Samuel Bak

Canvas is unlined. Paint surface in good condition. Miniscule pin dot sized spot of brown paint in sky (upper center). Under ultraviolet light some fluorescence visible on middle of extreme left edge of canvas, possibly due to the artist's medium.
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This monumental composition is a virtual manifesto of the thoughts that have obsessed the artist since the early 1960s. Utilising, with consummate skill, lessons learned from the masters of the Northern European Renaissance such as Durer and Cranach, he constructs a fantastical image of the human soul in the post-Holocaust age.

Born in Vilna in 1933, Bak spent the war years first in hiding in a Benedictine convent, then in the Vilna ghetto and finally in a labour camp from which he managed to escape. In 1948, Bak immigrated to Israel and studied at the Bezalel School, Jerusalem. Bak has travelled most of his life and portrayed his inner world though his personal symbols in his many canvases. For the artist, the Holocaust is the defining event of modern history, through which he perceives European culture, both past and future. In his work we enter a world of dreams, of obsessions that return again and again but bear little resemblance to everyday reality.