Description
Book SynopsisIn Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918-1945, Mirjam Rajner traces the lives and creativity of seven artists of Jewish origin. The artists - Moša Pijade, Daniel Kabiljo, Adolf Weiller, Bora Baruh, Daniel Ozmo, Ivan Rein and Johanna Lutzer - were characterized by multiple and changeable identities: nationalist and universalist, Zionist and Sephardic, communist and cosmopolitan. These fluctuating identities found expression in their art, as did their wartime fate as refugees, camp inmates, partisans and survivors. A wealth of newly-discovered images, diaries and letters highlight this little-known aspect of Jewish life and art in Yugoslavia, illuminating a turbulent era that included integration into a newly-founded country, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and renewal in its aftermath.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi List of Illustrations Note on Personal Names Introduction Part 1: In Search of an Identity: Sephardic, Zionist, Yugoslav Introduction to Part 1 1 From Dorćol to Paris and Back: Moša Pijade’s Self-Portraits 1 Coming of Age in Belgrade 2 Fin-de-siècle Munich 3 The Bohemian Paris 4 Pijade’s Self-Portraits: In Search of an Identity 2 Sarajevo’s Multiculturalism: Daniel Kabiljo’s Sephardic Types 1 Between East and West 2 Bosnian Artist or Yugoslav Zionist? 3 Choosing Sides 4 Kabiljo’s Sephardic Types 3 A Croatian Zionist: Adolf Weiller between the East European Shtetl and the Lure of Nature 1 Becoming a “Jewish Artist” 2 The Lure of Nature Part 2: From Avant-Garde to Political Activism Introduction to Part 2 4 Bora Baruh’s Refugees 1 “Four Mahaneh Portraits” 2 The Early Works 3 Paris: A Painter and a Revolutionary 4 Painting Refugees 5 Two Directions: The “Art for Art’s Sake” and the Socially Engaged Art 5 Ivan Rein’s Paris: From the Quartier Latin to Camp Vernet 1 Growing Up in an Affluent and Acculturated Jewish-Catholic Family 2 The Croatian School of Painting 3 Rein’s Paris 4 Social Awareness and Political Protest 5 Letters to Cuca: On Being Jewish, Yugoslav, and Universal on the Eve of WWII 6 The Ethnic and Universal Avante-Garde: Daniel Ozmo’s Linocuts 1 A Bosnian Sephardic Artist in Belgrade 2 Discussing “Jewish Art” in the 1930’s: Between Racial Traits and Human Values 3 Social Content and Expressionist Form 4 Sarajevo’s Avant-Garde: Collegium Artisticum Part 3: “We Artists Have to Paint”: Art Created during the War and the Holocaust Introduction to Part 3 7 Bora Baruh in Occupied Belgrade: Images of Jewish and Christian Mourning 1 Bombing of Belgrade and Persecution of the Jews 2 Painting Portraits 3 Refugees on Ruins 8 Art in Jasenovac: Daniel Ozmo and the Artists of the Ceramic Workshop 1 The Destruction of Sarajevo’s Jewish Community and Daniel Ozmo’s Arrest 2 The Jasenovac Camp and the Ceramic Workshop 3 Ozmo’s Depictions of Forced Labor 4 Slavko Bril 5 Portraits and Landscapes 6 Ozmo’s End 9 Refugee and Artist: Ivan Rein, Johanna Lutzer, and Jewish Cultural Life in Kraljevica 1 Escaping to the Adriatic Coast 2 Being a Refugee in Kraljevica 3 Ivan Rein’s Refugee Art 4 The Kraljevica—Porto Re Camp 5 Ivan Rein’s Drawings Created in the Kraljevica Camp 6 Johanna Lutzer: A Jewish Artist from Vienna 10 The Rab Island Camp: From Internment to Freedom Part 4: Producing Art for Partisans: Creativity between Ideology and Survival Introduction to Part 4 11 Bora Baruh as a Partisan, 1941–1942 12 Johanna Lutzer: Jewish Refugees with the Partisans in Croatia 13 Postscript: Jewish Artists as National Heroes, Victims of Fascism, and Holocaust Survivors Conclusion Bibliography Index
