J. D. Kirszenbaum (1900-1954). The Lost Generation

Kirszenbaum´s artistic œuvre, for the most part overlooked in the annals of art history, offers testimony to an entire generation of Eastern European Jewry. His peregrinations, prompted by the need to escape the oppression of his native Poland, led to formal artistic education at the Bauhaus in Weimar, his eventual integration into the Berlin gallery scene and the all-significant association with the School of Paris. The perpetual need to flee Nazi repression resulted in his significant part among those itinerant artists who, seeking refuge, education, personal stability and a sustainable future, developed an art redolent of nostalgia and loss. Kirszenbaum´s work, documenting both the life left behind in the shtetls and ghettos of Europe and the perpetual wandering of those searching for a better future, provides extraordinary testimony to the collective experience of a generation now lost.