Lot 93
  • 93

Leo Haas

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
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Description

  • Leo Haas
  • Theresienstadt: The Transport Comes; Transport from Terezin 'Released'; CafĂ© Alibi in Ghetto; Superman Commandant; Funeral with Dignity; and Kindertransport to the Zyklon: Six Drawings
  • each signed; each titled in Czech or German (on the verso)
  • each pen and wash and India ink on paper
  • each, 10 7/8 by 13 1/8 in.
  • 27.4 by 33.5 cm

Provenance

Family of the artist: sold, Sotheby's, Tel Aviv, April 23, 1995, lot 295
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Catalogue Note

Leo Haas was born in Opawa, Czechoslovakia in 1901. During the years 1939-45, he was an inmate of Nisko, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Ebensee Concentration Camps. In Theresienstadt, he was one of the principal painters who sought to record the atrocities of the Nazis at enormous personal risk. At Auschwitz, Haas was forced to produce portraits for Mengele and later he worked for the forgery commando of Sachsenhausen. Haas's work is represented in a number of Holocaust Museums and features prominently in the literature of Holocaust art.

The present works were executed immediately after World War II in 1945. They are based on pencil drawings of the same images which has hid in a wall in Theresienstadt and later recovered. These works formed the basis for the series of graphic works which the artist published recording his eyewitness account of the Holocaust.