Pinchas ShaarJudaica Polish Israeli Folk Art Biblical Modernist Oil Painting, c.1960

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This painting is iconic of Pichas Shaar's aesthetic, and stylistic influences. A ceramic mosaicist and sculptor as well as a … Read more This painting is iconic of Pichas Shaar's aesthetic, and stylistic influences. A ceramic mosaicist and sculptor as well as a painter, Shaars strong decorative sense was evident in his colorful canvas, with their frequent rectilinear geometry, depicting stylized figures, often mythological or biblical subjects.

Pinchas Shaar (born Szwarc, later Shaar) was born in Lodz, Poland in 1923. already at a young age he drew small graffiti and characters of fairy tales. at sixteeen he met the Polish painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a disciple of the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich, who encouraged Pinchas’ artistic education. Strzeminski encouraged Pinchas' artistic education and introduced him to the works of such painters as Picasso, Leger, Matisse, and Mondrian. Pinchas had his first exhibition in 1938 and also completed photomontages for a poetry book by Moshe Broderson that was published in 1939. Then, in September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On February 1940 the Jews of Lodz had to move to a ghetto and perform forced labor. The artist experienced the horrors of war and the Nazi holocaust concentration camps. Pinchas worked in a prefabricated furniture factory. However, after his artistic abilities were discovered, he became a draftsman. He also designed decorations for the ghetto's theater. In 1944 the Germans liquidated the Lodz ghetto and deported its inhabitants to concentration camps. Pinchas, his brothers and his father were sent to Sachsenhausen. After his liberation by the Soviet Army in 1945, Pinchas was fortunate to reunite with his parents and his two brothers. Unfortunately Pinchas' sister and her child perished in a Nazi camp. After the war, he spent a few years in Munich Germany, where he painted stage sets. In 1951 he returned to Israel. In 1974, he decided to go live in Paris, France In Paris, he studied at the Grande Chaumière and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. It is in Paris that he begins to paint the little fantastic folk art characters of his Jewish childhood. His work reads like poetry. Indeed, the artist gives great importance to writing that can be both graphics and thought. There is in the artist a certain spontaneity, a true freedom of expression. His paintings are like stories in which little fairy figures move, such as queens of Sheba, prophets, magi, or animals belonging to a fabulous bestiary. Pinchas Shaar reveals the meanders of his consciousness and gives us an imaginary universe that sometimes refers to Jewish folklore. The work of Pinchas Shaar is comparable to an inner world, tinged with both humor and sadness. But unlike the German Expressionists, Pinchas Shaar does not paint the "horror". The anxiety of the artist is rather of the order of metaphysics.
His work is in many museums and galleries and was included in the show Israel - Entre Reve et Realite at the Musée Juif de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium along with
Bergner, Yosl Pann, Abel, Rubin, Reuven, Tumarkin, Igael Lilien, Ephraim Moses Agam, Yaacov, Pins, Jacob Kadishman, Menashe amongst others. See less