957 film The Sculptor Speaks (17 minutes) on the Gross foundation website.

Read more about the life and work of Chaim Gross at artnet.com.

As it happens, the Syracuse University Special Collection Research Center has four boxes of Gross papers. I'm looking forward to finding time in the next year to examine these, or to interest a student in the project.

Exhibitions: Mark Epstein. Return of Master (Kiev, National Arts Museum)

Exhibitions: Mark Epstein. Return of Master (Kiev, National Arts Museum)

The Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews in Kiev has organized an art exhibition of the work of Ukrainian-Jewish avant-garde artist Mark Epstein (1899-1949). The exhibition, Mark Epstein: Return of Master opened at the National Arts Museum in Kiev in mid-December and includes about 100 works and is on view until the end of this month. The exhibition is the first of Epstein's work, which was not exhibited during his lifeitme during the Societ period. In conjunction with the exhibition the Centre has published an album of about 60 Epstein works including graphics, paintings, scenographic works an sculpture.

National Art Museum of Ukraine, 6 Grushevskogo St., 278-13-57, 278-74-54, www.namu.kiev.ua, until Jan. 30

Leonid Finberg, Director of the Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews of the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla academy” sent the following note:

Mark Epstein was a notable figure in the artistic life of Kyiv during the 1920’s. In 1928, having just finished the Kyiv Arts College, he immersed himself into the progressive arts movement of that time. He attended O. Exter’s art studio where his newest creative ideas were polished. Mark Epstein’s cubic-futurist works of the beginning of the 1920’s – Violoncellist, Family, Tailor, The Two, A Woman with a Yoke – have become part of the history of modern Ukrainian art.

Epstein was one of the founders of the artistic section of the Culture League – an association whose aim was the development of Jewish culture. Members of the section also included O.Tishler, El Lysytsky, J. Chaikov, S. Nikritin, and others. Marc Chagall, N. Altman, R. Falk, and D. Sterenberg also cooperated with the Culture League. In their effort to create new Jewish art, members of the Culture League synthesized images of traditional art with Ukrainian avant-garde ideas.

Epstein took an active part in this work. Unfortunately, only the graphic works of Epstein have been preserved from the 1920’s; representations of his sculptures have survived only as photos, while his paintings have been totally lost.

The work of the Culture League was terminated in the middle of the 1920’s. In 1932, Epstein had to move to Moscow. He took practically no part in exhibitions there, but worked a great deal. However his attempts to adjust his talent to the requirements of the times bore no evident fruit.

Here is a small selection (compliments of Flickr) of Epstein's innovative graphic designs using new forms of Hebrew lettering and composition.

Cover of the magazine "Freyd" (Joy). Kiev, Kultur-Lige, 1923, No 8, Yiddish. 27,1 x 21,5. Design: Mark Epstein Location: Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme, ParisSource: Hillel (Gregory) Kazovsky, The Artists of the Kultur-Lige, Jerusalem; Moskau 2003.

Cover of L. Reznik's "Ufstand" (Uprising). Kiev, Kultur-Lige, 1928, Yiddish. 22,5 x 13,2. Design: Mark Epstein
Location: Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme, ParisSource: Hillel (Gregory) Kazovsky, The Artists of the Kultur-Lige, Jerusalem; Moskau 2003.

Cover of a "Theather-bukh" (Book on the Theater). Kiev, Kultur-Lige, 1927, Yiddish. 23.5 x 16,5. Design: Mark Epstein Location: Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaisme, ParisSource: Hillel (Gregory) Kazovsky, The Artists of the Kultur-Lige, Jerusalem; Moskau 2003.

USA: Jewish Museum Cleans and Conserves Adolph Gottlieb Designed Parochet for Upcoming Exhibition

Cleaning the Adolph Gottlieb designed parochet. Photo from The Jewish Museum on Flikr.
More photos here.

Millburn, New Jersey. Congregation B'nai Israel, original sanctuary configuration showing parochet hanging on ark.

USA: Jewish Museum Cleans and Conserves Adolph Gottlieb Designed Parochet for Upcoming Exhibition

(ISJM) As the Jewish Museum gears for an exhibition of the modern art created for the Percival Goodman-designed B'nai Israel synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey (1951), its been cleaning and conserving art from the congregation (notably the large Robert Motherwell painted panel) and its own collection. It has been several years since the Adolph Gottlieb designed parochet, donated to the museum by the congregation (which has a replica in its place) in 1987, has been on view. In January museum conservators were cleaning and repairing the large fabric collage.

For more on Gottleib's synagogue art see my Tablet Magazine article about his stained glass windows in the Kingsway Jewish Center.

The following is from the Jewish Museum blog (Jan. 7, 2010):

Created for the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, Adolph Gottlieb’s Torah Ark Curtain is decorated with symbols in a compartmentalized form, a scheme that the artist also used in his Pictograph paintings at the time. Gottlieb was inspired by forms and expressions associated with non-Western art as well as Jungian philosophy of the unconscious. In this curtain, he abstracts elements of Jewish religious belief such as the Tablets of the Law, the twelve tribes of Israel, the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant. He also includes stylizations of objects developed for synagogue use (Torah mantles and Torah shields) and emblems that have become synonymous with Judaism (the Lion of Judah and the Star of David). The curtain was designed by Gottlieb and sewn by the women of the congregation.

Abstract Expressionist works–including Gottlieb’s curtain, a mural by Robert Motherwell and a monumental relief sculpture by Herbert Ferber–will be included in the upcoming exhibition Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb, on view March 14 - August 1, 2010.

In preparation for the exhibition, the Museum has begun cleaning the work. In the below photos, textile conservators Shelly Greenspan and Judith Eisenberg are doing surface cleaning and stabilizing appliques.

Symposium: "Jewish Art and Worship: America in the Post-World War II Era"

Millburn, New Jersey (USA). Congregation B'nai Israel, Percival Goodman, arch.
Photo: Samuel D. Gruber

Millburn, New Jersey (USA). B'nai Israel entrance vestibule, original appearance. Robert Motherwell panel will be on display at the Jewish Museum.

Seminar: "Jewish Art and Worship: America in the Post-World War II Era"

The Friedman Society of the Jewish Museum sponsors its annual S. Moldovan Memorial Symposium on sunday March 14 . This year's topic, "Jewish Art and Worship: America in the Post-World War II Era" is scheduled in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber and Gottlieb.

"Jewish Art and Worship: America in the Post-World War II Era"

The Jewish Museum (NY) from 9:30am-3:00pm.
Advance reservations required (Fee: $50, $10 student).

I am honored to be invited as one four speakers at the symposium. The schedule is:

Samuel Gruber, Managing Director, Gruber Heritage Global & Rothman Lecturer in Judaic Studies, Syracuse University, on "Post-World War II Synagogue Architecture: An Escape from Tradition?"

Karen Levitov, Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum, on "Modern Art for the Modern Synagogue".

Daniel Belasco, Henry J. Leir Assistant Curator, The Jewish Museum, on "The Tradition of the New: Modernism in American Judaica 1956-1967".

Matthew Baigell, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Rutgers University, on "Under the Radar: Jewish Religious Imagery in the Post-War Years".

USA: Exhibition by New Haven's Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

USA: Exhibition by New Haven's Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

Last week I wrote about the 1925 Orthodox Beth Israel synagogue in New Haven, Connecticut, popularly known as the Orchard Street Shul. I mentioned the upcoming exhibition at the John slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven organized by the artists' group known as the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project. The exhibition opens next week and continues through January, with a rich program of associated events.

The Public is Invited to the Opening Reception for the Participating Artists, on Sunday, December 6, from 12:00 Noon to 5:00 pm. To set the mood for the launch of “The Orchard Street Shul Artists Cultural Heritage Project”, the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale for Jewish Life at Yale will host a Jazz jam session on December 5 at 7:30, celebrating the swing dance music of 1924 and beyond, when the cornerstone of this Synagogue was put in place in a ceremony attended by Mayor Fitzgerald and much of the entire New Haven community.

The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art is open W-F, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, and weekends 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Schools and other organizations who would like to arrange a group visit outside of regular hours may do so by sending an email to: arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org.

Below is more information about the synagogue, the project and the exhibition provided to ISJM by Cynthia Rubin, one of the Project and exhibition organizers. Cynthia explained to me that the Project overall was inspired by the many instances of contemporary art installed within or inspired by historic synagogues in Europe. In the case of the Orchard Street Shul, the group wanted to draw attention to the historic, architecture and preservation needs of the congregation while still respecting the fact the building remains as dedicated house of worship. Thus, the exhibition is being help elsewhere (also to save on the winter heating bills for the near-destitute congregation) , and certain parameters were placed on the art created for the event. The art pieces must be somehow relevant to the specific location, history, art and architecture of the Orchard Street Shul and its location, and it must be respectful of the congregation.

"Respect" of course is a subjective term...as I have previously written in my accounts of archaeology of cemeteries in Spain and in other contexts. Still, I believe that for art as for all types of public discourse and behavior, context is everything. When context is understood, than respect should be a natural result - and when it is not, it is usually the result of deliberate and often provocative disrespect. In art, there is often a place - and an important place - for intentional disrespect and shock value. In community building (and that is what is part of the goal in New Haven) the same disrespect and shock can be counter productive.

My preliminary review of the art in this exhibition - through photos and description only- shows that much of its interesting, much is innovative and clever. I appreciate the organizers' decision to encourage thought, but not to shock.

Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project

During the months of December 2009 and January 2010, The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut will come alive with memories, recollections, and recreations of an important community heritage site, in an innovative group installation designed to both stimulate reflection on the legacies of past generations and engage the public in dreams for the future.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project is an art exhibition, a history lesson, a point of cultural exchange, and meeting place for dreamers, both nostalgic and visionary. Artists, researchers, and scholars have joined together to celebrate an important historic New Haven landmark which was once central to the life of a large Jewish immigrant population in the Oak Street neighborhood.

Urban changes in the last 50 years have all but erased evidence illustrating the importance of the Oak Street neighborhood in the lives of the newly arrived immigrants and migrants who populated much of the area now known as the "Oak Street Connector", Route 34. Where some see open space, or a new hospital, or a school, or a parking lot, others with longer memories see shops bustling with activity, voices shouting in Yiddish and Italian, sprinkled with a variety of accents from elsewhere, including near and distant regions within the USA.

Contributions to the installation offer a range of approaches. Some artists researched the history of the Orchard Street Shul and its neighborhood, uncovering multiple stories of this community: stories of women working together to aid refugees, stories of hard-working fathers and mothers who dedicated themselves to making a better life for their children, and stories of teenagers who giggled and mingled on the steps of the Shul. Others built on their own experiences, reaching into their hearts to create depictions of the Shul that are evocative of deeper connections with history and community. Still others focused on the issues of urban renewal, making real the shifts in our urban landscape that are difficult to imagine as we visit the site today.

Included in the Project are presentations by researchers from Yale University who developed innovative ways to document the building, including virtual reconstructions exploring new digital methods, ground-breaking research by computer scientists that promises to change the ways that cultural heritage sites will be documented in the future. Some contributing artists used this digital data in their creative work.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project is organized by Cynthia Beth Rubin, a New Haven based artist, in collaboration with participating artists and researchers: Nancy Austin. Meg Bloom, Donnamarie Bruton, Jeanne Criscola, Roz Croog, Linda Drazen, Paul Duda, Gonzalo Escobar, Maya Escobar, Alan Falk, Greg Garvey, Shalom Gorewitz, Jaime Kriksciun, Leslie J. Klein, Beth Krensky, Seth Lamberton, Mary Lesser, Lisa Link, David Ottenstein, Bruce Oren, Robert Rattner, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Holly Rushmeier, Janet Shafner, Frank Shifreen, Suzan Shutan, Sharon Siskin, Christina Spiesel, Yona Verwer, Julian Voloj, Laurie Wohl, Chen Xu, and Howard el-Yasin. The group includes artists from California, Florida, Utah, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, who traveled to New Haven to contribute to the project alongside artists from the region.

A Project Book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition, including essays by Hasia Diner, the eminent scholar of Jewish immigration history, Walter Cahn, renowned historian of art and and architecture, and Hana Iverson, known for her remarkable multi-media installation "View from the Balcony" that was instrumental in helping attract attention to the renovation project of the Eldridge Street Shul. The book will also feature photographs of the works in the exhibition and memories of the Orchard Street Shul, with commentary by Karen Schiff. The innovative book design is by Criscola Design.

An exciting series of public events includes:
Saturday, December 5, 7:30
Music from the 1920s-1930s jam session
Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale

Sunday, December 6, noon - 5:00
Opening Reception with the Artists
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Wednesday, December 9, noon
Lunch and Learn, in Partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, December 20, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion
Memoirs and Remembrances
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 10, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion: Documentations: Photography, Recordings and Recreations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 17, 2:00 pm
Informal Community Conversations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Thursday, January 21, 4:00 pm
Presentation by Yale Computer Science Graphics Group on
The Orchard Street Shul: Case Study in Three - Dimensional Digital Representations of Culture Heritage Sites.
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sunday, January 24, 2:00 pm
Panel Discussion: Art and the Echoes of Spirituality
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art


Sunday, January 31, 2010
Open Forum:
Artists Reflect on Cultural Heritage Project as Process
Closing Party
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

====================================
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art:
Hours
Wednesday - Friday, 11am - 4pm
Saturday & Sunday, 2pm - 5pm
(203) 624-8055

For directions and information on the John Slade Ely House visit:
http://www.elyhouse.org
For information on the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project visit:
http://orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
contact:
arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
Contact:
Cynthia Beth Rubin, Project Director
Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project
arts@orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org
Paul Clabby, Curator
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art
203-624-8055

Restitution: Settlement on Emil Nolde Work in Swedish Museum

Restitution: Settlement on Emil Nolde Work in Swedish Museum

The Web magazines ArtKnowledgeNews, ArtDaily.org and other media report that the dispute over ownership of a flower painting by German expressionist Emil Nolde, was been settled in Sweden where the Moderna Museet of Stokholm has agreed to return to Blumengarten (Utenwarf) (Flower Garden (Utenwarf)) to the heirs of Otto Nathan Deutsch, a German Jew who escaped to the Netherlands in the late 1930s.

The painting was stolen by the Nazis 70 years ago from the Deutsch collection, and in 1967 surfaced and was sold to Moderna Museet. Negotiations between the art museum and the heirs - two of whom themselves are Holocaust survivors - began in 2002. The work has now been sold on behalf of the heirs to an unidentified private collector who has agreed to loan it to the Moderna Museet for five years, and then will loan a series of other, undisclosed painting for another five years.

No media reports that I have read have commented on the irony of this situation - that Nolde in his lifetime was known for his expressions of anti-Semitism, or at least of his dislike of leading Jewish luminaries in Berlin and European art world. He had special dislike for Max Lieberman, leader of the Berlin Secession, and Paul Cassirer leading modern art dealer and arbiter of modern taste.

The ownership dispute was settled under the principles of the 1998 Washington Conference Principles, guidelines adopted by 44 countries that outline, among other things, procedures for dealing with art restitution claims. In June, the Jewish Claims Conference, listed Sweden with countries “that do not appear to have made significant progress.” The Claims Conference estimates that the Nazis stole around 650,000 works of art of all types.

The Deutsch heirs continue to search for other artworks which were lost during the Nazi period. A list can be found at the German Government website www.lostart.de.

Restitution: Jewish Museum of Prague to Return Art Collection

Restitution: Jewish Museum of Prague to Return Art Collection

The Associated Press has reported that the Jewish Museum of Prague is ready to return to relatives an art collection of 32 paintings that belonged to Emil Freund, a Jewish lawyer from Prague he died in the Lodz Ghetto in 1942. The contested collection includes works by Signac, Derain and Utrillo. How the collection will be returned and when and where items can be sold remains unclear. Czech law requires that at least some of the most notable works remain in the Czech Republic. The claimants would like the right to sell works abroad.

Read the article in the International Herald Tribune here.

Ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) Sculpture and Drawings on View in Matera, Italy until October 18th

Not Jewish Art, but a Major Jewish Artist: Retrospective Exhibition of Ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) Sculpture and Drawings on View in Matera, Italy until October 18th
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) One of the major retrospective exhibitions of an American and Jewish artist this year has gone virtually unnoticed in the US press. But in Italy, where the major exhibition of sculptor Ibram Lassaw’s work has been dramatically mounted in the Sassi (caves & cliffs) of the southern Italian town of Matera, Lassaw’s work has received extensive coverage, with over 80 newspapers articles heralding his work.

"The Great Exhibition in the Sassi" 2008 opened June 14, 2008 and will be on view until October 18 2008. The exhibition features approximately 80 sculptures and 50 drawings made from 1929 to 1996, loaned from the Ibram Lassaw Foundation in East Hampton, NY and from private American collections and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art; Heckscher Museum of Art - Huntington; Guild Hall Museum - East Hampton; New Jersey State Museum - Trenton; Neuberger Museum- Purchase and from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. The exhibition is co-curators Giuseppe Appella and Ellen Russotto, illustrate in depth Lassaw's artistic life.

Lassaw was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1913. He moved to New York in 1921 and died in East Hampton in 2003. He began to make abstract sculpture in the 1930s, and over the new two decades he strove to create a formal balance between geometric and organic form. He was one of the most important American artists of the "New York School". His can also currently be seen in the exhibition Action / Abstraction at the Jewish Museum in New York.

Lassaw also was part of the first generation of abstract artists who made work for synagogues. One his greatest works was the sculpture designed for the bimah and Ark wall at Port Chester’s Congregation Knesseth Tifereth Israel designed by Philip Johnson. The work was recently removed from the synagogue in a redesign and is now part of the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum, New York (for more on this work and its context see my book American Synagogues: A Century of Architecture and Jewish Community (Rizzoli, 2003). An Eternal Light from the synagogue appeared like a metallic sunburst. Atypically, it hung off center, to the left of the Ark. A large screen of welded copper, bronze and aluminum wire formed a backdrop to the bimah and Ark. The intricate wire pattern appears as graffiti-like drawing against a white painted backing. This work, entitled “Creation” measures 12 by 34 feet and projects one foot out from the wall plane. Lassaw, in a letter of 1986, described the work this way; “I think of it as a symphony structured in space rather than sound. It is an offering in praise and wonder of the living universe, without intending to portray the universe. One might say it is inspired by the starry fields, the galaxies and galactic clusters of which we are a part. These are not symbols but only what is there before you.” As I wrote in 2003, “One can view Lassaw’s ethereal ordered disorder as an antidote to the inspired, but still stolid geometry of Johnson’s modernism, or one can view it as the chaos of creation out of which God created the order of man’s thought and action, described by the laws and traditions of Judaism, and embodied in the purpose and form of this synagogue.”

Lassaw also created synagogue art for Temple Beth El in Springfield, Massachusetts designed by Percival Goodman. There his menorah and eternal light were much less assertive. They were essentially wire sculptures made of welded metal rods, similar to some of the pieces on view in Matera. They are transparent and appear to float in a sanctuary that is warmer and more engaging than the Congegration Kneses Tifereth Israel.

I asked Lassaw’s daughter Denise how her father’s work came to be in Matera, and why now? She told me that Lassaw was in a group exhibition Sculptura in America installed in Matera in 1990 by the Museo della Scultura Contemporanea Matera (MUSMA), which opened that same year in the Sassi, the extensive cliffs of cave dwelling (natural and man made) in which residents of Matera have lived for millennia. The museum is in two places in the Sassi: a dedicated museum that is part cave and part building; and lower down the gorge, a series of interconnected Sassi, old churches with frescoes and Neolithic storage pits; that all open to the gorge and the river below, amid the tangle of small bushes and trees, goats with bells. The Lassaw exhibition is in both places.

MUSMA is dedicated to sculpture and alternates between featuring an American or an Italian work each year. It was founded by men who grew up in Matera and played in the caves (Sassi) as kids. When in 1990 MUSMA flew all the sculptors and their families to Matera for the show, Ibram fell in love with the Sassi and loved the way his work looked in the caves. Denise feels her father would have been very pleased with the installation. She says, “These Italians really know how to do things nicely!”

For those who do not know Matera, its unique mix of landscape and architecture create one of the most unworldly and evocative environments in Europe. Though in antiquity and the Early Middle Ages there were hundreds of Jewish communities scattered across Southern Italy (remains can be seen not far form Matera in Venosa and Trani), there are no Jewish monuments known in Matera . But because to many, the landscape evokes ancient Judea, the Sassi have been a backdrop for many Biblical films ranging from Pasolini’s Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964) to Bruce Beresford’s visually stunning King David starring Richard Gere (1985). In the post-World War II period “optimistic modernism” the Sassi were deemed unhealthy slums, and beginning in the 1950s the Italian government began a program of forced relocation of Sassi residents. The museum is part of more recent program and to reclaim and preserve the Sassi, and today, they are a major part of the tourist and artisan economy of the region.