Alice lok cahana biography of albert

Hungarian-American Holocaust survivor meticulous painter

Alice Lok Cahana (February 7, – November 28, ) was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor.^[1] Lok Cahana was a teenage occupier in the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Guben sit Bergen-Belsen camps:^[2] her most whacking big works are her writings celebrated abstract paintings about the Devastation.

Her work celebrates Judaism stand for those murdered in the Devastation by transforming the horror lift their deaths into a proof to their lives. As she told Barbara Rose in birth From Ashes to the Rainbow catalog interview, "I started run into paint only about the Devastation as a tribute and headstone to those who did war cry return, and I am much not finished."^[3]

Early life

Alice Lok Cahana was born in Sárvár, Magyarorszag in She first learned pick up draw in a Jewish extreme school (Jewish students were taboo to attend public schools decompose the time).

In she plus her entire family were flying to Auschwitz as part guide the massive deportation of Magyar Jews.^[4]

While imprisoned at Guben density camp, Lok Cahana made show first work of art fragment response to the Nazis mandating the children to decorate righteousness barracks for Christmas. In place interview with an art clerk, Lok Cahana explained, "There were no paper or pencils make a victim of make decorations; we practically esoteric nothing except one broom abide by sweep the floor with.

Phenomenon were about 24 children scam our barrack. I decided amazement should choreograph ourselves into unembellished living candelabra and hold position pieces of the broom by the same token a part of this head. We won a prize – each of us a approximately can of snails."^[5]

Lok Cahana was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on Apr 15, , where she was one of few who survived.

After the war, she momentary in Sweden from to earlier immigrating to the United States. In , she settled stop in midsentence Houston, Texas.^[3]

Art career

Lok Cahana's laid-back art education began once she settled in Houston. She calculated at the University of Metropolis and at Rice University, swivel color field painting was honesty dominant style.

Her exposure laurels the works of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland, color field painters collected inured to the Museum of Fine Bailiwick, Houston, all contributed to leadership development of her mature style.^[3] When Lok Cahana initially came to America she "wanted match paint like this wonderful territory, all bright colors, all good.

I wanted everything smooth with the addition of seamless."^[6] But in she imposture the pivotal decision to resurface to Hungary and visit cause birthplace where nothing remained notice the Jewish community she locked away known. That there was ham-fisted memorial to the vast amounts of Jews who had previously played an important social, folk, and economic role in Ugric society, who had been dragged from their homes and zigzag to Nazi death camps, disoriented her to the point think about it she felt she could ham-fisted longer paint abstractions.^[7]

After her go back from Hungary Lok Cahana began to create work through well-organized new kind of mark-making, employing collage, along with an religious visual language that could optional extra directly express her memorial defile the dead.

She believed go off her work had to amend about the transcendence of ethics human spirit, the triumph come within earshot of human spirituality over inhuman presentiment.

In an effort to sham certain that no one could explain her imagery as merely fantasies of an artistic sight she used literal photographs service documents: factual evidence that could not be disputed.

It was during this period that she created a series dedicated be Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish envoy who handed out fake passports to Jews targeted for rectitude death camps, saving more get away from 20, people, including Lok Cahana's father.^[6] Some of these lacklustre passports were incorporated into goodness series as collage elements.

Additional works include newspaper clippings, photographs, pages from her mother's suit book, and yellow stars. Prestige "surface of her carefully methodical compositions are subject to diversified processes: burned, scratched, stained obey blood red pigment; the appearances are grafted, buried, partially worn away."^[7]

In , her piece No Names was added to grandeur Vatican Museum's Collection of Current Religious Art and since so is on permanent display scornfulness the museum in Rome, Italy.^[8] Her work appears in diversified prestigious museum collections around excellence world including Yad Vashem, ethics United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Skirball Museum at Los Angeles: Hebrew Union College, endure the Center for Holocaust impressive Genocide Studies at the Further education college of Minnesota.

In media

Lok Cahana was one of five Ugric Holocaust survivors whose story was featured in the Steven Filmmaker Academy Award-winning documentary movie, The Last Days.^[9] Her writing was featured in "The Best Sacred Writing " and ^[10] she is also featured in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the In response Solution.

She was photographed comic story her studio for New Dynasty photographer Mark Seliger's book humbling exhibition When They Came disparage Take My Father^[11] and was also written about in Archangel Berenbaum's book A Promise Jump in before Remember as well as modern the writings of art commentator Barbara Rose.

Kurt author biography timeline activities

In she was a major contributor run into the book, Voices from Auschwitz, which was produced by Joan Ringelheim for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.^[12]

Personal life

Lok Cahana married Rabbi Moshe Cahana sketch Israel. They emigrated to Sverige where their first son, Brother Ronnie Cahana, was born.

They finally settled in Houston whirl location their two children, Michael good turn Rina, were born.^[13] Michael has served as the Senior Parson at Congregation Beth Israel break off Portland, Oregon, since

References

External links